To hang the dukach, one or three ears were soldered to it. Dukachs with one ear were worn on a chain, ribbon, or among beads. Those with three ears were attached with three short chains to a large one.

From the second half of the 18th century, special brooches (“bows,” “lattices,” “motiles”) were made in the form of openwork ornamental plates depicting baskets of flowers, birds, leaves, branches, rosettes, crowns, cherubs, decorated with colored glass and stones.

Dukachs with bows were worn as a single pendant on a red ribbon. In this version, the dukach occupied a central, ceremonial place as an organizing detail in a set of breast jewelry.

The female branch of the military officers and ordinary Cossacks of the Middle Naddniprianshchyna adopted the custom of the unpolished Orthodox gentry to wear a necklace with a dukach, which became a kind of expression of claims to a special position in society. There were not enough European religious and household medals and large commemorative dukachs as jewelry for everyone, so to meet the demand, Ukrainian goldsmiths began to produce replicas on a commercial scale.

Thus, the nobility, wives and daughters of Cossack officers wore dukachs on chains.

At the same time, rural women and girls wore a dukach suspended in the center of a red necklace, threaded with silver or copper hollow beads - “reefs” or “ pugvitsyas”. One chest set could have two dukachs, each hanging from a separate string, marking the axis of symmetry of the oval lines of the necklace.

In Ukraine, there was also a custom according to which a godfather gave his goddaughter a dukach on the first anniversary of her christening. The best gift was considered to be a gold medallion with an engraved image of the saint whose name the goddaughter bore. A similar dukach with the image of the patron saint was a kind of talisman and was always worn next to the cross, serving as a lucky charm.

According to the nature of the design scheme, dukachs are conventionally divided into three types.

The first type includes dukachs, the simplest in structure, consisting only of a round medal-like pendant with an eyelet without complementary elements. These dukachs were without polychrome decoration and their decorative imagery was determined by the nature of the relief of the plot image and the frame, which was most often cast together with the medallion. Dukachs of this type, having a simple round shape, not burdened with decorative details, were worn on a red ribbon, hanging freely, and were different from other such jewelry because of their particular ease of movement. They were most popular in the north of Chernihiv region, and were also worn in Kyiv, Volyn, and Lviv regions.

The second type includes dukachs, in which a round pendant (medallion or coin) is complemented by a decorative element in the form of a rosette, crown, heart, cherub's head, cross, etc. soldered to the ear. Dukachs of the second type with a minimum of decoration were used in Kyiv, Poltava, Volyn, and Lviv regions.

The third type includes dukachs, in which a lace ornamental lattice of oval-elongated, triangular or round shape with wavy outlines (bow, motif, buckle) was movably attached to a round pendant with three chains or an eyelet. They are characterized by a kind of monumentality, polychrome decoration, and a certain static nature in relation to other jewelry.

Bows, to which dukach medallions were suspended, were closely connected with Ukrainian folk ornamentation. They often used the composition of the “tree of life” with two symmetrically placed birds.

In the Poltava and Kharkiv regions, they made lattices that looked like a basket with flowers and leaves. Their structure fit into an oval. Small rosettes of flowers were placed around the perimeter. Moreover, the basket lattices from Poltava region differed from those made by goldsmiths in Lebedyn, Kharkiv region. The products of Poltava craftsmen are less lacy, with massive leaves and several flowers extending to the right and left of the baskets, and an image of a head with rays in the middle between the leaves. Lebedyn baskets are more lacy, lighter, with branches with leaves and flowers flexibly and naturally spreading to the sides and upwards, and a rosette with a large glass in the center between the leaves.

Along with the above-mentioned lattice compositions, others were widespread, consisting of various ribbon weaves combined with elements such as a crown, heart, rosette, etc. Among them, the most characteristic for Nizhyn goldsmiths is a bow made of a metal strip in four loops with two small branches coming from the center. The bow was decorated with one or three glasses. However, most of the dukachs grilles that have survived to this day do not have a single motif in their structure, but consist of ornamental elements - leaves, curls, rosettes decorated with colored glasses, combined into complete symmetrical lace compositions.

In Volyn, the dukach was worn on a ribbon or a series of beads. Volyn dukachs were made from coins, medallions, or men's award medals. In the dukachs of the 19th and early 20th centuries, there were thalers of the Austro-Hungarian Empress Maria Theresa, thalers of Maximilian of Bavaria, Polish coins, and coins of the Russian Empire.  The centerpiece was the medallion, and the bow only visually complemented it or was absent altogether. Often, Volyn dukach resembled a lace brooch with a medallion in the center. 

At the end of the 19th century, factory-made stamped copper plaques similar to dukachs began to spread, but they did not catch on and quickly fell out of use.

In the early 20th century, artistic dukachs with frames and lattices remained a festive, ceremonial decoration in the complex of Ukrainian folk women's jewelry.

After the revolution, the mass wearing of coin beads and dukachs in Ukraine stopped altogether, as many jewelry pieces featured images of coats of arms and crowned persons, reminiscent of tsarist times; later, most of the ancient jewelry was melted down or exchanged for bread during the wars and famines.

During the Soviet era, the production of dukachs in Ukraine almost completely ceased and resumed in the early 60s and 90s of the 20th century and again in the 21st century. 

Zoriana Kuryliak

The photographs of dukachs from open sources

Jewellery from the collections of the Ivan Honchar Museum in Kyiv

Jewellery from the Open Chest collection

Archival photos of dukachi from open sources

Museum publications of the National Museum of Folk Architecture and Life of Ukraine in Pirogovo