Shirt, second half of the 19th century
We are presenting you this beautiful Ia (Romanian traditional shirt) from Muscel made of peasant linen, woven in the loom, with yellow-cream colored lines. The long cuffed sleeves have vertical seams down the middle, with geometric decorative motifs: X-es (crosses), spirals and octagonal forms with a cross inside.
The threads which stand out are the metallic, the golden and the black fine wool threads. The altița (t.n. square shaped area of decorations sewn on the shirt’s upper part sleeve) is made of two parts with geometric motifs and with decorations similar to that on the sleeve. The shirt is rippled at the top. The decorative motif has two parallel mirrored vertical registers, with similar geometric decoration, on a closed field, flanked by two rows of square registers (in pairs of four on each row), with octagonal geometric motifs and crosses. On the middle line there are eight geometric-vegetal registers (spirals and leaves), with space between them.
The shirt we are presenting you is part of the photo album included in the book „Ii de sărbătoare – din colecția Muzeului Nicolae Minovici” (Festive Ia Shirts – in the collection of the Nicolae Minovici Museum) by Maria-Camelia Ene.
