by Archyp Danyljuk, Tasia Hontar, and Ivan Krasovs'kyj

Three short 1987 essays on Lemko material culture: Archyp Danyljuk on
traditional Lemko domestic architecture, Tasia Hontar on Lemko
garments (first published in Forum #70, Summer 1987), and Ivan
Krasovs'kyj, a Lemko historian-ethnographer and curator of the Lemko
section of the open-air folk museum in L'viv, on traditional Lemko
women's clothing (translated from Ukrainian by Jurij Shkljar).

Traditional Lemko Domestic Architecture — by Archyp Danyljuk

TRADITIONAL LEMKO DOMESTIC
ARCHITECTURE

Carpatho-Rusyn American, Volume 10 #2, 1987

Lemko villages are mostly situated on low terraces along streams and rivers
beyond flood level. The oblong form of the houses and the method of their
construction is also linked with the system of land usage. In most villages the
land is divided into wide strips that run crosswise through the valley

In most cases, the houses in the Lemko Region had windows facing the road;
that is. their front facade. However, in the far western parts of the region
there are villages where the houses stand sidewise to the road The reason for
this was that in these localities there were wider river valleys, making it
easier to drive into most of the farmsteads.

The classic type of Lemko dwelling was the rectangular or row house. These
are rural village structures in which the farm buildings are built one touching
the other, all under the same roof as the house. Such Lemko houses are
composed of the dwelling unit - the room inhabited by the family (chyza), the
entrance passage (sini), and the storehouse or pantry (komora); followed by the
stables or cattle barn (stajnja); the threshing barn and grain-storage room
(pelevnja); and lastly the machinery and wagon barn (sopa).

A typical Lemko rectangular row house, village unknown. (Photo courtesy of
the Ukraina Society, Kiev)

The Ukrainian writer, Vasyl' Zemljak, described a Lemko village with its
houses in his novel, Green Mills: "The buildings here were brought
together in a long line and served all the needs of the farm - the family
dwelling, cowbarn, and grain-storage under one roof with the hayloft above.
Wooden double-doors or a gate led to the hay loft, but narrow doors to the
entrance passage of the house." This description actually refers to a
village of Lemko settlers who as early as the nineteenth century emigrated from
the Presov Region to Podolia in the western Ukraine, where their descendants
remain to this day.

The folk architecture in the Lemko Region has inherited much that is
archaic, that is, old building traditions which have been retained but adapted
to local conditions, be they geographic, ethnic, or socioeconomic. The houses
were most often made of split, half-round fir logs. In far northwestern
Transcarpathia (Subcarpathian Rus'), these were very often oak logs. The round
side of the split logs formed the exterior, the flat side the interior walls.
At the corners the timbers were fitted by overlapping through use of a simple
interlock device or a fish-tail joint. Dry forest-moss was packed between the
joints of the rounded logs. The roofs were thatched with straw, and the houses
usually had two sloping surfaces.

On the exterior, the timbers were rubbed with crude oil, which not only
preserved the walls from rot and worms, but even served as a sort of
ornamentation. In villages lacking such oil, burnt clay mixed with water and/or
linseed oil was used instead. The rounded logs were filled in or packed along
the whole length with moss and clay. This "mortar" was then
whitewashed, so that the resulting horizontal stripes stood out vividly against
the dark oily background of the logs, thereby underlining the structure of the
house.

The living space was quite spacious, in contrast to the entrance doors which
were usually very low and narrow. Windows in most cases had nine small panes:
sometimes two windows were built side by side. Inside the house, the walls were
coated with clay and whitewashed with lime or chalk. The ceiling, however, was
rubbed with crude oil or with a thick paste of brickdust and linseed oil.

Much attention was given to decorating the exterior walls. For color,
white or bright yellow clay was used. Decorations included various ornamental
motifs, such as solar signs, sickles, pothooks, angles, the tree of life,
braids, and flowers (the basic motif being a pine branch or stem and a flower).
Flowers were most often depicted on flat doors. There was also the tradition
that a "flower" must have as many stems or twigs as there were members
of the family living in the house. When a child was born, another pair of
branches was painted underneath. On the big gate-doors, usually birds were
painted .

The tree of life, a typical design in Lemko home exteriors.

