
Sewing Collection
The Sewing Collection was created in 1977, including embroidered textile materials that have entered the museum's collection since its inception. Some of them were acquired during the ethnographic expeditions of NIM in different regions of the country, and others were donated or bought by private individuals and collectors.
The collection is significantly enriched after the accession to the NIM of the funds of the National Museum "Rila Monastery". The collection today numbers more than eight hundred inventory numbers with over a thousand units, chronologically referring to the period XIX - the first half of the XX century.
Embellished decoration is applied to almost all clothing and clothing accessories and is an essential element in the construction of the overall costume. The ornamentation of the traditional Bulgarian clothing with vezmo is of ancient origin and was characteristic until the end of the XNUMXth - the beginning of the XNUMXth century, when changed economic, social, etc. conditions, as well as new aesthetic trends, provoked its decline.
The shirt is the main center of the weight room decoration. The embroidered motifs are distributed on the collar, the undercut, the sleeves and the skirts, forming a kind of ornamental frame. The most numerous in the collection is the group of sleeves from women's shirts from the regions of Central Western Bulgaria - Samokovsko, Dupnishko, Transko, Pernishko, Sofia; Macedonia. The vase is large-figured - richly embroidered, with colorful coloring and ornamentation. The cast woven home cloth (hemp, linen, later and cotton) used for the base has a relatively coarse structure, which determines the embroidery technique - by counting the threads on the weft and the base. The embroidery is filled with cross, contour, straight, openwork, liegat, etc. stitches, and the threads used are multi-colored, mostly wool, less silk, and more recently cotton. The ornamentation is diverse – geometric, stylized plant, less often zoomorphic and anthropomorphic. The sleeves of the Sofia shirt, worn under the sleeveless sukman, are heavily embroidered almost entirely from the shoulder to the wrist. In Dupnishko and Samokovsko, the writing of the vesbe decoration is based on a preliminary drawing of the canvas, filled with small stitches and with the help of a gergef.
Part of the materials stored in the "Sevices" collection are related to the decoration of the towels for the bridal veil. Such are the richly embroidered Dupniska mahram, the bridal veils from Dolna Lipnitsa and North-Eastern Bulgaria, the ruchenik from the Rhodope Mountains, the tablecloth from Macedonia. There is a significant number of sokaine embroidery - the embroidered ends of the cloth for women's veiling, characteristic of married women in the XNUMXth - XNUMXth centuries in the regions of Gabrovo, Dryanovo, Kilifarevo. The collection also contains embroideries from the Sokanese Macedonian weaving.
The collection also houses samples of so-called reshaped textiles, the result of the "Native art" trend that appeared in the 20s and 30s of the XNUMXth century and the return in a new form of the vesbian decoration in the Bulgarian home. The tablecloths, bags, cushions, curtains, etc., created in this way, give new life to already out-of-use bathroom decorations.
Part of the embroideries stored in the NIM fund are published in the catalogs "Signs of needlework. Collection "Embroidery of sleeves" from the fund of the National History Museum", S., 2017 and "Transformed needlework from the collections of the National History Museum", S., 2020.

Handwoven cotton canvas; embroidery with woolen threads and tinsel. Inherited from the family of Hadji Valcho from Bansko - a prominent Renaissance merchant and founder of the Zograf and Hilendar monasteries. Dimensions 65/38 cm. NIM 9616

Inherited from the family of Hadji Valcho from Bansko - a prominent Renaissance merchant and founder of the Zograf and Hilendar monasteries. Handwoven cotton canvas; embroidery with woolen threads and tinsel. Dimensions 41/53 cm. NIM 9618