There are stable symbols-images associating with a towel: towel - road, towel - bond, towel - embodiment of good. They have been solidifying in people's consciousness for years, and in modern culture they are taken as archetypes.

The archetype symbolism of the towel is determined by stable ritual, ceremonial and decorative functions of that thing, peculiarities of its form, nature of decor and composition, quality of towel cloth itself.

The image of towel-road originates from the process of thread spinning. The thread appears from the chaos of fiber, extends, and lengthens in hands of spinner - a mythical and poetic symbol of fate, personified in different cultures. The cosmic image of World’s space, wound on the spindle, might have arisen in imagination of those women who have left for the history their stone and clay spinning wheels in the strata of late Neolithic cultures.

The image of future cloth-road would arise in a woman's mind when she would make a warp from woven threads. The warp wound on the loom - mill was that visible way a spinner should follow. The cloth was a kind of mark of a traversed path, and a woman's thoughts were reflected in its patterns.

The woven cloth, taken off the mill, turned into a different space representation - into a spiral of linen whirlpool that resembles the model of the World as it preserves powerful motion energy. It is not by chance that in the mythical and poetic imagery different peoples are firmly associating spinning and weaving with World’s creation, it’s cosmic texture.

Linens, made by women's hands, didn't have strictly utilitarian function. They served, perhaps, as the first textbooks, visual aids for understanding the methods of comprehension of the World, realizing the notions of infinity and measure. From times immemorial linens that were woven during winter were whitened during the early summer dues in wet meadows, at the riverbank. The linens spread on the young grass under delicate rays of the morning sun, always evoked the image of the Way that calls you, leads you over the horizon into unknown World.

Towel-Path appears from the endlessness of linen as a measure of space. The length of towel linen relates to an arms span, person's height, and size of one’s house. The length of a towel-nabozhnik usually equaled to one  “gooba” which is approximately equal to the length of the longest wall in the house (one linen whirlpool equals approximately to three or four “gooba” lengths). Or it was equal tone or two “measures” of human height. In that way, cloth structured surrounding space, attached human dimension to it. The cloth, appearing from the chaos of natural material, was turning into the World model - well-ordered and decorated space - exactly through the relation with the towel as a certain measure and a completed object. It's not by chance, that in the Antique times the same word `cosmos' was used to define the notions of “World”, “harmony”, and “decoration’.

One may see the prototype of an artistic completeness of a towel as an object in a usual towel-ucirainik ('wiper'). The uciralnik acquires a quality of an object only when the edge of towel cloth is marked. Since the times of invention of weaving craft, a line, a stripe, an edging, that marks the beginning and the end of cloth, becomes a prototype of textile ornament.

The notions of cloth as a Path have been a part of the mythical World imagery since ancient times. They are embodied in rituals, folklore images, and works of folk art. There's a lot of evidence of this fact in ethnographic records of traditional ceremonies of Belarusian people of the 19th- 20th centuries. The image of a Path appears almost in all ceremonial acts performed with a towel.

The image of towel-path is present literary or symbolically at all acts of the wedding ceremony. The towel is tied around bride's hand, she drags it behind herself on the ground, and it represents the pathway her girlfriends will follow to get married. A padnozhnik towel (“step-on” towel), that the newly-weds stand upon during wedding ceremony in church, is supposed to be dragged by the bride behind herself, while she is walking around the altar, in order for her girlfriends to follow her path and get married.

By means of wedding ceremony the newly-weds passed into another age and social status, were born in a new quality. The towel was to mark the very moment of their passing. It was symbolically marking the path that led one to another, to their entering a new family structure.

Ethnographers note a semantic similarity of wedding and funeral rituals. Funeral rituals, according to firm beliefs of Belarusian people, assisted the passing of the dead into Another World and establishing relations of souls of ancestors and those of living relatives. This points to a continuous figurative and semantic tie of a towel and a Path even in a greater degree.

A spread linen, towel were supposed to serve as the path for souls of the dead. A towel was hanged behind a window of the house where there was a dead person, so that the soul of this dead person could find path into Another World.  Interestingly white towel would serve as a path to a good soul, while simple rope would lead a dead witch into Another World. The towel was supposed to hang in the house until the funeral and six weeks after that.