Inside the house, paintings were few. The walls were white-washed with
lime and blueing. Sometimes near the window, colorful streaks and dots were
painted, as well as around the contour of certain parts of the big stove.
These designs were made by those who believed in the magical power of such
signs, which allegedly protected everybody who lived in the house from evil.

The designs were executed with a cloth wrapped round a stick, or with a cat
hair's brush. Painting was usually done before important holidays: in spring
before Easter; in winter before Christmas; or at other times before 'holy days'
or monthly festivals. The ornaments were not copies, but always drawn anew from
memory. They were executed mostly by girls and elderly women.

This painting tradition in the Lemko Region began to disappear in the
decades after World War II, but thanks to the labor of love carried out by
Iryna Dobrjans'ka, one of the organizers of the Lemko Museum in Sanok, Poland
and now a researcher at the State Museum of Ethnic Studies and Applied Art of
the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kiev, the tradition has been carefully
investigated. Dobrjans'ka has prepared an album of Lemko wall-painting
designs, which is preserved today in the Museum of Ukrainian Folk Architecture
and Traditional Life in Kiev.

With regard to the layout of the interior, the '"mouth" of the
stove was turned toward a side wall. The bed was then set between the stove and
the side wall. It had a big feather or down mattress and above it hung a pegged
board for hanging Sunday clothes. In certain localities, on the side wall at
the head of the bed there was a shelf for dishes. Along the side and front
walls, there were benches. Between them would be placed a high table or a chest
which was always covered with a white towel which served for covering bread.

Various additions could be built onto the row house - a closed porch for hay
and straw and for various garden or farm tools, a pigpen, a fold for sheep, and
a stall for the horse.

These, then, were the general characteristics of traditional Lemko rural
domestic architecture. And despite the impact of modern building techniques and
styles, it is interesting to note that the old Lemko building customs are
preserved to this day in the far northwestern corner of Transcarpathia (the
Perecyn and Velykyj Bereznyj districts), in the Presov Region of northeastern
Czechoslovakia, and, of course, in the Lemko Region of southeastern Poland.

Archyp Danyljuk
L`viv, Ukraine

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Index

Lemko Garments — by Tasia Hontar

Garment of Andrew Savka
(1619-1661) the Lemko "Robin Hood." Woodcut by O. Velychko

All Lemko garments, particularly in their cut, and decorative techniques
are evidence of the subtle aesthetic taste of their creators.

Lemko women usually dressed in a chemise, a skirt, a kind of apron,
a sleeveless blouse and, in winter time, a sheepskin coat (jacket). On
their heads they wore a hood or a kerchief (babushka). Their footwear more
often than not consisted of leather shoes (postoly) or boots (choboty).

Sorochka (blouse / shirt / chemise). In Lemkovyna, it was known
as oplichaor chakhlyk. These sorochka blouses were made
of homespun hemp (for daily wear) and flax (worn on special occasions).
These were smooth or seamless cut - in other words, the sleeves were sewn
to the shoulders parallel-like, gathered up round the obshyvkacollar,
and down at the cuffs. What was special about the sorochka Lemko kind of
women's bodice / blouse was that they cut it waist short. Its lower part,
missing as it was, was made up for by the podolokwhite skirt of
rougher linen. It was tied about the waist by a length of cord. Blouses
worn by girls as well as women were always livened up by whimsical patterns
or needlework.

Most of the Lemko blouses feature cross-stitch at the sleeve and narrow
hem-stitch at the cuff. The women generally used yellow, green and red
threads against a red background, working their ornamental motifs into
the shape of crosses, rhombuses or even eight leaf rosette like patterns.

In winter, Lemko women put the spindytsiaskirts on top of their
podolokcounterparts. The latter were known as fartukh, litnyk
or kabatand were made of homespun wool. In summer, similar garments
were used, made of vybilkaprint cloth, dyed by itinerant craftsmen.
These skirts were usually dark blue, even black, complete with tiny ornamental
patterns shaped as small wheels, pepper grains or outlined as mere dots.
Such a skirt consisted of five gores (long tapered pieces of cloth) gathered
up as so many right little folds and sewn to the belt. With growing factory
output in the early 20th century, skirts like that started being produced,
using manufactured fabrics that were either monotones or prints. In order
to save on material, coarser lined was applied to make the front gores,
covered by the apron. Usually, all skirts worn by Lemko women for special
occasions were trimmed at the lower section, boasting several rows of narrow
sewn-on color stripes, popularly known as farbytky.

