The Ukrainian applied art is rooted deep in the past. From chronicles and other monuments of Kyivan Rus it is known that crafts already existed then to properly become Ukrainian later. For instance, the oldest types of folk applied arts and crafts are woodcarving (e.g., wood sculpture carving), carpet making, embroidery, pottery and ceramics.
The wood sculpture cutting reached its climax during the heydays of the Cossack state in 17th and 18th centuries when talented Cossack artisans, whose names failed to reach us, created in Ukraine the unique Ukrainian style, the so-called Cossack Baroque. Throughout the entire territory of the Cossack state comparatively small churches were erected distinguished by precision of lines and artistic perfection. Quite a few of them have preserved intact until now. Evidently, it was from the Cossack Baroque style that the skillful and masterly woodcutting spread to folk architecture of the Central, Northern and Southeastern Ukraine. Such elements as odvirok (doorframe), svoloka (ceiling supporting frame) and cornices of wooden structures were decorated by carving and, henceforth, the household goods and things, furniture, chest boxes, plates and dishes, tools, arms and munitions.
A special page in the life of Ukrainian arts and crafts is the woodcarving of the church iconostases and other religious objects. Here, polychromatic or gilded engraving predominates which is based on exigent floriated ornament comprising such skillfully conventionalized folk motifs as a stem of grapevine, sunflower, mallow, roses, etc. Compositions with groups of figures of saints, angels and so on arranged within the Baroque and Rococo ornamental forms and motifs are peculiar to the architectural forms of multi-tier iconostases.
As of today, popular are the objects of home craft of the western regions, especially the Hutsul ornamental hatchets, pistols, guns, powder-flasks, small vessels for liquids, and wooden, predominantly decorative plates and dishes (ware). To embellish their makes the Huzul artisans are using techniques of incrustation and patsiorkuvannia (encrusting with glass beads).
Woodcarving has succeeded to preserve regional diversity of ornaments characteristic to other genres of the Ukrainian decorative arts. Thus, in Halych and Volyn regions geometric forms of ornament dominate being in contrast to floriated ornaments in the central and eastern Ukrainian lands.
Making carpets is another olden Ukrainian trade. Functionally, there are three in use for carpeting: kover, kylym and, kots. The difference between them could lie in the techniques, ornamentation, size, and purpose. At present, they are distinguished only by territorial principle: kover and kylym originate from the central and northern Ukrainian industrial centers, while kots are handmade in the western, mainly Hutsul region. Moreover, variegated, often vegetative ornament prevail in the former, while the latter, that is, Hutsul kots is grey or white or the color of undyed wool, and if the ornament is present, it is geometric.
The most varied and, surely, the oldest in Ukraine is the pottery trade. In general, terracotta, grey, enameled, and black ceramics are singled out differing not only by territorial traditions of coloring and decor, but also in clay deposits. Historically, the centers of pottery emerged in accord to the natural location of deposits of the clay required with the names arising from the nearby settlements and perceived as brand names. As such, for instance, are known pottery of Horodysche and Plakhtian, as well as ‘black-smoke’ pottery from Havarechyna in Lviv oblast.
Fired without access for air under special technology, the ‘black-smoke’ pottery, , has emerged as alternative to the traditional antique ceramics, centering on the territory of Ukraine and present–day countries of Europe, and competed in Ukraine of 18th to 19th centuries with glazed ceramics.
The black earthenware is made of special clay on potter’s wheel. After drying, ornaments are burnished or ‘drawn’ on the articles using slip originating from the same deposit. Firing results in burnished surface having silvery tint, with the rest of it colored black.
As a rule, traditional earthenware is ornamented and decorated by enameling or fliandruvahhia, a specific system of ornamenting, with characteristic for Ukrainian pottery combination of green and brown glosts. Painted dishes, plates, tykva (pitcher), kumanets, blyzniata (jugs for holding wine), and dzbanky (bowls), and imaginative figures of goats, rams, and stags with flowerpots on their back bear vegetative or plotline ornamentation.
Peculiar for the Ukrainian folk pottery is making tiles for stoves and, from time to time, insertions for buildings in the form of relief and adorned with designs circle and rectangular ornamented slabs that create decorative friezes on the walls, etc. Tiles could be relief with green or brown glaze, or drawn; one may encounter tiles with blue enamel or even of two or tree colors on a white background. In old buildings, it is common to see tiled stoves as pieces of art intact but still in working order. They have practical use and serve as a style detail of the room.
Decorative painting as a vivid chapter went down in history of the Ukrainian culture. This type of folk art originated from mural painting spread widely since time immemorial in the Ukrainian villages. One of the centers that for ages were famous in Ukraine with the original art of painting is the village of Petrykivka in the Dnipropetrovsk oblast.
This original Petrykivka ornament evolved as far as 17th century from the distinctive decorative art of Zaporizhia with the fundamentals of the village interior and exterior decorative setting, household and domestic tools design passed from generation to generation, and local features of painting preserved. Here, until the end of the 19th century for the mural painting chalk, soot and color clays as well as self-made plant paints dissolved in yolk, milk and natural cherry-tree resin were utilized. The pattern was indented with a brush while petty details were shaped using homemade cat’s fur hair-pencils and guelder-rose clusters with fingertips. The characteristic feature of the Petrykivka folk artists’ creations was the use of vegetative and floral ornamentation distinguished by ease and expressiveness of the composition. Starting with the 20th century Petrykivka became the center of making maliovka, drawings executed with inexpensive aniline dyes on thin paper.
Another unique phenomenon in the decorative art of Ukraine is painting of pysanka, the decorated Easter eggs. The Ukrainian pysanka springs from ancient beliefs of this people, and if at the time of paganism the eggs were painted to mark the Holiday of Spring, they were decorated to commemorate the Velykden, the Holiday of Christ’s Resurrection, under the Christianity. With the Slavs, an egg was the origin of everything typifying the Universe. They believed in the world created in similarity to a large egg: the shell representing the skies, membrane as the clouds, the white as water, and the yolk as the earth. As the symbol of origin of a new life, an egg has a ring of symbolism of the Sun. Worshipped by ancestors of the Ukrainians, they believed it to be the surety of nature and life revival.
Depending on the region, differences exist concerning decor composition, color spectrum and division of a pysanka surface. Numerous crosses and intersections symbolize fertility, while rings and right lines were associated with male and female conceptions and medley of color reflected the surrounding.
Quite a few nations of the world have preserved until now the custom of using eggs for Easter commemorations, however, they are making predominantly dyed eggs, that is, single colored boiled ones. In contrast, pysanka painting in Ukraine scaled the heights of development becoming a separate form of art, and pysanka itself one of the cultural symbols of the country.