Putting a coffin into the grave on long towels or linen also symbolizes the way to the other world. A towel was the way between the world of the living and the world of the dead, between mundane and heavenly spheres.

In widespread in Belarus customs of worship of dead ancestors, that takes place on definite memorial days of every season of the year – “Dziady” (“Ancestors”), a towel is also a symbolic mark of the way that Dziady allegedly follow to return to the World of the living. According to ancient customs and ideas of a symbolic role of towel-path, even nowadays here and there in Belarus people cover graves with towels on Radaunitsa - Easter of the Dead.

Ancient rituals, concerned with the cult of ancestors, have remained in Belarus in traditions of worshiping Dziady. As an echo of these rituals, the towel plays another figurative archetypical part - the one of towel-poviaz’ (`bond'). Its presence in funeral rituals symbolizes the continuous connection of kin members.

At the wedding, a towel also plays a ritual part of connecting. It serves as a mediator in uniting two families, two kins. A bride prepares for her wedding together with the eldest women of the family towels-presents, towels-nabozhniki. The role of a towel at the wedding (none of the phases of the wedding can do without it) is well known, and is described in detail by ethnographers. For example, in 1947 in Luninets district up to 30-40 towels were typically prepared for the wedding. By means of the ritual of giving gifts, of tying up with a towel most respected people of the wedding ceremony - Father-in-law, Mother-in-law, matchmakers, brothers-in-law from groom’s side, his friends -a symbolic joining of the bride's kin to the groom's kin occurred. It is indicative that men were tied up by women - the bride, her mother and the bride's girlfriends. A towel, passing on from the bride's side to the groom's, embodied the idea of tying, it played a symbolic part of connecting two entities - masculine and feminine, joining up two families, two kins.

In poly-semantic significance of the towel at the wedding one can trace its most archaic role - to be a sign, a symbol, a protector of invisible participants of the ceremony - the dead members of the kin, ancestors. A decorated towel was a special ritual thing that ancestors' souls inhabited during the carrying out of the ceremony, and now the ancestor-towel took part in arranging the marriage and sanctified it. A pagan ritual of thrice-repeated wrapping of newly-weds with towel cloth in the place of honor, that preceded the wedding ceremony in the church, is well known not only in Belarus. Russians in Kaluga area call it - betrothal of newly-weds.

During the wedding celebration the bride and women of her family sanctified the towels provided as a dowry - from pieces of decorated cloth they turned into sacral things, got a semeiotic status. Women used wedding towels during all their life, they handed them down to their daughters. Decorated towels, that participants of the ceremony received at the wedding as presents, enriched family treasure of the costliest and most sacral things, and they were given to the church, wrapped around crosses, etc.

Among polysemantic symbolic meanings of the towel, the idea of good embodied in it and a firm belief in its magic properties, that can bring happiness, prosperity, health to a person and his/her family, perhaps are the main and the most significant ones. All Eastern Slavs believed that a towel is an embodiment of good. The towel is able to influence positively one's life, it possesses magic power. These firm beliefs showed an invariable function of the towel as a talisman. The towel carried out its protecting and magic function by means of symbolic qualities of yarn and linen, a sacral property of the red color and a sign property of design.

The symbolic idea of good, beneficence is probably embodied in the greatest degree in a towel-abydzennik and rent towels. The archaic tradition of making everyday cloth existed in Belarus till the middle of the 20th century. People applied to the tradition of the joint making of cloth, a towel, from the very beginning, i.e. thread spinning, to the end of weaving, when it was necessary to ward off a disease from a village, to save the harvest from drought and in other circumstances, dangerous for people. The last cases of making everyday cloth in Belarus were stated by ethnographers in the years of World War II, when women tried to protect lives of their own men-soldiers with help of this ancient custom.

Everyday cloth, newly made, embodies the symbolic idea of first-born purity and kindness. It is able to spread these properties around, to resist evil, sinful things, to change a dangerous course of life. For that purpose, Belarusians lay everyday cloth across the road and drove animals across it to protect them from illness; they lay it across the street to prevent spread of diseases; they held it above their heads and all inhabitants of the village passed under it, people also hanged it on crosses and sacrificed it to church. Magic actions with an everyday towel, donation of it to the church are the evidence of firm people's beliefs in a capability of cloth to change the broken World’s order and influence kindly man's fate.

