ELLIPSES AND CIRCLES MOTIFS

Apple patterns

In the dim weaving technique, patterns of both sides of textiles are different: ellipsis on one side and circles on the other. Sometimes they are called apple-shaped patterns. Weavers used to give preference to ellipsis. In the field research, 132 respondents out of 213 pointed to the circle pattern of elements of three and four sizes with ellipsis, and only 37 pointed to the ornamentation of the other side of the textile. In the case of other patterns, consisting of elements of four and more sizes, circles are a little different on both sides of the textiles. Eight-thread dim cucumber elliptic patterns look like photographic negatives: there are dark spots instead of bright spots, and vice versa on the other side of the textiles.

In the 20th century three kinds of definitions of apple-shaped patterns from East Lithuania were reported       . The same segment patterns are called wheeled (ratinis).

The respondents called some of the dim pattern quadrangle and circle motifs <apple-shaped *, others wheeled * ones. In the course of time these pattern names taken from picture-cloth technique textiles were adopted for some other segment ornamentation *. The leximy wheeled is very general. The impression is that a lot of patterns fall under this definition. However, only a few textile patterns with wheels were found. Besides, more apple-shaped patterns with elements of three, four and more sizes were found in West and Southeast Lithuania.

Twentieth century Lithuanian rural culture is extremely variable. Textile analysis shows the weavers’ obvious rationality, because it points to time, technique, pattern sample and the function of textiles. In many cases patterns have lost their sign value, and fabrics are perceived as functional realities.

The name wheeled is a very generalized concept. There may be an impression that different patterns are called so because some or other fabric figures form different circles, connecting with each other. But only a few out of many textile patterns are called this now. People took the dim pattern motif names <apple-shaped, wheeled from examples of picture-cloth (servetinė) technique. Eventually these names took root also for other segment patterns.