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Towel in Traditional Life of SerbiaEthnographic Museum of Serbia
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 Towel (town of Aleksinac) |
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| In Serbian tradition a towel played an important role and every household used it in general. It was a metaphor and a feature in wedding and funeral customs, a value that was bestowed and exchanged, and important decoration in a house. The fact that a towel has been kept up to present witnesses its special role and relevance. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Towel (Okruglica, Svrljig) |
The origin of towels is most probably connected with common Slavic culture and homeland. A Slavic word 'ubrus' witnesses this. It probably originated and was used in times when the Slavs used to live together and it remained in all Slavic languages. While the Slavs lived in their homeland or a bit later, certain important values, about towels and textile furnishing, were established. Linen as the most important textile product with the Slavs, considering all the effort taken in its production, had its economic value and it served as a means of payment in everyday trade since the 9th century. We find such value relation with textile products few centuries later. So in archival documents of Dubrovnik we find information according to which a towel was inherited, pledged or stole. Treating a towel as an economic value changed in time to be transformed into symbolical value that it has had in our recent past and present. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Towel (Markovac, Velika Plana) the first part of the 19th century |
Since the medieval times painting documents show the use of objects resembling towels according to appearance and function. Towel representations appear on frescos and icons in churches and monasteries in Serbia and Macedonia as well as the Balkan Peninsula in general. In festive scenes on frescos and icons long towels that were presumably used for wiping are placed round tables. Towel representations also appeared in the scenes of Christ's and Holy Virgin's baptism and small peaces of textile, which resemble towels according to their form, were presented with costumes being attached to belts. The word 'ubrus' has disappeared in time from use being replaced with 'peškir'. The word 'peškir', a Balkan Turkism of Persian origin, appears in similar forms in the Romanian, Bulgarian and Albanian languages with the same meaning. It is significant that in Serbia local names such as: kanavac, brisaljka, krpa, maramče, krpče, mahrama were also used. |
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 Towel (Metohija) |
A towel was made of flax, hemp, cotton, or rarely silk and was decorated with weaved or embroidered patterns that were most commonly placed at the narrow side. Materials used to weave a towel as well as appearance and size of a towel depended on its function. Towels used in everyday life were most often weaved of hemp and flax, although some of them were mixed with cotton, or completely made of cotton. Decorative or bestowed towels were most often made of cotton or silk or, a combination of these two. The exposed towels, made in the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, are work of diligent women weavers and embroiders in villages and towns. Towels were obligatory component part of bride's dowry and were specially weaved and embroidered but also inherited for that purpose. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The main meaning and most important function of a towel in one's life was wiping of body, so towels with this purpose were most widespread. Besides wiping, towels were also used in preparing food and covering dishes. Food in baskets was covered with towels when carried mostly to fields, plough-land, but also on festive occasions. Towels were also used while dining. These were long towels used by few persons to cover lap and wipe hands and mouths during mealtime. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Towel (Krepoljin, Žagubica) beginning of the 20th century |
Towels also represented an important decoration in houses. They were used to decorate home and the way towels were made, decorated and arranged with other objects inside a house clearly showed taste and imagination of housewives as well as fashion of those times. Towels were used to decorate mirrors and icons in guestrooms. Family photographs and room corners were also decorated with towels. They were placed on frames or hangers that were used for that purpose only. Decorative towels for wash-basins also embellished space at first, but they were also used for guests to wipe primarily. There were various ways of how to decorate rooms with towels in Vojvodina. Towels were placed as decoration on the inside of wardrobes, windows inside, or on wall plates. On the other hand, strong Oriental influences that dictated customs and ways of life in towns in Kosovo and Metohija, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina produced similar ways of how to decorate home and use towels as decorative elements. Thus there are great many ornamental towels from Kosovo and Metohija and the plateau of Sjenica and Pešter in the collection of towels in the Museum. Decorative towels were placed round corners and walls, in front of banjica-amam (Turkish bath) or round mirrors. |
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 Towel (Metohija) beginning of the 20th century |
