Borshchiv embroidery
A local tradition of women's shirt embroidery from the Borshchiv area (Ternopil Oblast, Western Podillia), recognisable by dense stitching in black woollen thread on the sleeves.
Borshchiv embroidery is practised in the town of Borshchiv and the surrounding villages in the south of Ternopil Oblast. Regionally it belongs to the embroidery of Western Podillia, which in general is marked by a dark palette, black combined with dark cherry or yellow, and by patterns that cover the whole field of the sleeve.
The Borshchiv shirt was embroidered in woollen thread, black or white, with the main decoration concentrated on the sleeves. Black was the defining colour of the older shirts, which is why the best-known variety is called the «black Borshchiv shirt». Present-day masters of the tradition include Iryna Herman and Ivan Kuzyshyn.
«Borshchiv folk embroidery» was entered on Ukraine's National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2020. The entry names not only the Borshchiv area but also the places where the tradition is kept up today: other districts of Ternopil Oblast, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, Lviv, Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia and Ukrainian communities in the United States. It is not on a UNESCO list. Borshchiv embroidery is not a synonym for Podillia embroidery: it is one local tradition within Western Podillia.
