The material culture of early Rus that I will discuss here appears
in the historical record in the 10th century, and survives with gradual
evolution of styles, until Moscow takes control of the Rus lands in the
15th century. This time span covers the historical periods of Kievan Rus
and Appanage Rus (or Rus under the Mongols). My primary interest is in
the late 13th and early 14th centuries, a time of irritatingly poor
documentation it seems. (Hence the use of information from the 10th-15th
centuries, from both the Kievan and Appanage Periods.)
The study of the ancient Russian clothes has been conducted mainly
by archaeologists. Intact objects of clothing from the 9th to 13th
centuries until our time are not preserved, and main sources serve
remains of clothes and embellishments, found in excavations of the
ancient Russian settlements and burials, and also images on ancient
frescoes, icons, princely illustrations that is miniatures, and objects
of applied art. These materials are matched with mentions of
clothing in written documents and narrative sources: chronicles, saints’
lives, and various types of reports. They can give researchers
also matching ancient scenes and finds with more later objects of
clothing and folk art, in details from embroidery, carvings and murals
right up to the nineteenth to twentieth centuries. (Rabinovich re: 9-13th)
The clothing of Russian population of the European part of our country in the course of four plus centuries, from the second half of the 13th to the beginning of the 18th cent., has been studied unevenly. Best studied of all is the 17th cent., a bit worse, the 16th, and even less the 13th-15th centuries. All together, each of these three periods has not only their own pieces of research concerning clothing of one or another social class or territorial group and separate categories of fabric and dress, but also summary works, devoted to clothing of ordinary peasants, city dwellers and higher levels of society for the whole period (Zabelin, 1862, 1869; Bartenev, 1916; Savvaitov, 1896; Prokhorov, 1881; Bazilevich, 1926). A few of these (Arthsihovskij, B.G.; Gilyarovskaya, 1945; Levinson-Nechaeva, 1954; Gromov, 1977) appeared in the last 3-4 decades. One can say, that on the whole Russian clothing of the 13-17th centuries has been studied sufficiently. And all the same there remains still much that is the so-called blank spot. In the past, not always was managed exact attribution of one or another terms, to give a clear idea of the cut or function of several items of clothing, “to tie in” names found in sources to concrete preserved pieces of costume. Not always succeeded, as will be shown below, even to precisely clarify the origin either of separate items of clothing, or of its whole composition. (Rabinovich)
Rabinovich says, regarding the 13th-17th centuries: the most reliable sources appear the authentic clothing, preserved until our day in various repositories. Here in the 1st place, the collection of the government museums of the Moscow Kremlin (For Armory Palace and Patriarch’s vestry), the State Historical Museum in Moscow, the State Hermitage and State Museium of the Ethnography of the Peoples of the USSR in Leningrad [now St. Petersburg]. A relatively small number of objects of ancient Russian clothing are kept in regional local museums. The overwhelming majority are clothing, shoes and headdresses of the 17-18th centuries. Very rarely (if one does not consider church vestments) clothing of the 16th cent., however it is possible, that a few objects of civilian clothing preserved in the collections of the 17th cent. were made already in the 16th cent. Exactly dated are only a few objects found in graves: the monastic schema of Ivan the Terrible, the shirts of his sons, Ivan and Feodor Ivanovich, and the shirt of prince M.V. Skopina-Shujskij, and also the shirt, in which was dressed the doll placed in the grave of the divorced wife of Vasilii III, Solomina Saburova (Koshlyakova, 1976; Veksler et al, 1973, p. 182; Vidonova, 1951; Rabinovich, 1965b, p. 284). Known also is the volosnik from the grave of a tsaritsa in the Ascension Monastery and a few other archeological finds, about which we will speak in their turn. We note here, that in the whole, the archeological clothing material gives for examination in this period rather a lot, but all the same relatively less than for the time earlier, for which it sometimes appears to be the only source. (Rabinovich)
Probably, a more important indication is the various forms of written sources, the number of which increases from century to century. We note that especially great materials about clothing can be found in wills, descriptions of dowries, marriage contracts, and in merchants expense books. The first of these three types of documents enumerate commonly the majority of the set of various garments and with these one can collect rather precise data. In wills and marriage contracts, is mentioned sometimes even a whole wardrobe. Much information is kept in inventories of tsarist property. Considerable value is presented in writings of traveler-foreigners, because in them is preserved often special descriptions of clothing and the general appearance of Russians. The keenness of observation of the foreigners, surprised by the unusual costume of a foreign land, compensates for their weak knowledge of local terms. For all the abundance of information of written sources it is still far from complete for the territorial and chronological relationships. (Rabinovich)
A special group of sources consists of different types of portrayals – book miniatures, pictures of contemporaries, different forms of papers [?листки], icons, portraits. Researchers long ago showed the reliability of these portrayals (particularly miniatures) (Artshikhovskij, 1944; Podobedova, 1965). (Rabinovich)
We wish to warn readers of the necessity of somewhat more strict criticism of illustrations in the works of foreigners visiting Russia, where along with very accurate reproductions occur also drawings imprecise and even fantastical. (Rabinovich)
Great difficulty arises with attempts to compare written, physical and pictorial sources, because not clearly to which item of clothing relates one or another name. Here a great help for researchers is provided, for example, by textbook type of illustrations of primer books, where sometimes directly correlated name of object and its picture. This can be compared with preserved reality. (Rabinovich)