Wedding towels, like everyday ones, got their good qualities while being used in a ritual. Being sanctified during the wedding ceremony a towel becomes means of attracting good, radiating happiness, it acquires virtuous qualities. Being put in place of honor, a towel-nabozhnik is able to influence positively family’s well-being, it’s life order.

Apotropic properties of towel cloth were strengthened by red color of its ornamental pattern, which in itself was an effective warning against everything unfavorable. Red threads and cloths with red ornamental patterns were used in ceremonial rites of Belarusian people and all the Eastern Slavs. An ornamental pattern of a Belarusian woven and embroidered towel was mostly plain red till the end of the 19th century.

This is a historical and geographical area that occupies main part of the Brest region.

    The predominating sort of towels in Zahodniaye Palesse districts are striped ones; these are the most archaic type of ritual towels. Cross red stripes of various widths are put rhythmically all over the linen of a towel or centered on its ends. This is the oldest way of magic-ritual marking of cloth, related to the belief in protective properties of the red stripe.

    A peculiar rhythm of striped decoration of Zahodniave Palesse towels could appear only in this area, where the scenery itself with its boundlessness and flat land seems to have accustomed men to measuring space. By their artistic nature towels are similar to Palesse singing as its drawl and monotonous rhythm of sounds was caused by this landscape, too.

    Towels striping, which dominates almost all over Zahodniaye Palesse - from Stolin to Biaroza and Ivacevichy, is one of the archaic features of traditional culture of that area. Along with considerable preservation of rituals, mythological ideas, folklore, material culture manifestations, traditional methods of keeping house, aimed at harmonic coexistence of a man under specific natural and geographic conditions of Palesse, this kind of towels is a part of the ancient Slavic World. 

    Traditions of making and using towels exist in Zahodniaye Palesse nowadays as well. Good preservation of traditional wedding ceremony in this region, decorating houses in Palesse are favorable to present day utilizations of towels.

    The following types of towels are presented in the album: Zahodniaye Palesse striped towels, Zahodniaye Palesse towels with attached ends, Ivanava towels, Stolin and Pinsk towels, Klecak and Liahavichy towels, Moral towels, Drahichyn towels.

This is a historical and geographical area that occupies the Western part of the Homel region from Zhytkavichy to Rechytsa on the right bank of the Dnieper and the lower Biarezina rivers. The Southern part of the Luninets district and the Gantsavichy district of the Brest region form part of this region, too.

Two strong ethno-cultural traditions are synthesized in towels of Ushodniaye Palesse. They are red and white banding of Zahodniaye Palesse's towels and semantic and sign richness of the red rhombic-geometric design of the Dnieper district. The monotonous and marshy landscape of the Prypiats river lowland changes into Mazyr Palesse's high banks and hills of fertile woods plateaus that a man had mastered for farming long time ago. This diverse relief of the region is reflected in multi-formity of artistic expressiveness of Ushodniaye Palesse's towels.

Towels of Ushodniaye Palesse are characterized by striping of the whole composition, distinct widening of the rhombic-geometric design, its richness of the red color with slight predominance over the white color of towel cloths. Their peculiar features are artistic and handicraft accuracy of making, richness of texture, a wide range of weaving techniques, that quite often combine between themselves in a peculiar way in one textile work.

The most artistically expressive towels are from Kalinkavichy, Brahin, Hoiniki districts of Homel voblast, and Luninets, Hancevichy districts of Brest region. In Ushodniaye Palesse, the towel as a ritual, semantic sign object hasn't lost its functions till our days. The evidence of this are different kinds of crosses decorated with up to dozens of tribute towels, that you can see in villages of Mazyr, Palesse. The following types of towels are presented in the album: Luninets towels, Kalinkavichy towels, Hoiniki and Brahin towels, Brahin zakladnyia (overthrow) towels.

This is a historical and geographical area that occupies the territory of the Dnieper basin to the Biarezina, West of the Mahilyow and Homel regions and the Southeastern part of the Vitsebsk region

Easily recognizable traditional ritual towels are determined by historical and ethnographic peculiarities of the region that is a specific outpost of keeping Belarusian genetics, its protector from the influence of the Russian and the Ukrainian ethnoses.

