Traditional neck jewelry of Lemkivshchyna ethnic region in western Ukraine
Lemkivshchyna ethnoregion is located on the slopes of the Low Beskydy of the Carpathians between the rivers Syan and Poprad and to the west of the river Uzh.
Only a part of the southern Lemkivshchyna - the "triangle" from the village of Uzhok (in the north) and the city of Uzhhorod (in the south) to the Borzhava river in the east - belongs to Ukraine now. Now it is Velyky Berezhnyansky, Perechyn and partly Svalyava, Irshava, Mukachevo and Uzhhorod districts of Transcarpathian region. Galician part of Lemkivshchyna is now located in Poland, and the southern part - in Slovakia.
Breast ornaments consisted of coral necklaces or its imitations (5-15 strands), glass red ("kalenky"), white ("tinsel"), green, golden, blue, dark purple, black and other colors and beaded collars ("kryvulki", "kryshy"). Crosses were attached to the necklace. Lemko beaded collars were wider than similar decorations from Boikivshchyna and Podillia, their width was up to 15-20 cm.
Their ornament consisted of three or four bands of geometric motifs arranged in a circle. Lemko beaded decorations resemble the ancient Ukrainian princely pectoral ("barmy") in shape.
During the second half of the XIX century, one-diameter syliankas in the form of small round collars were also known in Lemkivshchyna. Such decorations have almost not survived, perhaps because at the end of the XIX century they began to be replaced by double syliankas - beaded decorations in the form of an openwork collar, the composition of which had two ornamental tiers. At the turn of the XIX and XX centuries, Lemko two-part syliankas were replaced by large round collars with multi-tiered ornamentation, known in the region under the names "kryza", "kraika", "kryvulka". Among Olena Kulchytska's ethnographic sketches, there is an image of a Lemko ornament that has a two-tiered composition, but according to the size and peculiarities of the lower tier's ending, it can already be called a kryza.
The composition of the decoration combined sacred for Ukrainians motifs associated with life-giving and amulet semantics. Most often these were rhombuses, hexagons (with windows, grains), oblique crosses, squares, triangles. The composition of the decoration was divided into tiers by a zigzag motif. A distinctive feature of the ornamental solution of Lemko ornaments was its bright, saturated with open colors palette, the dominant color of which was red.
The two-part sylianka consisted of two parts - a ribbon and a collar, each of which had its own variant of stringing or weaving and ornamentation. Two-part syliankas were worn in Lemkivshchyna.
Color scheme - ornamental motifs of blue, green, yellow and white colors were placed on a bright red or dark red background.
At the same time, in the vicinity of the village of Lisko, beaded decorations of two forms were worn: a beaded ribbon that fitted closely to the neck, and an openwork kryza, the edge of which ended with beaded teeth and fringes.
Zoriana Kuryliak