A towel was a component part of many customs, primarily those connected with the life cycle such as birth, wedding and funeral customs. On such occasions towels were primarily gifts. In the past the principles on common life strictly determined the kind of gifts that should be given in a certain situation to a certain person, so a towel was bestowed in customs and when, whom and how to bestow it was exactly determined. Wedding customs with few phases and numerous elements in the last phase - wedding itself, offered many situations in which towels were exchanged. Towels were very common gifts if not the commonest among other textile objects. Since wedding represented the establishing of connections both between families and in a social community in general, the role of a gift was to secure such a connection. In that sense the size of a towel, quality of the material and production depend on the fact to who a towel will be bestow. One would be given a worthier towel if it was necessary to establish a closer connection with him and if his role in the wedding was of great importance. The towel of bridegroom's relative - dever was distinguished from others according to its size, decoration and the way of production, almost in all parts of Serbia. Besides bridegroom's relative, the marriage witness - kum and best man - stari svat were also given towels that differed in their size and decoration, and were more luxuriant in comparison with towels of other wedding guests. They were the most important guests with whom it was relevant to establish strong and friendly relations. |
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 Towel (Priboj) from the thirty years of the 20th century |
In funeral customs, a towel also functioned as a gift. It is a fact that just like a wedding, a funeral itself consists of many elements that are strictly respected. In this system of rules a towel occurs very often as a gift even today. Symbolic giving of presents, i.e. giving for the soul of the deceased also appears in funeral customs. One of these forms is to send a towel to the deceased to the after-life world. Concerning relations with the parallel world, towels were bestowed to churches as well. Such towels-donations are called spomeni (remembrances) or uspomene (memories) among the Serbian folk because a memory on a person should be kept by those towels and lines on them. Besides this, towels for health were also donated to churches. The custom of bestowing textile products (towels among them) to churches is an old and common habit in Serbia, which has been kept up to now. |
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 Towel (Belgrade) the end of the 19th century |
Another important event in one's life was building a house, which was marked by giving towels. In the final stage of building a house, the roof was garnished with gifts, which, among other things, contained towels given to builders as presents. There are no many data on bestowing towels on other occasions. Towels were given to especially significant guests during formal visits. Concerning this, it is familiar that towels were given to liberators in the First and Second World Wars. Since birth, wedding and death were events that represented turning points in life, there is an opinion that gifts served to establish order and social balance. In any case, a social connection and contact among individuals and families were established by giving towels. Gratitude for a certain favour or completed work was also expressed through this. How a towel was thought of and what it really meant is showed by a custom of establishing a connection with the parallel world by the towel. |
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 Towel (Belgrade) beginning of the 20th century |
Beside the mentioned evident roles in life, there is another purpose, maybe not so obvious. Unlikely other purposes this one has not been described in ethnological literature enough. Towels functioning as markers of something particularly occur in customs representing most often a particular individual and his role in a particular custom or social status of a person. Towels can also mark a ritual itself or some of its elements. Apart from the role in rituals, towels marked social status of an individual as well. Women and girls wore towels in south Serbia as a part of their clothing, tied to belts. Girls wore them on their right and women on their left side. In south Serbia, girls carried small towels in hands when visiting public celebrations and dance-leaders carried them as well. Through this social status and the role of an individual in a certain social event was expressed. |
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 A small towel (Radovnica, Trgovište) beginning of the 20th century |
As we can see, a towel is an object with long history and various uses. The way it has been presented through its most important functions it has had in Serbian tradition clearly shows how significant it is in folk life. The most relevant characteristics of this textile product - appearance, main use and attributed values were created in distant past. From a simple linen object that obtains its name and form most probably even in the ancient Slavic homeland, a towel gradually acquires new features, functions and decorative forms. This object is generally accepted due to its simple form but also its symbolic values that it gets in certain social and historical milieus. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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