According to historical sources, the ancient Egyptians were the first to learn how to make beads. Later, Byzantium became the center of production of art glass and beads, from there the production moved to Venice, and due to frequent fires the glassworks were moved outside the city to the island of Murano. For many years, the island of Murano was the only place in Europe where beads were made. Despite the strict secrecy, in the XVIII century the process of bead production spread to Bohemia (since 1918 - Czech Republic). Bohemian merchants transported these goods to other countries, in particular, through the territory of Bukovina.
At first, beads were expensive, they were sold by the thimbleful. In the late nineteenth century, the Czechs mechanized the process of bead production, which significantly reduced its cost. From 1919 to 1940, the territory of Northern Bukovyna was part of Romania, which was a corridor for the supply of beads from the Czech Republic. It became available to the general population, which led to the widespread use of this material for creating jewelry in Bukovyna in the late XIX - early XX century.
Beaded products were made by two techniques – netting and weaving. The technique of netting consists of stringing beads on a thread and netting them in connected beads. This made it possible to obtain light and lace products. By changing the density of netting (grid of the number of beads on the side of the square 1:1, 3:3, 4:4), masters modeled the shape of the beaded jewelry, giving it the necessary roundness to be placed on the neck.
Stringing was carried out using the techniques "grid" ("rhombic grid"), "honeycomb", "cross", a combination of techniques "grid" and "cross"; "on one thread", "on two threads", "on several threads".
It is known that the technique of stringing "cross" in combination with the technique of "grid" was used to create syliankas in Northern Bukovyna and to decorate sylianka pendants in Western Podillia (in the vicinity of Husiatyn and Kopychynets in Ternopil region).
The technique of weaving resembles the creation of the cloth by a simple overrun on a special loom device. This technique was used to create ribbons of different widths and lengths. In woven ribbons, the beads are tightly adjacent to each other, so the product does not have a lace and grid pattern and cannot take a rounded shape.
By form, beaded jewelry was divided into several types:
- ribbons from 1 to 3 cm wide, used as head ornaments (of women's hair and men's hats); often the lower edge of the neck ribbon was decorated with pendants (beaded fringes, loops), which gave it a compositional complete look; these decorations were made and worn in Boikivshchyna, Lemkivshchyna, Hutsulshchyna, Pokuttia, Bukovyna, Zakarpattia, Prykarpattia and Podillia; in Hutsulshchyna, Bukovyna and Pokuttia such decorations were sewn on a ribbon - "garasivka";
- looped ribbons made of beads 60-70 cm long and 3-5 cm wide, which were worn around the neck; the place where the ribbons were connected was decorated with fringes, loops; they were made in Boikivshchyna, Bukovyna, Hutsulshchyna;
- jewelry in the form of a round collar, made in the technique of weaving with a lace texture of grid weaving, often ended with fringes; such jewelry was made in Hutsul, Transcarpathia, Prykarpattia, Podillia, Nadsyannya, Boykivshchyna and Lemkivshchyna; the widest collars were in Lemkivshchyna - up to 15-20 cm, in Boikivshchyna they were 7-14 cm wide, in Podillia - 7-10 cm wide; a separate type of jewelry was toothed syliankas, which had a toothed shape.
Syliankas were one-part, when the pattern was placed in one strip, and two-part - with two stripes of the pattern. The lower edge was finished with several rows of loops or beaded tassels.
Double sylianka consisted of two parts - a ribbon and a collar, each of which had its own variant of stringing or weaving and ornament. Two-part syliankas were worn in Western Podillia, Lemkivshchyna, Hutsulshchyna, Boikivshchyna and Nadsyannya.
Most of all, geometric patterns were used in beaded jewelry, the main motif of which was a crossed rhombus - "with a cross", with a smaller rhombus in the center - "with eyes", a rhombus with a horned outside – "with horns", a rhombus framed by squares of "towns". These basic motifs of the pattern were complemented by other geometric motifs: crosses, triangles, hexagons, rose stars, guardians, dashes, dots, S-motifs.
There were two types of compositions:
- ribbon composition of interconnected motifs (were common in Podillia, Transcarpathia and Hutsul region);
- ribbon composition of motifs of disconnected, separated by pauses unoccupied background (were common in Boyko and Lemko districts).
Geometric plant pattern (branches, leaves, flowers) was widespread in the vicinity of Przemysl, Bibrka, Sokal and Mostysk in Lviv region, Husiatyn and Kopychynets in Ternopil region, Tyachiv in Transcarpathia, as well as in Podillia.
Zoriana Kuryliak