Portrait of a Woman in an Old-Fashioned Wedding Dress
Toropets, Pskov Gubernia. First half of the 19th century
- Period Early 19th century
- CategoryPortrait
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Toropets, a large merchant town in Pskov Gubernia, was famous for the luxurious costume of its local townswomen and merchants’ wives. According to local historian Mikhail Semevsky, “they wore open-front sarafans of brocade, damask or satin fabric embroidered with gold or silver threads and girded with a gold sash or broad ribbon. The sleeves of their white shirts were sewn of the finest material, and their cuffs were of lace. In their ears were four-cornered earrings with stones and on their necks hung strings of pearls in several rows. Their expensive costumes (a kokoshnik alone could cost from two to seven thousand silver rubles) were handed down from one generation to another” (Semevsky 1864).
The unique kokoshniks of Toropets women, known in the local parlance as shishaks, were given as dowries. The number of knobs, or shishki (hence the headdress’ name), on the front of the headdress could reach thirty. These kokoshniks were a visiting card of sorts for the town of Toropets and were not just adornments but also good investments that fetched enormous sums. During times of financial difficulty a shishak could be pawned or rented out for weddings.