Ornamental design of textile elements in the wedding decoration of horse among the Bashkirs

Abstract

The area of this study includes the south-east of the Republic of Bashkortostan (Abzelilovo, Burzyan, Baimak, Beloretsk districts) predominantly inhabited by the Bashkir people. The chronological framework of the research spans the 20th and early 21st centuries, i.e. the time when horse wedding decoration was still used by the Bashkirs in some locations, attesting to preservation of long-standing ethnic traditions. The aim of this study is to analyse decoration elements of horse in the wedding ceremony among the south-eastern Bashkirs in the 20th and early 21st centuries, including caparisons, saddle blankets, breastplates, bellybands, and cruppers. The source basis includes author’s fieldwork materials collected during in 2010, 2017–2019 and 2023, as well as archival materials, museum collections in the city of Ufa and rural school museums preserving rare exhibits. Standard scientific methods, such as comparative historical research, scientific description and analysis, have been used. During the collection of field materials, traditional ethnographic research approach was also used, including observation, photofixation and in-depth interviewing conducted in the Bashkir language, which allowed us recording local names of the wedding horse decoration. Analyzed were ornamented caparisons, saddle blankets, breastplates, bellybands and cruppers as attributes of the Bashkir wedding ceremony in the south-east of the Republic of Bashkortostan. The festive horse decoration was part of a bridal dowry; the bride herself participated in its making. The bridal horse decoration in the wedding ceremony performed social, sacral and aesthetic functions. It was enriched with sacral signs and symbols to protect from bewitching and evil spirits. A young wife moved to husband’s house on her horse decorated for wedding accompanied by her husband, girlfriends and close relatives. Until the 19th century, the bride would have ridden astride, but already at the turn of the 20th century that would be quite a rare phenomenon. However, in some villages there were single cases of the observance of this rite even in the mid-20th century. It has been found that in the 20th century in the south-east of the Republic of Bashkortostan several types of wedding caparisons, different in their ornaments, materials and techniques, were used. There were several types of appliqué and kuskar embroidery. The altered form of the wedding horse decoration has been preserved until the early 21st century.

Keywords

• bashkirs
• bashkir wedding
• horse decoration
• saddlecloth
• decorative applied arts.