Lemko women's clothing
from Komancha - Sanok region.

Apron. Worn on top of the spidnytsiaor skirt, this garment
was traditionally known as zapaska. It was usually cut and sewn
using the same fabric as the spidnytsiaskirt, if not finer in quality
or whiter in color. Just like the spidnytsia, every zapaska
would be pleated ever so neatly and livened up by the addition of color
bands and laced flounces.

Sleeveless blouse. Otherwise known as lebykor korset,
this kind of women's garment was impressive with its beauty and unique
decorations. Ya. Holovatsky, a well known scholar, wrote at the end of
the 19th century that neither a maiden nor a married woman would ever dare
put in an appearance at work, unless she had a bodice like that securely
on. A lebykwas usually made of factory produced black, blue or
navy-blue cloth, trimmed by the chain or the trestle type needlework, done
using red thread plus fine yellow metal buttons of brass. The colors of
the needlework blended harmoniously with those apparent on the sleeveless
bodice.

Footwear. Postoly, also known as khodakyor kerptsi,
is the term for shoes made of home-treated leather. To wear them, one had
to lace such a shoe to one's leg, using the navolokylaces or strings.
On special occasions, rich Lemko women wore boots, painted yellow or black.

Headcloth. A maiden's headcloth consisted of a white homemade
lined or commercial made kerchief - khutskaor *khustia.*Married
women kept their hair in a tightly twisted, small bun, clasped by a fine
hazel-nut ring, known as khimlie, khomevkaor khymka. Women
wearing such a khimliawould always cover them under the chepets
(hood, bonnet), the latter being made from florid manufactured fabric.
On top of all that, they always sported and extra big, and warm babushka.
The first time a girl could wear a khimliaand a chepets
was during her own wedding, in the case of the traditional pochepny
ritual of being dressed-up, and decorated, to face the husband-to-be. On
occasion, the maids of honor, while attending to the bride's looks and
costume, sang:

"She was a maiden yesterday,

She sported a garland.

Now she is a woman,

Wearing the hood."

Lemko woman's clothing
from Hrab, Jaslo region

Jewelry. Jewelry formed an inseparable component of the Lemko
woman's traditional dress. They put on necklaces of corals or colored strings
of glass. Girls and young women also practiced wearing broad strips of
colorfully embroidered cloth pinned to the necklace. It was known as basabanka.

High collars of the kraikaor kryzatype contributed remarkably
to the treasure trove of folk ornamentation. These were made by both girls
and married women. The colors of such a collar harmoniously blended with
those of the accompanying, embroidered blouse (bodice) and leybyk,
producing a dark or light red background to accommodate a variety of scattered
rhombuses, crosses or hexagons, made of braided strings of white, blue,
green, black and yellow beads.

A Lemko man usually wore a shirt, pants, a belt, a sleeveless jacket
(vest), postolyshoes or chobotyboots, and a hat.

Men's shirts were made of hemp or flax. They were short, hardly reaching
the belt. Ethnographic sources testify that shirts worn in the late 19th
century were buttoned at the back. In the villages of western Lemkovyna,
they were buttoned at the shoulder. The collar was narrow, laced with a
red string or fastened with a special shponksbutton. In that period,
men's shirts were not decorated, but prior to World War I, needlework started
being applied.

In summer, Lemko men wore lined pants held up by the *ochkur *rope
(also known as nohavkaor hacha). In winter, they put on
white cloth trousers on top of these pants, called *kholoshni *or
holoshni. Although held up by narrow leather belt, another broad
one was worn on top, having four clasps (buckles), called cheres
or yuhas.

Like the women, the men put a cloth sleeveless jacket (vest) on top
of the shirt. It was known as a lebykor bruslykand was
ornamented by needlework and metal buttons. In western Lemkovyna, such
vests were embroidered at the tails and the stiff collar. The patterns
used were floral - flowers, twigs, buds and leaves. The needlework was
marked by a rich and clear-cut decoration.

The chuha (chuhania) was a typical Lemko outer garment
in the form of a short cloak made of brown or black homespun cloth. At
the back, every such chuhahad a broad and long pelerine or neckerchief
called halerya, ending in long torokafringes known as svichky
(literally, candles). A chuhapelerine was usually ornamented with
several white stripes of broken lines. Since chuhaswere worn over
the shoulders, the sleeves were sewn up at the cuff. They served as extra
large pockets or bags. At a Lemko wedding, the marshalokemcee always
kept a bottle of alcohol down one of the *chuha *sleeves.

