Traditional crafts and handicrafts
Rural crafts and handicrafts such as weaving and embroidery are closely connected with traditional folk costumes. As everywhere in Transcarpathia, weaving was one of the oldest and most widespread mass crafts in the Perechyn region. Hemp, linen and wool yarns were the main yarns from which the fabrics were made. From the end of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century, cotton yarn was also used. Each family had looms, and each woman and girl could spin and weave.
Making home-woven fabrics is a complex process that took a long time and required hard work. In the Perechyn region, it consisted of traditional stages: making threads from yarn on a spindle, rewinding threads into spools, twisting into balls, warping and weaving. According to the functional purpose, home-woven fabrics and cloths were divided into three groups: clothing, household and interior. Clothing fabrics were woven mainly by simple weaving of threads. In the villages of the Turyan valley it was quite common to sort. The largest group of interior fabrics are towels. In the everyday life of the inhabitants of Perechyn region there were towels («utyraki»), the simplest version of which was made from a piece of home-woven hemp cloth, chopped on three sides and hemmed with a machine seam. There were also towels («utyraki»), one of the longitudinal edges of which was decorated with embroidery.
The interior fabrics also included the so-called peg towels, which were used to decorate the corners and walls of houses. In the 1920's and 1930's, under the influence of urban embroidery and as a result of cultural and everyday contacts with Slovaks in Perechyn and its environs, wall napkins, on which scenes from folk life were embroidered, became widespread. Such napkins were embroidered along the contour of the pattern with the technique of stitch or cross.
Tablecloths have both a decorative purpose and a hygienic function. Tablecloths differ in purpose. The number and artistic level of embroidery on the tablecloths testified to the mastery of the hostess, her well-being. The embroidery of the tablecloth could determine the social and property status of the family. In the early twentieth century, the embroidery of tablecloths in the Perechyn region was dominated by traditional geometric and geometrized ornamental motifs. Later, geometric and floral motifs or only floral ones were combined here.
In the 1930's and 1940's, tablecloths were usually embroidered using the counting technique, and embroidery was made of floral ornaments. At the beginning of the twentieth century, embroidered tablecloths («breadbaskets») were used to cover Easter baskets. They were decorated with cutting and netting. Holiday tablecloths were used to set the table on Sundays, holidays and banquets.
Home-woven paths («pokrivtsi»), which covered benches and chests, became widespread among interior fabrics.
Easter eggs were an integral part of the folk culture of Ukrainians in the region. Traditional Lemko Easter eggs are made with a hairpin, a pointed stick, as a result of which a teardrop-shaped shape is formed, thicker on one edge and thinner on the other. This form is a module for creating a large number of ornamental motifs that have a stylized plant character. Drop-shaped patterns are placed on clear symmetrical structures that are rhythmically placed in the sharp, middle and wide part of the egg. Therefore, Easter eggs have a three-part division.
We can assume that the use of a hairpin was preceded by an Easter egg with a funnel, which has a more complex design. Chicken, duck and goose eggs were used for painting. Winter bird eggs have a thicker shell than summer ones, which is important for the artistic processing of Easter eggs and their long-term storage.
Easter eggs of Lemkos are mainly one-, two-, tricolor, bright saturated colors. Therefore, we can talk more about color combinations than about the construction of color. The most common combinations of white pattern with red, blue, green, pink, yellow colors.
By ornamental nature, they are openwork, where the mass of the pattern and background is proportionally balanced. Such Easter eggs are widespread in the western part of Transcarpathia and Ukrainians in Eastern Slovakia. Traditionally, Easter eggs of Perechyn region were painted in one color, but in different tones: red, green, blue, orange, purple. The pattern is built of ribbons of small ornamental motifs: stars, branches, loops. By the nature of the pattern, they are similar to thin white lace on a colored background.
Among the oldest motifs found on Easter eggs in the Perechyn region of the second half of the twentieth century are princesses, spirals, and S-shaped motifs. Easter eggs were performed with both a hairpin and a pen. Maria Khavavka, born in 1935, from the village of Tury Remeti, continues the ancient Easter egg traditions of the region. Her works are dominated by motifs of stars, willow branches and spruces. Easter eggs were also made everywhere in Transcarpathia, cooked in a decoction of onions, on which the leaves of spring plants were reflected in the reverse way.
