The Art of Patching Time

There is nothing permanent under the sun, we tell ourselves, saying something we can no longer put to effective use. Still, there are people challenging that old truism. The gift of Empress Anna Ivanovna of Russia, made to the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, torn in 27 places, or another donation to the Pecherska Lavra Monastery of the Caves, in a similarly lamentable condition, made by an ordinary nun back in the seventeenth century, deserve to have their velvet and needlework sparkle anew. All these “patients” are standing in line to be treated by restorers, masters who work not only with chemicals, paints, dyes, and thread, but also with time. Restoring fabrics is considered the most difficult in the world. Inna CHORNOKAPSKA, Ukraine’s only first class restorer specializing in fabrics, does everything to show the visitors of Kyiv museums the true face of embroideries and tapestries, doing a truly surgical job on them, except that such surgery can last between three months and several years. To declare she is a master skillful with her fingers is no compliment for Inna Chornokapska. It is a title conferred on her after decorating sculptures at Kyiv’s ceramics factory, to which she dedicated ten years of her life before staring to work as a restorer with the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra 33 years ago. At her age of 70, she thinks of how best to restore items of exhibits on her desk at the center of restoration and expertise, and what her next tasks will be like.

“Cleansing an object is most important, lest it be destroyed. It can be very difficult, physically difficult,” says Inna Chornokapska. “My daughters and husband used to come to lend a hand. Certain things like felony [chasubles] and sakosy, elements of ranking clergymen’s garments — are very heavy. Imagine how much time it takes to clean them with a tampon, dipping it in alcohol. At first it was morally difficult because of the dirt. Their collars were like sweat- saturated bootlegs. But then I got used to it.

“I have to neatly mend the holes. You can’t make the fabric look like new. Our task is to preserve what we actually have. If I have to cut it to make the task easier, I do. I do fabric-to-fabric bonding, using a flour glue. To do this bonding, I have to select the fabric — mostly silk. We can sometimes use cotton but never synthetic materials. I adjust the color and bond it. We never restore needlework unless allowed by a special restoration council. If we know of similar curls, locks, or ornament, they may instruct us to restore the pattern. The trouble is that old needlework usually consists of threads no longer available. Old threads have altogether different colors and textures. Making them look old is no good, because the difference will be instantly apparent to a practiced eye. If some of the embroidery has detached itself with time, we will glue or otherwise attach it back in place. But there is no way to introduce a new component and make it look as old as the rest. All those old threads have gone through so much!”

Inna Chornokapska receives most of her assignments from the Kyiv-Pechersk National Historical—Cultural Preserve, boasting some 6,000 specimens of old fabrics, among them donations to the monastery from Hetmans Danylo Apostol and Ivan Skoropadsky, Elizabeth of Russia [the youngest daughter of Peter I], artist Ivan Izhakevych, and many other prominent Ukrainian and Russian figures. The lion’s share was stored at the sacristy of the Dormition Cathedral. The relics survived the explosion, although many were ravaged by the fragments, heat, and cold of the next five years before the rubble was cleared. “As huge fragments fell they tore off pieces of fabrics and then everything went down and was buried under the huge weight of the debris. So now you treat these fabrics with steam again and again, and it just doesn’t seem to work,” complains Inna Chornokapska.

The Day: You must have become desperate.

I. C.: Indeed I did when there was nothing to use to help me do the job. I knew what I had to do and how, but I had no materials to do so. Perhaps we lack materials the way they have elsewhere. Previously, we had stores selling special chemicals, now there is nothing one can find. With time, I worked out my own methods, using what materials were available. Otherwise I’d have to spend God knows how long and never do the job. Alcohol is the most precious agent. I add distilled water and dip tampons to clean fabrics. And, seeing it’s not enough, do it again and again.

True, I thought it reached my wit’s end once. I resigned. I had long filled in forms requesting materials, explaining how badly I needed them, that I couldn’t do without them. I remember submitting another such form and then waiting at the secretary’s desk at the office of Sopyn, the manager of the museum. And then the manager opened the door and saw the form in my face. I picked it up and went to the secretary of the local party organization. I told him what had happened. He picked up the phone and called the manager, saying, “You’ve had a visitor, our staff restorer, you must sign her request immediately.” I could hear the man’s roaring voice on the phone: “What? Tell her to go to the devil!” After that I tendered my resignation. The secretary of the party organization (he had lost a leg during World War II and walked using an artificial one) learned about it. I heard him limping up the stairs to my room on the fifth floor. “Inna Oleksiyivna, please cancel you resignation,” he told me. I did. The very fact that a man with an artificial leg had climbed the stairs and tried to help me was the most important thing.

Restoring fabrics is considered the most complex task. I used to have pupils, but they would come, work for a while, then leave. I knew precisely how they felt; not everyone can have the patience. At present, young people want to have everything overnight. First, they ask how much they will be paid. I feel shocked. Why not ask me about the job, how interesting it is, what kind of things they will have to restore. Things we deal with were created by real artists. Here every component was carefully planned and added in the right place. A lot of beauty, but the process is extremely labor-intensive.

The Day: You have spent decades studying Ukrainian religious needlework, so you must know the specifics.