The Dnieper district is the area with the most significant and diverse artistic traditions of ritual towels. This region's towels impress with richness and vividness of the red color, perceptible archaic character and semantic essence of the rhombic-geometric design, variety and invention of techniques and methods of weaving, embroidery, and lace decoration.

The Dnieper district is distinguished by variety and close coexistence of certain artistic and stylistic types of towels. The greatest number of traditional towels and the richest mosaic of their different local varieties are in the Homel Dnieper district or the Sozh river district. Towels of Chachersk, Vetka, Dobrush, Homel, Buda-Kashaliova districts reflect composition-ornamental traditions of folk weaving and embroidery that existed on this territory in the 19th century and their artistic development in the 20th century.

The Mahilyow Dnieper district is characterized by towel types that can be found on a rather large territory. At the same time, artistic traditions are intermixed here, too, and that's why very often different varieties of towels coexist in one village.

The Biarezina part of the Dnieper district that borders Central Belarus has preserved unique local traditions of towel art that formed in the past under conditions of isolation of this forest land.

Such multi-layered artistic craft and technological traditions can be found only in towels of the Dnieper district. Old “branaia” [1] double-weft and “zakladnaia” [2] techniques, “perabornaie” [3] weaving in its various technologies: one-sided setting, imitation rep setting, pressing-warp setting, etc.

One of the peculiar features of towels of the Dnieper district is predomination of the red color in woven and embroidered ornamental patterns over the white cloth The redness of these towels is intensified with trimming of the ends of a towel with red and red-white woven terry, insets of red bunting strips of cloth that harmoniously complete their entire decorative composition. At the same time the Dnieper district is the only one where there one can find towels with black branyia [1] patterns, which were probably meant for death - the funeral rites.

At present, in the Dnieper district, being in the natural ethnographic environment, towels go on fulfilling their ritual function as nabozhniki in wedding ceremonies and funeral rites. Even now artistic traditions specific for this district are still being considered in their making.

The following types of towels are presented in the album: Rahachou zakladnyia towels, Kirau towels, towels of the village of Madora, Dubrouna towels. Kasciukovichv and Khotsimsk towels, Slauharad and Byhau towels, Slauharad towels, towels of the region between the rivers Sozh and Besiadz, towels of the village of Zakruzha. towels of the village of Amelnaye, Homel towels, Dobrush branyia towels, Buda-Kashaliova towels. Prysno towels, Dobrush perabornyia towels, Chachersk towels, Krasnapolle towels, Nehliubka towels.

This is a historical and geographical area of Belarus that occupies the biggest part of the Vitsebsk region

Old techniques of ornamental decorations of ritual towels, that were once common for all the Eastern Slavs are preserved in the Lakes district. At the same time, in the 19th - the beginning of the 20th centuries, towels of this district were exposed to a great influence of external factors, and to a great degree they lost ethnic primary nature of their artistic language.

A traditional towel of the Lakes district is not big in size. The decor of its rather narrow borders is concentrated at the ends. Metrical characteristics of these towels result from the habit to decorate the red corner with only one towel; that habit is widespread in the Lakes district and echo traditions of central and Southern regions of Russia.

The Lakes district is an area of inter-ethnic contacts and migratory movement, its population consists of heterogeneous ethnic groups, and the district borders the Pskov and Smalensk regions of Russia. It's not by chance that along with geometric patterns on woven and embroidered towels you can see vegetative-seedling motives, subject antroph-amorphous images, ones of birds, life tree, that are rarely found in other districts of Belarus. They are typical for ethno-cultural traditions of Northern Russia, where they are most brightly reflected in embroidery of the archaic type. An old technique of two-side sewing, or “painting”, that is called “Russian sewing”, is used for embroidering towels in the Lakes district. Towels embroidered in this way are found in settlements of Russian Old Believers [4], and there’re lots of them in Western districts of the Vitsebsk region.

In the milieu of Old Believers as a result of their interrelations with cultures of the neighboring ethnoses - Belarusians, Lithuanians, Letts, Polish people, a unique artistic phenomenon appeared, i.e. towels made in the technique of pattern weaving that are distinguished by a great number of enlarged ornamental motives, polychromy, emphatic decorativeness.

