A caparison is an element of equestrian decoration, a blanket that covers a horse’s croup.
Such items were usually decorated with rich embroidery, silver plaques and beads. Caparisons were put on horses on special ceremonial occasions — for the Yakut summer festival of ysyakh or for weddings.
Svetlana Ivanovna Petrova, associate professor of the Department of Folklore and Culture of the Yakut State University, writes in her article “Traditional sewing and embroidery of Yakuts: history and modernity”, “Caparisons, saddle blankets — kychyms, and saddle pads — lepse, made in various techniques, are found everywhere. They are presented in different variants in the Toibokhoysky museum, in the museum named after Sergey Afanasyevich Zverev of Suntar ulus, in the Lena Historical and Architectural Museum-Reserve ‘Druzhba’ in the village of Sottintsy in Ust-Al Sottintsy of Ust-Aldan ulus, in the Museum of Ethnopedagogy of Orosu village, in the Cherkekh Museum of political exiles, etc.“
The collection of the Churapchinsky Museum contains numerous variants of caparisons of the 19th and 20th centuries. The copy presented in the exhibition is made by an unknown craftswoman. The caparison with hearts was created in the appliqué technique.
Local legend has it that this work of craftsmanship emerged because of the separation from a loved one who was and there was no news from him for a long time. The separation from a loved one inspired her to create this caparison.
Saturated with symbols, the craftswoman’s language of imagery is original and distinctive. The craftswoman embroidered a thin stem, which grows from a black heart-shaped figure, and topped it with a rhombus-shaped ornament. All the elements, patterns and colors, carry a certain semantic meaning, which is connected with the traditional worldview of the artist. Red symbolizes life, black — Mother Earth “Iye sir”, the symbol of the Motherland, green — hope, immortality and nature, which is awakening.
The composition has wide black and red borders. The figures are harmoniously arranged, the work is executed in pure colors.
