Potter’s Day must have national status

“You are lucky to be in Opishne” reads the chalk inscription on a wood plaque at the entrance to the National Ukrainian Pottery Museum-Preserve in the village of Opishne in Poltava oblast. This helps the visitors feel at home during the first week of the National Potters’ Fest entitled “Zdvyh-2009,” held on June 29 to July 5. The Day’s journalists attended it when the festivities were in full swing, after several days of symposiums dealing with Opishne’s role and contribution to world pottery. The museum-preserve hosted the Cerampeak in Opishne exhibit displaying the best works submitted by 52 potters from various oblasts of Ukraine, including a double-headed lion, candlesticks, a fish skeleton, and figures of goddesses, peasants, and Cossacks, totaling 119 works of art displayed out of doors. There was also the Third Youth Festival involving 70 potters aged 10–21 from Ukraine, Russia, Moldova, and Belarus. Yet the biggest event of the week was the National Potter’s Day marked on July 4.

ALMOST ALL OPISHNE RESIDENTS ARE SKILLED POTTERS

On The Day The Day’s journalists came to Opishne the agenda included master classes by Ukraine’s leading potters, a pottery fair, guided tours in local pottery museums, and pottery competitions. However, the main item was whether this holiday would receive the national status—something Opishne has been waiting for over 20 years. (The first Potter’s Day was marked in 1989.) Minister of Culture and Tourism Vasyl Vovkun, who attended the fest, promised to have this issue duly resolved: “I will submit a proposal to make Potter’s Day a state holiday next week. We are happy to realize that Opishne is reviving its age-old traditions and that we are sitting side by side with the veteran potters, whose names are known far outside Poltava oblast. Making arrangements for these festivities on this scale was hard this year, but we did it because this holiday is so important for Opishne.” Opishne residents say they will keep their potter’s wheels running as long as the sun shines and they have enough clay. They pin hopes on the younger generation, boys and girls who are learning the craft from their grandparents. Opishne boasts a government-run boarding school known as Opishne Art Collegium. Its graduates have proven their skill and that they can keep up the good tradition. On Potter’s Day their master classes were conducted on a level matching those conducted by the veteran potters, with the girls matching the boys’ skills, adorning ready products with clay ornaments.

“This kind of d cor we place on top of the product,” says Iryna, a ninth-grader at the Collegium, pointing to a plate adorned with flowers and leaves. “I started at the potter’s wheel with a bowl, now I’m using small balls [of clay] to make ornamental elements (even as she says this, her fingers never leave the potter’s wheel, producing flowers and leaves). Before I paint the ornament, I have to fire this plate in a kiln at 1,000°C. After that I glaze it to make the patterns shine and then fire it in the kiln again. Only then will my product be ready.”

“You forgot to mention one more aspect—painting,” her classmate Sofia joins in. “The painting is done after the first firing, using special syringes and natural paints. We make these paints ourselves, by diluting argil and adding blue, yellow, and other dyes. We also need wet sponges and pieces of clean cloth to constantly wet and clean our fingers; clay doesn’t like dry and dirty hands. And we also use the stek, a wooden stick used to cut the lines and make holes.”

Noted potters conducted their personal master classes. They say that the main thing is to learn to center the clay piece on the potter’s wheel—otherwise the end product will turn out crooked.

“First we take a chunk of clay and place it in the center of the potter’s wheel,” Natalia Buryni says to the guests while operating her wheel. “We keep this chunk of clay wet with our hands and then, as the wheel revolves, we start shaping the walls of a pot. When it is ready, we remove it from the wheel by passing a special thread or string under its bottom to separate it from the wheel.”

Natalia demonstrated the procedures quickly and skillfully, because she was working on a small pot, whereas her fellow potter was less lucky: he wanted to make a pot that was 30-40 cm tall, so lifting it off the wheel was easier said than done, considering the weight of the wet clay.

COMMUNICATION WITH COLLEAGUES ARE IMPORTANT

I watched the masters and pupils at the potter’s wheel and decided to give it a try. There were elderly women sitting at their potter’s wheels beside the girl students of the collegium, teaching them to make clay whistles. Making a whistle doesn’t sound like a sophisticated job, but if you sit beside Lidia Oliashko, who has been making such whistles for the past 38 years, and watch her hands on the potter’s wheel, you realize that it’s best to leave pottery well alone; your fingers feel as though made from wood, you have no command of them, and your chunk of wet clay gets dry and then falls apart, so you have to start from scratch.

“First you take a small chunk of clay, roll it up in your palms, make a hole in the middle — so it has enough air, and that’s the hole through which you will blow to get the right kind of sound. Then we mold the ears on the sides. You just keep running the wheel and keep your fingers wet, keep shaping it up, and everything will be OK,” Lidia instructed me.

I followed her instruction and shaped the ears, or whatever they looked like, shaped the tail, and pierced the eyes with the stek, but the old craftswoman did not trust me to make the whistling hole, telling me no one could do it the way she could, because it takes skills and years of experience, so one wrong move with your stek and the whole thing goes down the drain.

“The last thing you must do is actually whistle; you take a lungful of air and whistle through the hole, so all of Opishne can hear you,” the old woman said and then blew my whistle. The sound was muffled, but I was happy to receive any sound at all.

My whistle was, of course, no match for those made by the potter Mykola Poshyvailo with his 49 years of professional experience. In fact, there is the Poshyvailo House Museum in Opishne with the family’s best works on display. Of course, this potter has his tricks of the trade up his sleeve in making such whistles sound melodious. He pours some water inside and then the sound is like the singing of a nightingale. Mykola can shape his clay into anything you can think of: dishes, cups, miniature pots, piggy banks, etc. Other potters had similar merchandise made of white, red clay, glazed or not.

The prices were quite reasonable: 5–10 hryvnias for a whistle, 35–40 hryvnias for various kinds of pots and jars, and 10–20 hryvnias for clay dishes. In contrast to this, Serhii Denysenko’s pottery from Vasylkiv ranged between 150 and 800 hryvnias per plate. He explains that every ceramic piece is a separate work of art; such objets d’art are found on museum displays throughout and outside Ukraine. The prices are up because he has to use expensive materials; he spends at least six hours decorating a single dish. Denysenko says it is like scuba-diving, except that there is no scuba and you have to hold your breath while taking a dive to a great depth, so as to make every line straight, meaningful, and “singing.” Meanwhile, rubbing elbows was more important for the National Potter’s Week participants than selling pottery.

Says Dr. Oles Poshyvailo (Mykola Poshyvailo’s son), Ph.D. (History), ethnologist, an expert in the ceramics field, and one of the organizers: “We arranged for Ukraine’s top-notch potters to attend Zdvyh-2009. I feel happy about these arrangements. I know that otherwise every master would have to flow with the current. What all of them need is an opportunity to communicate and share their experience. This is how they inspire each other to come up with their best creations.

“They attend each other’s exhibits, thus charging themselves with fresh creative energy. Without such creative reunions, their potential falls into decay, they start doing things purely to earn money. Zdvyh-2009 means a gathering of talented potters; it means a fresh impetus to this craft, considering that most of Ukraine’s largest potteries are at a standstill in Opishne. One such factory ceased functioning in 2003. Last year another one was bought out by a businessman for a mere 500,000 hryvnias [roughly $70,000]. This factory specializes in rewinding transformers and other things that have nothing to do with pottery, with the kilns being dismantled and sold for peanuts. There are 25 individual potters left in Opishne—per 8,000 residents, which is a very small number.”

Opishne plans to celebrate the Potter’s Week next year; the local enthusiasts feel sure that this holiday will be observed for as long as there are potters.