The textile businessmen's influence on epigraphic embroidery (from the end of the 19th to the first half of the 20th century

The aim of this article is to demonstrate the role of textilebusinessmen in developing a tradition to embroider inscriptions from the end of the 19th centuryto the first half of the 20th century. Very little information is available on edition of schemes for needlework by textilebusinessmen (in contrast to entrepreneurs involved in perfumery sector – from the last ones the terms «broker embroidery» and «soap embroidery» have been created). The French company «Dollfus-Mieg & Compagnie» is shortly recollected in academic literature, whereas Russian trading houses «Marіya Sadomova’s Sons» and «N. I. Kuvshynnikov with His Sons» are at the periphery ofscientific curiosity. However, as our analysis has shown, their publication activities also had influence on embroidering inscriptions which were folk texts. The main method of this research is historical and genetic. Due to this method we have been able to identify the concrete print schemes for needle work which eventually became the basis for the folk embroideries. Also, the comparative method has been applied for the matching one and the same plots from different sources. Scientific novelty is in the first systematic demonstration of the textile businessmen’s influence (the companies «Dollfus-Mieg & Compagnie», «Marіya Sadomova’s Sons» and «N. I. Kuvshynnikov with His Sons») on the emergence of verbal texts in folk embroidery. Conclusions. We can state that not only perfumers but also businessmen of other industries played a role in developing a tradition to embroider inscriptions from the end of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th century. Particularly, the textile businessmen (the French company «Dollfus-Mieg& Compagnie», «Marіya Sadomova’s Sons» and Russian trading houses «N. I. Kuvshynnikov with His Sons») published a huge amount of printed cross-stitch papers with alphabets, inscriptions and genre scenes (the last ones with their realistic plots encouraged the embroideresses to add verbal texts by their own).