A fairy tale made of wicker

Amateur craftsmen in Ukraine are too numerous to count. Many of them work only for themselves and their families to boost their income, while others cannot live without attending various fairs, festivals, and competitions, the kinds of events where they can show off their work, see what their colleagues have accomplished, chat, and perhaps find new apprentices. Oleksii Dolia, the deputy director of the Museum of Folk Architecture and Life in Pyrohove, believes that the former are craftsmen while the latter are master craftsmen, who are willing to share the secrets of their folk arts. These are the creative individuals who attended this year’s festival.

“We invited around 200 folk craftsmen,” Dolia told The Day. “Our ethnographers work all over Ukraine, and we follow their recommendations by inviting the finest ones to take part in our festival, which has been in existence for more than 20 years. Ten years ago we did not have so many talented people who could produce artistic and useful things out of wood and wicker. We are especially pleased to see that young people are now taking an interest in folk crafts.”

Products to suit all tastes and pocketbooks have become a staple of the festival. Visitors could browse among straw hats and slippers, carved boxes and straw decorations, talismans, musical instruments, dishware, furniture, and even a life-sized horse made out of the roots of a tree. This masterpiece has already inspired a legend: if you pull the horse by the tail and make a wish, it will come definitely true.

Folk craftsmen and regular visitors to such events will agree that these festivals are impossible to imagine without two master craftsmen who are known in Ukraine and abroad: Ivan Malysh, a master hatter whose straw hats are worn by half the population of Myronivka in Kyiv oblast, and Viktor Tereshchenko, a musician, reed-pipe maker, and carver rolled into one.

To date, the 60-year-old Malysh has made over a thousand straw hats. He says they help people who suffer from hypertension. Although he doesn’t usually wear his products, he made an exception for the festival-a combination of advertising and prophylaxis.

“My uncle taught me how to make straw hats after my mother sent me to his farm to herd cows. That’s how I earned money in those days,” Malysh said. “My uncle told me: ‘Keep learning, child, it will come in handy.’ I thought: ‘Why the devil do I need this?’ But I finally learned the craft. Later it grew on me so much that after the harvest I couldn’t bear the sight of straw lying around uselessly — my hands reached out for it by themselves. In those days I made hats and gave them away.”

Malysh eventually gained recognition and began receiving invitations to various exhibitions and folk art festivals. He is proud of the silver medal he won at an international ethnic festival in Moscow in Soviet times: “They began to raise me very, very high.” Today he has many followers (the best one is his wife) and besides straw hats he makes caps, sombreros, and bonnets, according to the dictates of fashion.

His fellow craftsman, Tereshchenko, has devoted his life to making folk music instruments, especially the reed-pipe. In 1969, when he was a student at the art college in Nizhyn, he was taught how to carve reed-pipes out of wood and play them. Since then he has been teaching this art to schoolchildren as well as to his own children and grandchildren. At the entrance to the museum you can hear the soft sounds of his instrument — it helps guests get their bearings. During the festival various melodies — from the Ukrainian anthem, Cossack marches, to folk songs — can be heard throughout the village of Pyrohove.

“I can play many anthems: the Ukrainian national anthem, the religious hymn “Bozhe velykyi yedynyi” (Oh, great and only God), and Cossack anthems,” Tereshchenko boasts. “One time on Andriivsky uzviz I was asked to play the Soviet anthem. I said, “Of course, I can play it but the reed- pipe will start crying tears of blood.” The onlookers said, “You probably have lung disease.” I said, “No, it’s the reed-pipe that cries like this.” And so I learned to play that anthem too.”

Tereshchenko has made more reed-pipes in his life than he can count — maybe a few thousand. He sent a couple of thousand reed- pipes to the Ukrainian lyceum in the Crimea; the whole school is now learning to play on his instruments. For him carving is a fairly lucrative enterprise, which is just what he needs now: the 62-year-old retiree is raising two small children — a three-year-old and a four-year- old — from his second marriage. (The children from his first marriage are grown up and live abroad.)

“When I was first invited to come here in the mid-1970s, I earned 600 rubles in a few days. I had never had so much money in my life because as a teacher I only made 120 rubles a month,” recollects the master. “Now my reed- pipes cost 30 to 120 hryvnias apiece. I can make two simple ones in a day. I want more people to learn to play the reed-pipe. It’s not hard and I even give clients music notes with instructions. Experience has convinced me that the reed- pipe fosters kindness in people.”

This is how folk craftsmen combine talent with self-realization, love of life with creativity, and financial interest with altruism. It was a great pleasure to talk with these people; they speak as though they were telling a fairy tale: nicely and slowly, with illustrative stories and happy endings. This is no surprise — these people know the craft they have lived by, as did our ancestors in days of old. This is the source of their outward simplicity and inner wealth.