ANCIENT UKRAINIAN JEWELRY “YAHNUSKY” AS MEMORIALS OF THE 17th – THE BEGINNING OF THE 21st CENTURIES

Abstract

The purpose of the research is to analyse the original heart-shaped female dukachi-yahnusky, which remain in private and state museum collections of Ukraine, and the data of literary sources, which are used to trace the aspects of the ancient jewelry spread of this type in the domestic cultural space during the 17th  – 19th centuries, as well as their later “replicas reconstructions” that have been used by Ukrainian women since independence. The methodology of the research is based on a set of dialectical, semasiological, semiological, hermeneutic, historical genetic, historical chronological, comparative (historical comparative), idiographic, historical cultural, prosopographic, inductive and deductive methods. The scientific novelty of the research consists in determining the local historical and cultural specificity of the spread among the Ukrainians of the 17th – the beginning of the 20th centuries of wearing the original dukachi in the form of a heart (sometimes in combination with a bow). Separate sources of inspiration have been singled out that had influence on the spread of such jewelry in the territories of Kyiv region, Cherkasy region, Poltava region, Chernihiv region, Sumy region, Kharkiv region, Voronezh region, and Kursk region, populated by the Ukrainians or compact groups of the Ukrainians during the period under analysis. There have been distinguished varieties of ancient “folk” jewels, primarily, made of copper alloys, bronze, nickel, and silver; and “panskyh” (first of all, made of silver, sometimes gold plated) objects, and in modern universal everyday “replicas” – zamakovykh (zinc alloy with aluminum, magnesium and copper), non-silver (copper, nickel, zinc alloy), brass, cupronickel, silver, gilded yahnusky. The Conclusion. It has been determined that wearing of yahnusky played a special role among the Ukrainian women’s jewelry, which originated in the circles of the Cossacks of the Baroque era. The connection between the beginning of the tradition and the spread of such neck and chest ornaments talismans was outlined at the end of the 16th century (the age of Mannerism) in Europe at the initiative of Pope Urban V (since 1594). The spread of the fashion for the symbol of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ in the ensemble of outfits from this time has been traced, first in the western Ukrainian territories (as an imitation of the ancient of wearing medallions of various shapes, where ducat was understood as a ducat – a metal coin minted in Venice from the 13th century, and from the 14th – in Hungary, Austria and Poland). It has been discovered that these ornaments of the national women’s costume had been found in Kyiv region since the second half of the 17th century. It has been noted that the commemoration of the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus coincided in the Baroque era with the spread of fashion in courtly women’s European costume to wear whimsical, decorated in the style of clothing of French favorites, in particular, the Marquise de Pompadour, heart-shaped wax dukachi with bows and frills around the neck instead of a cross, which corresponded to the aesthetic requests of the Baroque and Rococo for the demonstration of virtues and readiness for love. There have been analysed the ancient examples of dukachi, including their wedding varieties, made on the territory of ethnic Ukraine at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, which preserved in domestic private and state collections. There have been singled out the objects among them originating from Kyiv region, Cherkasy region, Poltava region, Chernihiv region, Sumy region, Slobozhanshchyna.

Key words: ancient Ukrainian jewelry, “yahnusky”, jewelry shops, the 17th – the beginning of 21st centuries