The history of ornamental jewelry in folk art reflects the history of the development of the Ukrainian people, its cultural and religious traditions, the surrounding nature and traditional crafts.
Folk craftsmen made jewelry with great love, putting their creative imagination into it. And metal necklaces are wonderful examples of folk art that testify to the great artistic abilities of folk craftsmen - from Trypillians to modern ones.
Metal jewelry of Trypillians, Cimmerians, Scythians and Sarmatians
The territory of modern Ukraine was inhabited by the Trypillians, Cimmerians, and Sarmatians. And information about the oldest metal jewelry has come down to us as archaeological finds.
In the fourth millennium BC, women of the tribes that carried the Trypillian culture wore copper beads and moon-shaped pendants. The Trypillians knew how to melt metals and cast them in clay molds, which were used to make jewelry. In the Late Bronze Age (the last quarter of the second millennium BC), metal jewelry became widespread: hryvnias, necklace strings, lunnytsia pendants, neck plaques, medallions made of bronze, gold, and silver.
Metal necklaces
Source of the illustration: National Museum of the History of Ukraine
Among the jewelry of the Cimmerians are necklaces and beaded fibules.
Scythian women decorated their necks with gold plates. Only Scythian kings had the right to wear massive pectorals (such as the one found near Tovsta Mohyla in the Dnipro region). Among the found Scythian jewelry are bronze and gold jewelry in the animal style, made using the casting technique.
Pectoral of the Scythians
Source of the illustration: Rodovid Museum
Sarmatian jewelry includes hryvnias, fibules, and metal beads made using the lost-wax casting technique. In the areas inhabited by the Sarmatians of the Chernyakhiv and Antean cultures, who partially converted to Christianity, two-sided cross molds, as well as silver and bronze crosses, were found in the Chernivtsi region of Bukovyna. On the territory of Galicia, crosses-encolpions and crosses-adhesives, including those depicting the Virgin Mary and the Crucifixion, were found in Halych, Lviv region.
Metal necklaces of Kyivan Rus
Metal jewelry made by the Dnipro Slavs in the middle of the first millennium consists of fibules, pendants, and plaques cast in bronze, connected by chains, rings, and elongated plates. Encolpion crosses, gold and silver pectoral icons were found near Kaniv.
Neck hryvnia
Source of the illustration: National Museum of the History of Ukraine
In the 9th and 10th centuries in Kyivan Rus, cities, including Kyiv, were the centers of artistic crafts, in particular metalworking. Craftsmen at the princely courts made jewelry of gold and silver, and for ordinary townspeople - necklaces of metal beads and pendants of various shapes (round, oval, lily-shaped, cross-shaped) of bronze, yellow copper, tin, and lead. Bronze and silver hryvnia necklaces made of a single piece of metal, often twisted from wire, were also common.
Metal necklace with a moon pendant
Source of the illustration: National Museum of the History of Ukraine
Among the pendants, lunnytsia, decorated with circles, triangles, and diamonds, stood out for their sophistication. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, the custom of hanging coins (silver Roman denarii, Arabian dirhams) and specially made imitations of them in necklaces became common.
Сoin with an eyelet
Source of the illustration: National Museum of the History of Ukraine
Also widespread were the flourishing enkolpion crosses, which came from Byzantine art as a symbol of the spiritual victory of Christianity. In the princely Kyiv and the Galician state in the 9th through 13th centuries, two methods of casting were predominant: wax modeling and reusable molds. Old Rus goldsmiths cast more than 20 different types of body and clothing jewelry from bronze, silver, and various alloys. Bronze and silver jewelry, including enkolpion crosses, were found on Castle Hill in Lviv, in ancient Halych, and in Volyn.
The main motifs of jewelry ornaments are geometric. Many jewelry items featured curves, such as an endless line, a bihunets, and a snake. Circles were frequently seen, which had a talismanic function because they have neither beginning nor end and are considered a universal sign of the divine cosmos and the Divine. There were also wedge and lily-like motifs. With the adoption of Christianity by Rus, floral ornaments appeared in jewelry.
