ZOOMORPHIC IMAGES IN EASTERN SLAVIC EMBROIDERY OF SOUTHWESTERN SIBERIA

Abstract

The article presents the results of the first study of iconographic, compositional, and stylistic features of zoomorphic images in embroideries made in the 19th and the early 20th cent. by Russian women – members of the old residents’ community of Western Siberia. The analysis reveals several types of decorative compositions. Hypotheses concerning the origins and functions of the embroideries in Siberian Russian folk culture are proposed. The specimens, collected during field studies in the 1980s and 1990s, were preserved either by old women who had made them in their youth or by relatively young women as a memory of their grandmothers, mothers, and mothers-in-law. Certain towels were memorial, i.e. they were received after the death of a woman who had made them. Ethnographic data indicate that animal images such as horses, lions, dogs, hares, elephants, etc., differ in origin. To understand their function and meaning, both their prototypes and their late transformations must be considered along with intercultural contacts and the impact of urban culture.