COLOUR

The Belarusian ornament is a traditional set of symbols and colors that our ancestors have used for many centuries since pre-Christian times.

These colors have deep symbolism. White background is the color of purity. Red is the color of the sun, blood as a symbol of life, and in general a symbol of life

Why is the ornament on clothes placed only in specific places - on the collar, on the cuffs, along the shirtfront, on the headdress around the face? It is there where there are “gaps”, where evil can enter the human body. Everything else is protected by fabric. And the fabric was woven on crosses on which these signs were applied.

Perhaps the Belarusian ornament is the most restrained, the most ascetic of the three East Slavic ones.

Belarusians did not have symbols of death

— All these symbols are very strong signs that should protect a person. Although we don’t put the meaning of a talisman into them now. And our ancestors believed that they help. That’s why we didn’t have signs that would symbolize death, pain, grief.

The Belarusian pattern has a minimum of colors. Until the century before last there were only two - white and red: the unchanging white background as a symbol of purity and purity and the varied, rich in shades of red as the color of warmth, joy, sun, wealth, health.

At the end of the 19th century, black appeared in the Belarusian folk ornament - not as the main color, but as an outline, shading the lines of the pattern.

Belarusian ornaments almost always have clear geometry. Line, cross, diamond, square, stripe.

If the vegetation is grapes or geometrically correct oak. If the bird is made of diamonds or squares. Maximum stylization, minimum picturesqueness.