Сross
Source of the illustration: National Museum of the History of Ukraine
The most common metalworking technique was casting from wax models in stone molds.
However, the Tatar-Mongol invasion of 1240 and the subsequent dependence on the Golden Horde halted the development of Kyivan Rus art.
Metal necklaces in Ukraine in the 14th - 19th centuries
After the western and southern lands of the former Kyivan Rus became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, which later united into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the craft of goldsmithing developed again in many cities in the 14th - 18th centuries: Kyiv, Lviv, Halych, Kamianets-Podilskyi, Lutsk, Belz, Poltava, Pryluky, Nizhyn, Hlukhiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and others. The main metals used were gold, silver, and other non-ferrous metals, and the types of goldsmith's products were dominated by metal filigree necklaces and pendants, such as crosses, coins, icons, medallions, and dukachas.
Until the middle of the 17th century, Lviv was the leading center of goldsmithing in Ukraine, and in the first half of the 18th century it moved to Kyiv. Ukrainian goldsmiths created original and highly artistic works of vivid national color in the techniques of casting, minting, etching, engraving, filigree, etc.
Since the 17th century, in the Eastern Carpathians in the Hutsul and Boikivshchyna (modern Ivano-Frankivsk, Chernivtsi, Zakarpattia, and Lviv regions), mosiadz (from Polish mosiadz - yellow copper, brass), an artistic processing of metals (copper, brass, bronze, copper, tin, and antimony alloys), has been widely developed. Craftsmen made various jewelry, such as zgardas with cross-shaped pendants and clasps made of brass, copper, and nickel-plated brass with geometric decor and ancient pagan symbols.
Zgarda
Source of the illustration: The Josaphat Kobrynskyi National Museum of Hutsulshchyna and Pokuttya in Kolomyia
In the eastern part of the present-day territory of Ukraine, the main place in the decorative complex of jewelry was occupied by dukachs, minted medallions or gold coins that hung on chains or were suspended from a brooch-bow. In some regions, the place of the dukach was occupied by a richly decorated cross. Dukachs and crosses were made of copper, silver, or white alloy using the technique of casting or stamping.
Dukach
Source of the illustration: National Museum of the History of Ukraine
Metal necklaces in Ukraine in the 20th and 21st centuries
At the beginning of the 20th century, the industrial production of jewelry developed in Ukraine, but its replication had a negative impact on the artistic level of handmade products and urban goldsmithing started to collapse. During the World War I, the mosiacal trade also declined.
In the period between the two wars, the goldsmithing craft of Galician Ukrainians rose, but they specialized mainly in religious items. However, due to Soviet rule in eastern Ukraine, the production of folk metal jewelry (dukachs) almost completely ceased. The same fate befell the goldsmiths and mosiazhnyky of western Ukraine after the spread of Soviet rule to these territories and the outbreak of World War II.
Soviet-era jewelry was factory-made, unified, and mostly devoid of Ukrainian national style. At the same time, there were artistic jewelry workshops in the USSR that created real works of art. Such items did not reach buyers; they were shown at exhibitions, but sometimes their designs were redesigned and put into factory production.
Jewellery of the Lviv Jewellery Factory
Source of the illustration: sorokastore.com
Individual artists from the Hutsul and Bukovyna regions, who created unique original metal products in the style of traditional Ukrainian jewelry, also allowed themselves to deviate from the general Soviet trends.
After the restoration of Ukraine's independence, the motifs of traditional Ukrainian ornaments began to gradually return to industrial jewelry and to the works of art workshops and individual artists. The national flavor and traditions of Ukrainian goldsmithing and mosiazhnytstvo are especially evident in the jewelry of the 21st century: factory jewelry embodies Slavic and Ukrainian symbols, while art workshops and individual artists reproduce traditional zgardas, dukachas, and create Ukrainian necklaces in ethnic style with modern metal elements. The works of contemporary artists differ only in which element prevails: an exclusive artistic component or a commercial one. And each designer and artist chooses for themselves whether their products are works of art or artistic craft.
Reference list