Wedding crown

The crown is made of silver-toned metal and is fragmentary. It takes the form of a wide band, decorated at the bottom with a strip imitating gemstone insets and small flowers, above which is a stylized radiant glow around now-lost insets, alternating with four medallions with a dotted border, in which the faces of saints were painted. The images on three of the medallions are lost; on the fourth is [the Holy Great Martyr Catherine], holding a palm branch in her right hand.

The crown belonged to the pre-war collection of the Sloboda Ukraine Museum named after H. S. Skovoroda. During the Second World War it was evacuated and returned to Kharkiv in November 1944.

Note: the wedding crown is a special headpiece that the priest places on the heads of the bride and groom during the Sacrament of Marriage. From the 18th century, crowns began to be made in the shape of royal crowns. The bride's crown bore an image of the Mother of God, and the groom's an image of a bishop-saint.

The crowns symbolize the glory of God and the royal dignity of the newly formed Christian family as a "domestic Church," as well as a reward to the newlyweds for having kept premarital chastity.