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Always closely linked to their native land, the Macedonian
people have mostly lived through century's of tradition transmitting it
from one generation to another, and thus creating an unusually rare material
and spiritual culture which bears some patriarchal characteristics.
Among their enormous cultural inheritance, the Macedonian
creators of impressive folk poetry and dance music have preserved till
today a very significant cultural inheritance - the Macedonian folk arts.
As a collective and anonymous artistic creation, the Macedonian folk arts
developed and formed directly with its creators. It is the reflection not
only of the wealth of the creative spirit and high value of the Macedonian's,
but of the economic, social, and cultural conditions of different historic
periods.
The Macedonian folk arts whose origins can be perceived
in the distant parts, developed on the basis of the old Slav and old Balkan
arts as well as through different elements from other people particularly
the Byzantine and the Turks. Although containing a lot of foreign elements,
the Macedonian folk arts developed independently, and their works are characterised
by great originality. The Macedonian's adapted those foreign elements according
to their own taste and ideals, giving their forms and proportions, colours
and composition, creating something of their own, which can be rightly
considered, the expression of their spirit and feelings.
Their artistic activity and talent was transmitted to
everyday objects which are simultaneously rustic, beautiful and practical.
Applying traditional technological processes, inherited from old times,
the anonymous creator formed (in artistic way) different objects with floral
and animal threads, wood, clay, stone, metal and other materials found
in nature. There fore, different objects for everyday use, especially the
very functional, are enriched with aesthetic characteristics. Particular
attention was paid to the design and decoration of their clothes, so that
national costumes and jewellery are the most expressive and the most numerous
examples of the traditional creativity of the Macedonians. The national
costumes in Macedonia (created over a long period of time), preserved the
traces of old cultural influences, and in their way of development fit
the elements of old Balkan, Slav and Oriental culture. Above all the product
of domestic textile manufacture, the Macedonian national costumes are characterised
by richness and ornamentation. Western Macedonia, especially divided into
smaller regional units with different ethnic characteristics is a real
mosaic of various beautiful national costumes, where the women's costumes
are of special interest.
Decorative Macedonian embroidery, characteristic in the
forms, technically complex and of picturesque colours give special expression
and distinction to the national costumes. The women's gowns are especially
decorative, and are the main bearer of this kind of traditional artistic
creation. Embroidery is not only an artistic expression and the essential
element but the most characteristic of the costumes of different regions.
The Macedonian folk embroidery, mostly made of wool and
silk, impresses with its polychrome where all the shades of red dominate.
Light red is particularly characteristic of the embroidery of the Prilep,
Bitola, Debar and Ohrid regions. The women's gowns from Dolen Polog and
Skopska Crna Gora are decorated with black moulded embroidery which reminds
us with its stylish composition of the early Christian textile decor.
 The folk textiles of Macedonian's are an important branch
of the folk arts, although today limited, it continues as a necessary and
indispensable need of the Macedonian's in most parts. Besides different
materials and parts of the costumes and textile objects for everyday domestic
uses the big Macedonian carpets made in Ohrid, Prilep, Krusevo are of particular
importance. They are of real value due to their beauty, rich ornamentation
and harmonious colours. The Vlasi in Macedonian, tribal shepherds almost
up to the present, have always made special kinds of thick covers, characterised
by their colours. Jewellery has a particular place in the Macedonian folk
arts as an integral part of the national costumes together with embroidery,
representing its most decorative features. Made of various materials (gold,
silver, copper, pearls) and done with the help of different techniques
(casting, filigree work, granulation, engraving) the jewellery is rich
in forms, very decorative and in harmony with their national costumes.
Macedonian jewellery can be found in the well known centres of fillgree
craft; Bitola, Ohrid, Struga, Skopje, from where valuable hand-made products
are dispersed all over Macedonia.
Some samples of this jewelery are real masterpieces of
filigree craft with old preserved forms and elements.
Especially outstanding, with rich ornamention is the
jewellery found on formal women's gowns from Skopska Crna Gora, Skopska
Blatija, Struska and the Ohrid, Marko and Prilep valleys, giving particular
artistic effect to their national costumes.
Besides metal jewellery one can find different ornaments,
knitted in pearls in the eastern part of Macedonia. Pearl jewellery is
special hand-work with peculiarly rich and stylistic motifs. Different
metal objects for everyday use, made by blacksmiths are artistically formed
and richly decorated with various dishes of copper and brass, with rich
ornament hand engravings done by coppersmiths are found in almost all towns
in Macedonia, (especially in Prilep, Ohrid, Krusevo and Skopje). The copper
dishes are charaterised by rich forms and original lines, well composed
with the very function of the objects. Their ornaments, very rich and variageted,
made mostly in engraving technique of shallow and relief forging has mostly
Oriented characteristic.
 The pottery of Macedonia developed and perfected through
many centuries was only to be found in the pottery centres until recently
- Resen, Veles, Struga, Skopje, Debar, Besovo and especially in the village
of Vranestica, in the Kicevo district. Macedonian pottery is characterised
by the ancient forms which reflect the impressions of monumentality, as
in the heavy and massive dishes from Debar, Struga, Skopje. The pottery
from Resen and that belonging to the Vlasi people, looks very impressive
with its long and knightly forms. The pottery dishes are made of clay mostly
on a foot-worked potter's wheel and decorated by rather primitive means,
colour, graphite, and applications of relief motifs. With their variageted
forms and rich decoration, they bear witness to their well-developed sense
of the arts and rich imagination.
From time, immemorial the Macedonian's have used different
wooden tools and objects in their household which are still preserved today,
bearing very old traces of human artistic creativity.
 Using very primitive tools, the anonymous artist trimmed
and decorated everything with engraving. All objects used by peasants for
their work in the fields or shepherds men with cattle in the mountains
as well as those objects which were used by women for different jobs. Folk
engraving however, reached its perfection in the well known works of the
Macedonian carves - Mijak - the mountain population from the Debar district
who shaped wood like professional craftsmen, creating a special and particular
art, which passed beyond the folk level, becoming the common Balkan heritage.
The masters from Mijak, the carvers worked in deep and
shallow carving. The decorative objects of lay and sacred character which
once decorated the rich town houses (Tetovo, Debar) churches - St.Spas
in Skopje, St. Dimitrija in Bitola, the monastery's (St. Jovan Bigorski) in
Macedonia and the Balkans, remaining the most precious cultural historical
monuments and masterpieces of this branch of the Macedonian folk arts.
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