Goddess Embroideries of Eastern Europe [Paperback]

Mary B. Kelly (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 6, 1989

Remnants of ancient goddess beliefs were very much a part of nineteenth century Eastern European folk culture. Even up to the twentieth century, Eastern European women supervised rituals in honor of the goddess, and carefully embroidered her image on their ritual cloths and clothing. Today, the strong, powerful goddess figure can still be seen on many examples of Eastern European folk textiles.

The author introduces these figures and the folk life from which they sprang, explains changes in the goddess motif and its meaning, and unfolds for us rich examples from textile collections in Russia, Ukraine and Yugoslavia. She describes folk arts from Romania and Poland and relates her conversations with folk artists in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Her story ends in the United States with descriptions of public and private textile collections which contain goddess embroideries. Kelly weaves a tale of her search for the goddess Berehinia and her research on why goddess embroideries exist in Eastern Europe.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Mary Kelly's great contribution is to have brought the artist's skills of visual perception to bear upon a mass of materials and with the aid of considerable ethnographic knowledge, to have made us all "see" the goddess...

Kelly's real achievement is in reading visual symbols. This kind of analysis is underrated in our learned culture, even though reading the pictographic language of women and other groups deprived of a public voice is extremely important." -- Dianne Farrell in SIGNS, Autumn, 1991

About the Author

For more than 20 years, artist and professor Mary B. Kelly has traveled to the Eastern European area; documenting techniques of folk embroidery and weaving, and researching the design origins of their motifs. A graduate of Rhode Island School of Design and Syracuse University, Kelly has received numerous grants, has written articles for textile magazines, lectured on folk textiles and written books on Eastern and Central European folk embroidery.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: StudioBooks (June 6, 1989)
• ISBN-10: 0966892917
• ISBN-13: 978-0966892918
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,594,645 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Artist, Professor of Art and author, MARY B. KELLY has documented folk textiles in Europe, the Balkans, Greece and Scandinavia in her trilogy, Goddess Embroideries of Eastern Europe, (!989) Goddess Embroideries of the Balkan Lands and Greek Islands (1999) and Goddess Embroideries of the Northlands ( 2007). She served as guest curator for Sacred Symbols, Ceremonial Cloth, an exhibit at the Vesterheim Norwegian American Museum in Decorah Ia, (2009). In 2011, she published a chapter "Berehinia" in the 3 volume set, ed. by Patricia Monaghan, Goddesses in World Culture, Praeger, (978-0-313-35465-6) and the text for Kaspaikka Muistiliina, Maahenki, Helsinki, Finland. (978-952-5870-02-2) Kelly has presented her findings in conferences at Oslo University, (2008) and research for this book as keynote speaker at the ASWM conference in Madison, WI and at the Ukrainian Museum, NYC (2011). A graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, and Syracuse University, Kelly conducts classes, lectures and exhibits on Hilton Head, SC where she maintains a weaving and painting studio.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Resource!, April 25, 2006

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This review is from: Goddess Embroideries of Eastern Europe (Paperback)

This book is a great resource for students of anthropology as well as artists and craftspeople. Includes extensive amounts of information on hard to find topics such as the pagan spiritual implications of specific design motifs and their relevance to seasonal rituals. Artists would find that these motifs, while traditional to textiles, would translate nicely to number of mediums.

Kelly discusses at length several Slavic goddesses rarely (if ever) mentioned by books considered to be in the "canon" of mythology. One can more easily find literature on gods such as Perun, and so it is nice to finally see more attention given to the "divine feminine" of the Slavs.