The Karakachkae Drama
We spend a lot of time, effort and attention to details and materials when developing each product we make at B.Version. So much time that sometimes we might go a little mad…
While we were designing, testing and preparing the Chiprovtsi polar fleece blanket, it always seemed that the figures from the blanket are trying to tell us something. This obsession came again and again until we finally understood what the blanket is trying to tell us.
It was actually singing…
THE KARAKACHKAE DRAMA
/Complete and Unabridged with Notes and Glossary/
CHARACTERS
Karakachkae (also referred to as Karakachki and Karakachkas)
Rabbits
Frogs
THE Kamulka figure
Birds
Hedgehogs
A vine
A “mirror”
Hidden Karakachkae
Scene on the Front Side of the Blanket:
CHORUS OF THE KARAKACHKAE (triumphant):
We are the karakachkas,*
Black brides our weavers call us,
But in fact, in a black night,
we fled from a venomous bite.
In red and green we encircle the dragonic mirror,**
where vines, birds and hedgehogs make our days sweeter.
Who would’ve known that timorous rabbits us surround?
In strings they sit: white, black, yellow, blue, as if deadly drunk.**
Could it be that the dragon women the rabbits` hearts have sunk?
Yellow and red, having in their middles giant beating hearts,
Fire they are breathing as hearths!
CHORUS OF THE FROGS (saddened):
Sorrowful is our fate, among these rude women,
About us, the simple frogs, what are they sayin‘?!**
With what sins did they charge us? Oh… such a pain!
On green or on blue we reside and from food we abstain.
THE KAMULKA FIGURE (offended):
About me you forgot!
Luck I bring a lot,
In the mirror’s crown I am hidden,
To give me at least a glance you are bidden!
Scene on the Back Side of the Blanket:
CHORUS OF THE HIDDEN KARAKACHKAE:
We stay away from intrigues,
And we remember the days, when not in treatises,***
but in life, like goddesses they revered us … yet, with a proud pate,
In green and blue we praise our beauty, mate!
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NOTES
*-Karakachka are the figures that look like women. In Turkish kara means black and kaçmak, to escape. However carpet weavers used to call them “black brides”.
**- The big window like figure with a vine inside was called a mirror (ogledalo). It is decorated with the characteristic ornaments that look like zmey (dragon) heads. The small figures in the orange bordure were supposed to be rabitts. The large yellow and red figures in the checkered border were called jabitsi meaning frogs in Bulgarian.
***- Referring to contemporary books and theories, according to which karakachkas are depictions of the prehistoric Mother Goddess.
