Historical reconstruction starts long before the first cut of cloth. At Atira Ruthenia we recreate the townspeople, military servitors and knights (*zemiane*, the landed military nobility) of Ruthenia within the Grand Duchy of Lithuania around 1370–1420: the lands of today's Kyiv region, Volhynia, Chernihiv and Pereiaslav. This article explains how we do it: which sources we use, how we label what we know, and where our knowledge stops.
Why there is so little to go on
The dress of this time and place has few specialist studies. Because Ruthenia was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and closely tied to the Kingdom of Poland, most of the relevant work has been done by Polish, Lithuanian and Belarusian scholars. For much of the past two centuries, under the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, the subject was largely neglected in Ukraine, and so far no Ukrainian historian has made it a main research topic.
The evidence is not absent, but it is scattered: studies of medieval art, archaeological papers on single types of accessories, and works on the dress of earlier and later periods that touch on ours in passing. Together they are substantial. What nobody has done yet is bring them together into one picture of how people in Ruthenian lands dressed around 1400. Much of what reenactors wear is therefore the result of their own research, built piece by piece.
That is why we treat every reconstructed garment as a small research question, not as a costume.
Four kinds of evidence
1. Images by Ruthenian painters
The closest pictures we have come from churches decorated by Ruthenian painters for King Władysław II Jagiełło. The frescoes of the Holy Trinity Chapel at Lublin Castle were completed in 1418 by a team of Ruthenian painters led by Master Andrew; they include two of the three portraits of Jagiełło painted in his lifetime (Lublin). A related cycle survives in Sandomierz Cathedral, dated to around 1421 (Jurkowlaniec).
These paintings are invaluable for silhouette, headwear and details. But they are church art: saints are dressed by Byzantine convention, not in everyday clothes. We look most closely at donors, soldiers and secondary figures, and we treat each figure separately.
2. Archaeology from our own region
Organic finds survive rarely, but they do exist. Excavations in 1986 on the citadel of Chernihiv produced a collection of 186 leather objects from 14th–15th-century layers. Among them are soft shoes and boots, leather gloves, belts with rows of metal studs, and a belt pouch with a flap, two inner compartments and embroidered decoration (A. V. Kurbatov, *Arkheolohiia*, 1996, no. 2). From Kyiv, a cast bronze mount in the shape of a dragon, found in 1936 on Starokyivska Hill, has been identified as a fitting from a decorated leather belt pouch of the later 15th–16th century (M. Osypenko, *Arkheolohiia*, 2016, no. 4).
These finds give us real shapes, materials and construction for footwear, belts and pouches: exactly the accessories that make a costume read as belonging to a place.
3. The wider Grand Duchy and Rus'
Vilnius, the Grand Duchy's capital, has some of the richest organic layers of the 14th–15th centuries in the region. A 14th-century girdle bag with metal fittings from the Lower Castle closely resembles finds from Novgorod and Tver (Lituanistika). Elsewhere in the city, a late 14th–early 15th-century workshop made boots, gloves and quivers (Lituanistika).
Written evidence also helps. Novgorod and Pskov birch-bark letters of the 13th–15th centuries mention cloth of wool, silk, flax and hemp, dyed in various colours, bleached linen, and cloth measured by the cubit (Kalugina 2024).
For the Grand Duchy itself, two works by the Belarusian scholar Hanna Barvenava are central to us: her survey of medieval textiles in the lands of Belarus (2008) and her study of Gothic costume in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania from the late 13th to the 16th century (2002).
4. Polish and Western European parallels
The Grand Duchy was joined to the Kingdom of Poland in a personal union from 1385, and fashions moved between the two. For Poland we rely on Maria Gutkowska-Rychlewska's history of dress (1968) and Krystyna Turska's study of court dress in Poland under the first Jagiellons (1987), which covers the reign of Władysław II Jagiełło.
For cut and construction we use the best-documented collections in Europe: the excavated textiles of medieval London (*Textiles and Clothing, c. 1150–1450*, Museum of London) and the Bocksten Man from Sweden, one of the few complete men's outfits surviving from the 14th century. These show how garments were actually cut and sewn. They are parallels, not evidence for Ruthenia, and we label them that way.
How we label what we know
Every element of a reconstruction gets one of four labels:
- Documented: a find or image from our region and period supports it.
- Parallel: evidence comes from a neighbouring land or a related period (Vilnius, Novgorod, Poland, Western Europe), and we name it.
- Interpretation: a reasoned conclusion from several sources.
- Open question: we don't know yet, and we say so.
Where a source comes from a neighbouring land rather than from Ruthenia itself, we say that too. A belt pouch modelled on the Chernihiv find is documented; a hood cut after a London pattern is a parallel.
From source to needle
Sources become garments through practical choices: wool or linen, the width of the cloth, hand-sewn seams, the colours that period dyes could give. Each choice is written down. This matters beyond the club. In our heritage-skills workshops in Ireland, participants learn to sew from the same documented patterns, and they learn why each choice was made.
What comes next
The club's historical commission gathers and checks these sources, so that the research does not rest on one person. It is preparing documented "passports" for its display kits: for every garment and object, the source behind it, the material and the maker. We will publish them here as they are completed.
Sources
- Holy Trinity Chapel, Lublin Castle: Lublin Travel
- G. Jurkowlaniec, The artistic patronage of Władysław II Jagiełło: Medievalists.net
- M. Smorąg-Różycka, Bizantyńskie freski w sandomierskiej katedrze, *Prace Historyczne* 141 (2014): RUJ
- А. В. Курбатов, Коллекция кожаных предметов из Чернигова, *Археологія*, 1996, № 2
- М. С. Осипенко, Пізньосередньовічна накладка із зображенням дракона з розкопок 1936 р. на Старокиївській горі, *Археологія*, 2016, № 4
- 14th-century girdle bag from the Vilnius Lower Castle: Lituanistika
- 14th–16th-century wooden buildings, Maironio 13, Vilnius: Lituanistika
- E. M. Kalugina, Medieval fabrics according to birch-bark letters (2024): DOAJ
- E. Crowfoot, F. Pritchard, K. Staniland, *Textiles and Clothing, c. 1150–1450* (Museum of London)
- M. Nockert, *Bockstensmannen och hans dräkt*
- H. A. Barvenava, *Tėkstylʹ Siaredniavečča na ziemliach Bielarusi* [Medieval Textiles in the Lands of Belarus], Minsk: Belaruskaja navuka, 2008. ISBN 978-985-08-0941-4
- H. A. Barvenava, "Hatyčny kascium VKL k. XIII – XVI st." [Gothic Costume of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Late 13th–16th Century], in *Castrum, urbis et bellum*, Minsk, 2002, pp. 23–38
- M. Gutkowska-Rychlewska, *Historia ubiorów*, Wrocław–Warszawa–Kraków: Ossolineum, 1968
- K. Turska, *Ubiór dworski w Polsce w dobie pierwszych Jagiellonów*, Wrocław etc.: Ossolineum, 1987
*Read also:* Historical reenactment at Atira Ruthenia · HEMA and historical reenactment: what is the difference? · Workshops for schools and communities · Book a workshop or demonstration