I. C: There are Russian and Ukrainian elements, and they’re quite similar. More emphasis was placed on religious needlework in Russia. Take the Stroganoff schools, they drilled every craftsman the hard way! The facing was gorgeous, they were gradually introducing threads of different shades. We never did, yet our garments are so attractive. We just sewed on pieces of silk into the face and then into the eyes, brows, nose and mouth. The result was so beautiful, you should see some of those images! Once I had to work on a miter and the needlework portrayed some of the hierarchs of the Monastery of the Caves. They looked wonderful. Every face was so real you wanted to touch it, and their beards and mouths, and expressions were different. Whoever did it must have been a real master. The threads were so ever thin. Picking one in place of an eyebrow, I would leave a hole. I wanted to patch it up, of course, and found the finest thread available, yet it looked too thick, compared to the others. At the time the industries, if any, were kept by craftsmen, but they knew their crafts so well!

Religious needlework is strictly canonical; such garments were made within cloistered communities. In the seventeenth century, the Ascension Convent was a venue of gold and silver needlework. The Mother Superior was Mary Magdalene, Ivan Mazepa’s mother, The Day was told by Valentyna Shcherbakova, senior scholar at the Kyiv-Pechersk national preserve. In the eighteenth century, the venue was transferred to the Frolivsky Convent. However, the craftswomen found a way to lend the author’s individual touch to every embroidery. The Kyiv-Pechersk Preserve stores several such works by Piora Hlibova of the Frolivsky Convent, with beetles and dragonflies perches here and there on the light green chasuble, for they are also creatures of the Lord.

The Day: What about the sukhozolytsia fine gold and silver threads?

I. C: Actually, there is little gold and silver involved. Some forty years ago, our display featured a veronica embroidered in gold on the hem. And you know what? Someone cut off a piece and I had a hard time looking for an expert to restore it. Eventually, I met a woman who had done such things for the Lavra, but she passed away before I could give her the piece. Regrettably, no one does gold needlework at the Lavra. They just make dark religious garments, nothing even remotely resembling what we have in our museum stock. In fact, modern religious garments have the wrong colors, the wrong kind of fabric and embroidery.

The Day: For you the main thing is preserving, restoring all that dates from the past, without adding anything on your own, let you deprive a given relic of its individuality and age. How do you feel about the restoration of temples of Ukraine?

I. C: I wonder about so many being restored. If our people become fully aware of the Lord in their hearts, they will have enough room in the available houses of God to offer up their prayers. I’d rather build public canteens serving inexpensive meals, so that people with low incomes could come and eat. They must care for the people. They did previously, no matter what we hear to the contrary.

My parents were hard-working people and taught me to live in the same way. Money was something no one could come by only by working hard. At the time, we were seldom issued bonuses and no one asked for them. God forbid one was late for work, even five minutes! The administration’s commission kept track of everything. We are children of the war, it raised us this way. I was nine when the war broke out. All those years we suffered so much but never complained. Why should we? It was our common ordeal. My mother would sit up nights, sewing linen and underwear for [Soviet] servicemen. We were evacuated to Mordovia and the only thing we could take with us was the sewing machine. My mother worked at a post office during the day.

Apart from religious needlework, Inna Chornokapska must also restore secular objets, like Brussels tapestries portraying scenes from Don Quixote, from the collection of Kyiv’s Museum of Western and Eastern Art; these things are probably more popular with the capital’s audiences than relics stored at the Kyiv-Pechersk Preserve. They have all been treated by her masterful hands! When colleagues from Moscow saw them they could not conceal their amazement: “What is it? You must have assigned the job to some thirty restorers.”

I. C: I didn’t want to do those tapestries at first. They were in a terrible condition. They were so large I didn’t know where to spread them. Finally, we cleaned them in the yard. There were many holes and the color as though they had been dragged on a dirty tarmac. The museum people admitted they’d called dry cleaners and they’d used some chemicals right there at the museum. We unstitched the lining. There was so much dirt inside, black as soot. And the lining had holes. Eventually, we found the same kind of fabric and replaced the lining. We finished the job in a year’s time.

Just as there is the reverse side to any embroidery, so there is one to a restorer specializing in fabrics. Cleansing beauty of dirt is a hazardous task. Previously, it was done at the [Soviet] museums, using insect-powder, but then it was found in the blood of one of the cleaning women. Inna Chornokapska has also suffered from dust-powder when blisters suddenly appeared all over her body. Other chemicals she used were also anything but harmless, including toluene (doctors say it can even alter one’s blood group). Be it as it may, she developed red spots on her skin that would remain for a long time. She never consulted physicians and she did not want to quit her job. “The dust of centuries” is yet another enemy of both the museum relics and the restorer. Inna Chornokapska spent a long time receiving eye treatment after some dust had got in her eyes from under the lining of an old museum item. She says good ventilation is all she needs. Nothing else.

Over the decades of dedicated work, she has learned to keep body and soul together, patching up holes in precious old museum items and inventing ways to otherwise restore them, using a meager assortment of improvised means. She hates any setback in her work. Her colleagues say, however, that she will never sacrifice quality for speed. She can rejoice in her rejuvenated chasubles, sakosy, and pidriznyky embroidered icons. She must know how her “charges” heave a sigh of relief after the display closes.

“After hanging on display and then placed on special paper on the floor, the relics can have a rest,” says Inna Chornokapska.