“Pigeons Fly off a Stone Mountain”: From a Cooing Lovebird to a War Pigeon, or Modification of Embroidered Rock Dove’s Symbolics in Today’s Ukrainian Merch

Abstract

The article is devoted to the symbolics of doves on epigraphic embroidered towels (mainly known as rushnyks with inscriptions), which were massively produced by Ukrainian girls and women from the end of the nineteenth till the middle of the twentieth century. Embroidering lines from folk songs or proverbs on textile was a very popular kind of so-called written (or fixed) folklore. By combining these verbal texts with different images of pigeons, fundamentally new works were created. For some time, this phenomenon was almost forgotten. However, in the course of recent years Ukrainian collectors and artists have been actively using old embroidered samples for souvenir products or stage decorations. Being popularized and updated in our time, the meaning of these embroidered birds has undergone significant changes. On specific examples, the author shows how one and the same image of pigeons acquires different, often even opposite senses depending on the context.

Keywords

• embroidered towels (rushnyks)
• ukrainian merch
• doves
• symbolics
• anti-ship cruise missile neptune
• anti-tank weapon javelin