Hello all,
Today I will start to cover more of Romania. Specifically, Județul Muscel within the larger region of Muntenia. Here is a map showing the location of Muntenia within the current borders of Romania.
And here is a map showing the location of Județul Muscel within Wallachia. It no longer has official administrative status, having been absorbed by Argeș County.
The ornament of the costumes of Muntenia is particularly rich, being within the orbit of the National Capitol. Gold and silver thread are prominent. Compared to some other regions of the country, however, the color palette is rather restricted. The main colors used are black, red, gold, and silver.
The basic costume is made of 4 garments. The chemise, ia, wrap skirt, fota, sash, and headcloth, marama.
The chemise, ia, was originally constructed with a shoulder inset sewn to the sides of the body pieces, and a sleeve added below that. Today, the inset is usually one piece with the outer sleeve, and the inner sleeve is joined to the gusset, there being a seam on both sides of the sleeve.
There is a band of embroidery across the upper sleeve, on what originally would have been the shoulder inset, and bands 'rivers' of embroidery down the length of the remainder of the sleeves, and the front of the shirt. The collar, cuffs and hem are also embroidered. The seams are often joined with decorative stitching. The 'rivers' are always vertical, never on the diagonal as they might be in Bucovina or Moldova. The main bands on the front are often made from a series of squares of embroidery.
In recent costumes the altița, [the band of usually monochrome embroidery at the top of the sleeve below the inset], is usually absent. This is again, in contrast to Bucovina or Podillia. If it does occur, as in the examples above and below, it is interrupted by the rivers, which extend all the way to the shoulder embroidery.
As you can see in the above example, sometimes colored lines are woven into the cloth near the selvedges and these lines may be incorporated into the ornament of the garment. Note also that this ia has extra long sleeves, just to show off the amount of embroidery. It would have been worn with many folds on the arms.
The cuffs may be simple bands on the ends of the sleeves.
Or they may be set a few inches from the end of the sleeve, forming a ruffle.
Or they may be absent entirely, the edge of the sleeve having another embroidered band.
The embroidery tends to be made of just a few simple motifs repeated to make the designs.
This piece uses cross stitch, outline stitch, and chain stitch with metallic thread.
Some more graphs of embroidery. Note that these show an intact altița. These are older forms of the embroidery. The range of stitches and motifs is limited, and yet they are recombined to form a huge number of distinct arrangements. Here are a handful of examples.
There is another form of sleeve construction known in this area. It is rare, but consists of a single long length of cloth which is sewn together in a helix. These do not have rivers, but a band of embroidery along the edges which spiral down the arm with the seam.
The lower body garment is usually a wrap skirt, fotă. This is generally the case in Eastern Romania, Muntenia and Moldavia.
This is woven of usually black wool with ornament woven in or embroidered. This example above is polychrome, but the ornament is more commonly in metallic thread or monochrome. The ornament forms a band at the hem, and then along the wrapped edge in front. The color palette is again red, black, gold, and silver, with other colors being rare or used in an ancillary role.
A rare alternative is to have a narrow apron with the overskirt wrapped around the back, with the edges just meeting. Notably the apron is worn under the skirt.
Some more examples, showing the range of ornament.
The overskirt is held in place by a woven sash, bete. These were often woven with simple bicolor designs.
On the head was worn a garment called maramă. This consisted of a long length of cloth one loom width wide. It is similar to the Ukrainian namitka, or the Lithuanian nuometas. Unlike these more northern examples, the Romanian maramă was woven of a light gauzy cloth, and had more opaque ornament woven throughout its length. It was wrapped loosely around the head and shoulders.
Here are some examples of the woven ornament of this garment.
The maramă was sometimes held in place by a headband, fruntar, often of black velvet with beadwork. A velvet band with attached coins was also worn.
The traditional footwear was stockings with moccasins, pinci. These were later replaced by modern shoes or boots.
This first plate shows another variant of the embroidered sleeves, where a length at the end of the sleeve was embroidered on the back side, and pulled through the cuff to show it off.
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Some more images from this region.
Thank you for reading, I hope that you have found this to be interesting and informative. I hope that those of you who embroider will find this style to be challenging, and that you will find ways to incorporate this embroidery into your lives.
Roman K.
email: rkozakand@aol.com
Source Material:
Georgeta Stoica et al, 'Portul Popular de Coloctie', Craiova, 2013
Paul Petrescu et al, 'Arta Populara si Decorativa', Sibiu, 1981
Auralia Douaga, 'Ii si Camasi Romanesti', Bucarest
Tancred Banateanu et al, 'Port, Tesaturi, Cusaturi', Sibiu, 1955