About the Cover Illustration

The figure on the cover of Azure in Action is captioned “Woman with child from Durdevac.” The illustration is taken from a reproduction of an album of Croatian traditional costumes from the mid-nineteenth century by Nikola Arsenovic, published by the Ethnographic Museum in Split, Croatia, in 2003. The illustrations were obtained from a helpful librarian at the Ethnographic Museum in Split, itself situated in the Roman core of the medieval center of the town: the ruins of Emperor Diocletian’s retirement palace from around AD 304. The book includes finely colored illustrations of figures from different regions of Croatia, accompanied by descriptions of the costumes and of everyday life.

The village of Durdevac is near the town of Osijek in Slavonia, a geographical and historical region in eastern Croatia. Women in Slavonia were known for their intricate embroidery and sewing skills, and everything they wore was made by hand requiring the weaving of textiles and dyeing of wool. Slavonian women typically wore long white skirts and white linen shirts with a collar, topped with long black and brown vests embroidered along the edges in wool of different colors, with white headscarves and necklaces made of red coral beads. The long aprons that completed the traditional costume were elaborately embroidered with colorful patterns of flowers or geometric designs.