Men's footwear was similar to that of the women - the postoly
shoes or chobotyboots.

Lemko man's clothing
from Komancha, Sanok region

In summer, the Lemko men wore the kaoapblack hat, its brim bent
upward. Young fellows decorated their hats with black or red feathers.
In winter, men sported round sheepskin hats, the top covered with dark
or light blue cloth.

Lemkos from the village of Zavadka, Sanok county - engraved by A.
Gareis, 1877.

More Photos of Lemko Garments

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Traditional Lemko Women's Clothing — by Ivan Krasovs'kyj

American**, Volume 10 #3, 1987
with permission*

This article is written by Ivan Krasovs'kyj, a Lemko historian-ethnographer and curator of the Lemko section in the open-air folk museum in L'viv, Soviet Ukraine. The article was translated from Ukrainian by Jurij Shkljar and appears here with the courtesy of the Ukraina Society in Kiev. - Editor

Clothes worn by Lemkos have always fascinated outsiders by their striking variety of designs and color patterns. Until the mid-nineteenth century, Lemkos made their garments from homespun linen and heavy, coarse cloth. Later, the intrusion of commercial manufacture into the peasant's daily life had an impact on the evolution of clothing as well. Cheap factory-made fabrics gradually replaced homemade garments, although the latter retained traditional folk designs.

Lemko women generally wore underclothes consisting of asorochka (blouse) and a spidnyk (underskirt), also known as a podolok. On holidays, they put on fine linen blouses and weekdays they wore ones made of coarser konipnefabric. These blouses were generally short, 20-24 inches. In the eastern Lemko Region, the blouses were tucked into the skirt; farther west they were sewn onto the skirt. A typical blouse from the Sanok district had a stiff collar. Beneath it, the cloth was pleated, with three-row embroidery (tryrjadka)
done in bracket (lapky) and square-stitch (kvadratyky), using blue and red threads and embellishing the sleeves below the shoulders. Toward the edge, the sleeves were also pleated. The cuffs were narrow, decorated with three-row embroidery and a pointed overhand stitch at the end (zubci). Blouses made in the central Lemko district of Jaslo had somewhat broader solid sleeves with multicolored needlework in the lower part. The broad cuffs boasted embroidered leaves, twigs, and flowers, and ended in slits trimmed with colorful overhand.

The outer garments included a skirt, known as the kabator fartuch, with a small fartushokor zapaska (literally, apron, but here that part of woman's dress which serves as a skirt). The skirt proper was wide, pleated at the waist, with the straight folds pleated still more at the bottom. Until late in the nineteenth century, dresses worn every day were unornamented, whereas holiday garments boasted needlework in
the form of sun-shaped, curved, flower, and leaf-styled patterns. these were done in blue or brown thread. Designs were first carved on a wooden board. The board was then covered with a fine layer of dye and an imprint made upon a length of cloth. Such a print dress was called a maljovanka or farbanka. As factory-made fabrics found their way to the countryside, these farbanka dresses gradually disappeared.

In a description of the Lemkos from 1841, the Galician Ukrainian ethnographer Ivan Vahylevych claimed that Lemko women even then wore calico finely-pleated skirts in summer, but come winter they put on those same homemade farbankadresses. Along the border with the Boyko Region in the east, Lemko women dressed in colorful skirts. Those worn by unmarried girls were blue, red, and pink; those by married women were green; and those by widows were black. In the central and western parts of the Lemko Region, the nyzor solid stitch was used to sew narrow colorful stripes on women's skirts. The front from the belt down was a hand's length from the hem under the zapaskaskirt and was made from a wedge of homespun linen.

The "shoulder garments" consisted of a lajbyk, korset (bodice),*kozushanka *(sheepskin vest), *kozhushok *(short sheepskin coat), serdak (peasant's coat of coarse wool), and *hunka *(jacket). The lajbykwas a kind of sleeveless waistcoat made of blue coarse cloth, decorated with multi-colored laces and buttonholes.