Traditions of making towels have almost died out in this district.

The following types of traditional towels are presented in the album: Ushodni (Eastern) Vitsebsk towels, Polacak towels, Vitsebsk towels, Old-Believers embroidered towels, and Old-Believers “Vybarnyia” [5] towels.

This is historical and geographical area, that occupies the biggest part of the Minsk voblasc’ and Western remote area of Mahilyow voblasc’

Old ethno-genetic information is practically erased in towels of Central Belarus by posterior historical and cultural influences, coming of civilization, which pace of development in the 19th-20th centuries was fastest in Belarus.

The most ancient features are preserved in towels made in techniques of picking embroidery and branaie double-weft weaving, which come from the Biarezina local area that includes Cherven’ and Biarezina districts of Minsk voblasc’, the Asipovichy district of the Mahilyow voblasc’.

There are some unique local varieties among towels of Central Belarus. Those were formed under the influence of factors, typical for certain areas. Towels of the Kapyl and Slucak areas are characterized by craft accuracy and high quality of the production, variety of weaving techniques and methods, which provide evidence of continuous succession and stability of local traditions of the weaving craft. Even ten or twenty years ago, weavers of the Kapyl area wove towels according old patterns.

Patterns of perabornyia towels show the last step in the development of local artistic and technological traditions. Present-day perabornya towels keep functioning as an attribute of the wedding ceremony. But they have also turned into decorative objects, which are assigned to be an interior decoration, provide evidence of weaving skills and inventiveness of their creator. Geometric vegetative and zoomorphic motives form the ornamental patterns of these towels. You can often see images of birds, lions on them. In their general features perabornyia towels of Central Belarus are similar to those of the Nioman river district. Their development was subordinated to general laws of the development of folk arts, that at the beginning of the 20th century mastered actively new^, artistic-ornamental, composition and technical methods of handmade patterned weaving.

The following types of towels are presented in the album: Kapyl towels, Asipovichy towels, Cherven towels, Staryia Darohi perabornyia towels, Slucak perabornyia towels.

This is a historical and geographical area that occupies the upper basin of the Nioman and its tributaries, the area of the Hrodna voblasc’ and the Western districts of Vitsebsk and Minsk voblasc’s

Towels of the Nioman district are noble; their decorations are not garish. They have a mark of the land where Baltic and Slavic traditions from time immemorial were deeply intertwined, where the glorious Belarusian state - the Grand Duchy of Lithuania has developed. Something special, deep-rooted in mentality, sub-consciousness makes local women to entwine distinctive patterns and color combinations, that are genetically special to this area and its descendants, in towel cloth for hundreds of years. In their style and technologies, towels of Nioman district are similar to folk cloths of neighboring Lithuania and Latvia. There are no flaming red patterns on them. Towels of this area, made in pure white color or soft hues of natural linen color, stand apart from the rest of white-red-white Belarusian towels.

As for spiritual and religious culture of the Nioman district's inhabitants, towels play a less important part here in comparison with other parts of Belarus. Unlike Orthodox population of the district, Catholics use less traditional towels in rituals. Towels are not used for decoration of the interior of Catholic churches. At home Catholics don't put towels on icons. Very long wedding towels are typical for the Orthodox culture in that area. “The towel on all the icons”, that was specially made for a wedding, ran up to 450cm (14’) or even 600cm (18’) in length.

Towels of the Nioman district are characterized by harmonious combination of techniques and fabric. They are distinguished rather for richness of fine-patterned texture, interweaving of towel cloth and high quality of work, than for original decor. Ornamental repeated compositions of towels are mainly vertical in direction, which is also typical for towels of neighboring Lithuania and Latvia. The most widespread technique of towel making is four-heald and multi-heald weaving. The weaving traditions of the district were undoubtedly formed under the influence of West European crafts, and they have a distinctive mark of Western European artistic culture.

In many villages of the Nioman district, towels are still being woven. Traditions of woven and embroidered towels live due to the function of an obligatory attribute of the wedding ceremony.

The following types of towels, distinctive in their artistic features formed at different times, are known: Vilna towels, Vilejka and Miadzel towels, Hrodna white towels, Hrodna perabornyia towels.