Meander “zeg” in the decor of felt as a reflection of the world view of Kalmyks and Oirats of Mongolia

Felt-making of Mongolian nomads has ancient origins dating back to the history of Central Asian culture. The technique of making felt and its decor of Kalmyks of Russia and Oirats of Mongolia are conditioned by the tradition. They are linked by the common heritage of ornamental culture, the archaic layer of which is represented by a geometric meander. The design of the felt pattern is further developed in the polychromy of Kalmyk folk embroidery “zeg”. The artistic phenomenon is due to the historical circumstances of the formation of the folk and their culture. In general, the descriptive nature of domestic and foreign studies of cultural heritage indicates the need for a structural-functional analysis of the works of applied art of nomads. The study material is presented by museum collections of felt items (Russian Museum of Ethnography (St. Petersburg), the National Museum named after N. Palmov and the Museum of Traditional Culture named after Zaya-Pandita (Republic of Kalmykia). A multi-layered ornamental composition of felt carpets is decoratively expressive. The universe, unfolding on the plane, concentrates a particular view of the world of the nomad. He opens it in a long-line building space, perceived in motion. The tradition embraces the compositional reception of a plastic-changeable image plane. The cyclical development of movement carries a rhythm that organizes the beginning of being, realized in the linear contour of the meander. The pattern, repeated in the system of the ornamental row, forms a decorative composition of felt. In the aesthetic expressiveness of the ancient geometric motifs of the image, the mobile way of life is transmitted. Such is the Kalmyk ornament “zeg” as an expression of the “path” in the figurative thinking of nomads. In the quilted felt pattern, the archetypical essence of the decor is preserved, combining the shapes of a semicircle, a square, a triangle or a polygon in the rhythmic dynamics of the linear composition. The imaginative graphics of the semi-circular meander “zyungara zeg” in a stylized image of a yurt, the sun or a star, was born in the prism of the nomad's worldview in the “road” - a constant movement from one nomadic camp to another. The ornament as a self-valuable sign of the adaptation and self-regulation of culture in the aesthetic field of folk art is a marker of the space,“cultivated” by the ethnos. The vector of the Kalmyk tradition of the decor, established in the isolation from the original cultural center, is the movement from the massive plastic form of Mongolian decoration to the capacious convention of polychromic embroidery “zeg”." The artistic style is formed in the tonal development of the color scale of the embroidered pattern of clothes and the wave-like rhythm of the quilted meander “zeg” on the felt. Perception of the world as a philosophical understanding of being is expressed in its space-time constants. It is projected during the creation of the decor: the composition and the rhythmic-color dynamics of the pattern on the felt plane. The analysis of the “felt” ornament in the historical and cultural prism explains the mechanism of the formation of the artistic form. It is naturally considered to be the genetic code of the traditional culture with the nomadic soft household environment as a part of it. The stitch and color cord layout contrast with the background of the felt base, forming the center of the linear composition in the border of characteristic ornamental rows. Ensuring the preservation of the tradition, the ornament of felt mats has aesthetic expression of the decor. In this process the initial “proto-form” is a geometric pattern of felt as an ancient layer of nomadic ornamentation. The graphics of the contour ornament initiates the appearance of Kalmyk embroidery, representing the top of the symbolic language of the artistic tradition. In the ethnointegrating function of folk art, relevant far from the cultural ancestral homeland, an ancient meander appears. The linear expressiveness of the quilted pattern on the felt is inspired by the figurative worldview, born in the rhythm of nomadic life. In the sphere of the universal “cosmo-anthropic existence” of a society formed in relations with the natural environment, the characteristic dominants of the traditional culture of Kalmyks and Oirats of Mongolia are revealed.

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