Summary
The publication presents the watercolors of Evgenia Lepavtsova, which she painted for the four-volume album Bulgarian Folk Costumes, co-authored with Maria Veleva, published between 1960 and 1988. The drawings are kept in the Scientific Information and Documentation Department of the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies, Art Archive Fund. Unfortunately, over the years, some of them have been lost and today can only be seen in the volumes published in the last century. However, in recent years, other drawings of costumes by her have been found, which were unknown to both specialists and connoisseurs of traditional clothing.
The long-lost inventory book of the fund, in which the artist herself recorded the drawings, was also discovered. In it, Lepavtsova gives her own descriptions of the elements of the clothing, as well as the place where she drew them. This gave the publication team reason to propose the publication of these drawings and descriptions by Lepavtsova, which were previously unknown. Unlike Maria Veleva, who provides a very detailed analysis of a given garment but is sparing in conveying the folk names of the elements of the garment, Lepavtsova records each element in great detail in the inventory book with its folk name. In addition, she also records the inventory numbers of the costumes she drew from the collection of the National Ethnographic Museum (now part of the structure of the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies). Thanks to the joint work of colleagues from the museum and the institute's archive, all information about a given garment has been collected and presented in this volume.