A popular variety of the sleeveless jacket is found in the korset (korsetca) bodice, which was made of dyed coarse cloth, silk, or velvet, and lined with homespun linen . Its bottom section, from the belt to the hem, ends in semicircular wedges *(klynci)*or flaps (klapany), and the korset bodice was more often than not buttoned up. Throughout the Jaslo district and in the outskirts of the towns of Nowy Sacz and Gorlice, *korset *bodices were embroidered with colorful threads and laced with tiny shining plates and flower-shaped beads.

Sometimes, a Lemko woman would put a sheepskin jacket (kozhushanka) on top of the blouse. This jacket was designed to resemble the *korset *bodice, but without the wedges (flaps) at the bottom. This garment was widespread in the central part of the Lemko Region. It was made of cherry-colored velvet, lined by homemade coarse cloth or linen. The edges were trimmed with black sheepskin or other differently dyed material. It was embellished by a couple of bouquets of various color and embroidered on the chest. In the Sanok district, women used to wear short yellow sleeveless wool-lined jackets. The edges were complete with the baranok (lamb) stitch. Floral needlework brightened up the chest.

A sheepskin jacket (kozhushanka) with boquet pattern on front and lamb stitch (baranok) on edges. (Photo courtesy of the Ukraina Society, Kiev)

The serdak (woolen coat) and hunka (jacket) were made of homespun linen. An unlined serdak-- loose and of simple cut -- was ornamented by colorful sewn-on laces. The hunkawas a jacket with different kinds of lining. It was worn on cold days. Its collar, the ends of its sleeves, the lower and front edges, the trimming of the pockets were covered with white or blue factory-made coarse cloth, or with red or green woolen laces, called suknjat. Down the back there were falda (slits). In the eastern Lemko villages, the hunkawas
made of black or gray coarse cloth, while in the western Lemko villages, similar garments were made of white cloth. These jackets were either buttoned up or fastened with wire hooks. Lemkos used to wear hodakyor *kerpci,*shoes made of two rectangular pieces of rawhide tied to the feet with woolen strings known as navoloky. On Sundays and on holidays they wore Hungarian fancy boots with high legs. Lemko women covered their heads with pieces of white cloth. Elder women wore big babushkaswhich they knotted
at the back or folded up, throwing the rest of the cloth over the shoulders. A babushkawas often decorated with small flowers, the edges trimmed by colorful patterns. The part that hung from the back featured a large embroidered flower whose design was in each case decided by the craftswoman.

The hardan , worn around the neck. (Photo courtesy of the Ukraina Society, Kiev)

Lemko women and girls also used to wear krajkyand other strings of beads. A krajka necklace was braided, using strings of different beads and forming a band with a vegetative ornament that was fastened round the neck. The hardanrepresented a more sophisticated design, having a network of whimsically-braided colorful beads. Korali (literally, corals) were strings of beads tied round the neck, consisting of
some 10 to 15 strings varying in length. These were either red (genuine sea-bred corals) or cheap glass imitations. After World War II, the practice and trades of working wool and making fiber began noticeably to decline. It was at that time that traditional Lemko garments were discarded. In the Soviet Union, only Lemko women in far northwestern Transcarpathia (Subcarpathian Rus') have persisted in wearing
the traditional dress for daily use. Among other Lemko immigrants in the Soviet Union, it is only in folk ensembles that traditional dress is worn, as in the Lemko choirs from the villages of Loshniv (Ternopil' region) and Rudne near L'viv.

Ivan Krasovs'kyj

L'viv, USSR

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Colophon

Three essays on Lemko material culture, hosted at carpatho-rusyn.org
(Carpatho-Rusyn Knowledge Base): "Traditional Lemko Domestic
Architecture," by Archyp Danyljuk (Carpatho-Rusyn American, Vol. 10
#2, 1987); "Lemko Garments," by Tasia Hontar (Forum #70, Summer 1987);
and "Traditional Lemko Women's Clothing," by Ivan Krasovs'kyj
(Carpatho-Rusyn American, Vol. 10 #3, 1987, translated from Ukrainian
by Jurij Shkljar, courtesy of the Ukraina Society in Kiev). Captured
2026-08-05 from http://www.carpatho-rusyn.org/lemkos/arch.htm,
cloth.htm, and ivan.htm. Published here under permission held by the
New Tianmu Anglican Church for this material, recorded 2026-08-05; all
rights remain with the original authors and publications named above.
Krasovs'kyj's essay is a third-party translation reprint (translated by
Jurij Shkljar), not a Good Works Translation prepared by this library.

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