Crafts

Wood Carving Instead of Retirement

Viacheslav Deriabin from Poltava is 60 years old. For the last five years, he has devoted himself to wood carving. It is a story of a person who got over an extremely difficult and thorny path but managed to find...

Opishne – Life Originated in Clay

They say that clayware — a jug, a kumanets (a ceramic vessel for water and wine that is common in Ukraine) or anything else — is like a living creature. Potters themselves referred to their wares as if they were...

Carpathian Lizhnyk — A Hutsul Invention

Yavoriv, a settlement in Hutsulshchyna region, has always been famous for the beautiful works of its artisans; decorated Easter eggs (pysankas), embroidery and woodwork are widespread here. However, there’s something else makes Yavoriv such a special place: the art of...

Prybirsk: Life on the Exclusion Zone Frontier.

Prybirsk in Polissia could be just a picturesque village not far from Chornobyl. It could be known only by locals and some very curious tourists, but thanks to a couple of indifferent activists the village got re-energized. The festival “Chornobyl-Renaissance”...

Hordii Starukh. 300 Lyres

Lyre art was once widespread in Ukraine, from the 16th century to the 1930s when Soviet officials ordered to “clean up” cities and villages of Ukrainian musicians. History contains allegations of Soviet officials organizing a conference for 300 Ukrainian Kobzars,...

Potters Family that Changed Opishne

There are about ten pottery centres in Ukraine. Opishne in the Poltava region is the largest among them. This is an old Cossack town (nowadays it has the status of the urban-type settlement – ed.), that is rich in the clay...