Interviews

At the beginning of April after Borodianka city near Kyiv was freed from occupation, a ceramic rooster from a surviving kitchen cabinet on a ruined house became widely known. We tried to find out who the author was and whether it could be reproduced.

At the Turkish Festival, held near Istanbul in late June and early July this year, Georgia was presented mostly by silver enamel jewelry by Sophie Etsadashvili and by Katherine Hehuchadze - fancy cold batik on homemade silk paper, tapestry with fulled wool and oil paintings...

We continue to discover traditional world arts. This time we present conversations with creative people representing Cyprus, Hungary and Caucasian Circassians. We had a possibility to communicate with these artists during the International Festival of Culture and Arts that was held in the Istanbul province B.Çekmece in the period of the late June - early ...

They say that the fate of man is partially determined by the place of his birth. If it is written in the stars for you to be born in Avanos, the Turkish province of Nevsehir, then there’s a chance of 90% that you will become a potter...

It would seem that each country has everything in its own way. Really, Turkish people like different fabrics, silver decorations, copper ware, carpets and colored ceramics. Nevertheless, eyes of creative people of any country are shining with ideas, and all the smiles serve as a universal language even if you don’t know the local one...

It is lives of people at the Hutsul territories in the old times captured in more than a thousand photographs – so many of them are collected during private expeditions by Volodymyr Kitselyuk, an ordinary enthusiast from Hutsul region, a doctor by profession and an ethnographer by vocation. Volodymyr has posted the photographs he has ...

"Once people used to carry water in "ban’kas" of this kind. A ban’ka was covered by a husked corn ear. People used to dig a small hole in the earth and put it inside covering it with soil: the water in such ban’kas stayed cold for the entire day. Our ban’ka is also called "a ...

Well-known in Ukraine and beyond its boundaries graphical artist, creator of vytynankas and pysankar Andriy Pushkaryov is discussing the level of the vytynanka development in Ukraine and the peculiarities of this art.

"Ancient patterns require to be photographed from several sides because a pysanka is a very fragile thing and can be broken any second. But then it will always be possible to reproduce a pysanka in accordance with the photographs for it to have a new life..."

"We are often invited to decorate restaurants in this style. Some people even ask us to decorate their apartments with “Petrykivka”. I hope that the tendency will return back to Petrykivka village itself..."

"Oriental ornaments do not work on me, however beautiful they are. They do not touch me and my soul does not fall or live for them. And when I take a look at a Trypillya art (though they say it is possibly not entirely Ukraine) it penetrates through me instantly..."

"Most often I make floral ornaments. I scrutinize manuals, albums of national Ukrainian costumes and try to reproduce after the pictures the ornaments that ancient masters used to create in the old times..."

"You know who is killed by an aspen stake? Vampires are. So the children were given these toys starting from their childhood for evil not to touch them. And because of this the aspen toy has the strength of a guardian talisman".

"Among all the artists, sculptures, wood carvers – that is all the people involved in the decorative and applied art - practically everybody one time or another touches upon the Kozak Mamay theme. And everyone sees it his own way... The conception itself and what everything should look like I had been cherishing for a ...

Yuri Melnytchuk, a member of Kiev museum of Ivan Honchar, is perhaps considered the most known connoisseur of the art of national embroidery in Ukraine. Starting from 1996, he has been teaching ladies to make embroideries in a correct manner and running a thematic studio.

"There is a wonderful album of M. Kulzhynsky issued in Moscow and named «Description of the collection of national pysankas». 2219 pysankas are shown there, so it takes just to republish this album... Literally – there are only several copies of Kulzhynsky book. But it contains unique ancient pysankas".

"Because in whatever mood you are and whatever problems you have you forget about everything when starting to make pysankas. Maybe it really is that way because pysankas carry lucid ideas and bright hopes for the future so that they drive all the bad thoughts away".

"..all the time working with straw I knew it could serve not only as material for making pictures. And certainly there existed different traditions connected with straw but during Soviet times I couldn’t find anything about them in the books or get any information from people".

"..I said I would sell it for that sum and added that the doll’s name was Dana. And the woman suddenly replied that her daughter’s name was Dana, too. That means the doll was not selling because it was waiting for that very girl".

"We make everything from the rye. Rye is the symbol of life, so here you have the main symbolic meaning... A circle is often present in our work and the circle implies the guard charm, the family, family tree, children, grandchildren and grand-grandchildren – the continuity of the family."