Tetiana Serebrennikova: “Olena Pchilka was deeply concerned that our ancient embroideries might be forgotten”

The project’s main goal is to preserve and popularize in modern clothing some elements of ancient embroidery presented in Olha Kosach’s album “Ukrainian Folk Ornament: Embroideries, Textiles, Painted Eggs,” Kyiv, 1876. In an interview with the project author and curator Tetiana Serebrennikova, we discuss embroideresses’ methods of work and the holding of master classes, exhibits, and soirees about the ethnographic heritage of the Kosach family.

“THE VAST MAJORITY OF UKRAINIANS EMBROIDERED IN RED AND WHITE (GRAY)”

“This began as long ago as 2005 with the Ukrainian-language Internet resource ‘Contacts through Embroidery,’” Tetiana SEREBRENNIKOVA recalls. “It was a virtual communication: we displayed the photos of our own works, shared embroidery techniques and literature, showed the pictures of embroideries from museums and our grandmothers’ trunks. This gradually formed an interest club of sorts. We began to conduct online master classes. A hobby grew into a serious movement. And in 2011 Kyiv hosted the All-Ukrainian Congress of Emroideresses, in which 150 people from all over Ukraine participated.”

How did you hit upon the idea of this project and where did you see Olena Pchilka’s rare publication?

“I read about this book and then asked the Lesia Ukrainka Museum where I could see it. It turned out that no museums or private collections had the full version of this publication. The book is partially available at the Lavra Art Museum and Lesia Ukrainka museums in Lviv and Volyn. So, part by part and photo by photo, we gathered a full album and then decided to embroider and republish it.

“This work by Olena Pchilka (Olha Kosach) is the first research into Ukrainian ornamentation. The book was republished, with some changes, five times in Olena Pchilka’s lifetime. But only the first edition comprises a foreword in which she says what Ukrainian traditional embroidery was like, explains symbols and ornaments on each page of the album. She clearly distinguishes between Ukrainian and Russian ornamentations, noting that geometric patterns are typical of our embroidery. Instead, Russian embroidery is under Oriental influence.

“Olena Pchilka proves that Ukrainian clothes displayed protective charms, while Russian embroidery only performs a decorative function without sending any message. The album contains ornaments stitched in the most archaic techniques, such as darning, white yarn stitching, lining, cutting-out, etc. The foreword is about the development of Ukrainian embroidery. Kosach discusses the Brocard embroidery borrowed from France. She saw that a foreign embroidery technique, Western European cross-stitching, was superseding the ancient national techniques. She writes about this in the foreword to the 5th edition. She was deeply concerned that our ancient embroideries might be forgotten. Olena Pchilka proves that Ukrainians used to embroider, above all, clothes. Incidentally, Olena Pchilka won the first grand prix at the 1st World Exhibition in Paris.”

For what purpose are you embroidering a book published as long ago as in the 19th century?

“We have embroidered today the sheets of the 1876 edition. This was done by embroideresses from various regions of Ukraine. We have staged an exhibition at the Museum of Books and Printing, and now we are going to show our works and give classes in Lviv and other cities of Ukraine. We are also inviting other countries’ Ukrainians to take part in ‘Contacts through Embroidery.’ We want to show that folk embroidery is beautiful, modern, and not so difficult, but it is not ideal and has some drawbacks. So, everybody can try their luck. We give master classes in libraries and museums. Ukrainian culture is unique in that it has such a deep-rooted tradition of embroidery. As fate had it, very much was lost and vanished during wars and famines. We want to revive a vogue for ancient embroideries. It is far easier to learn embroidering than egg-painting, pottery, blacksmithing, weaving, or other folk crafts.”

Is the embroidery which Olena Pchilka and later her daughter Olha present in the albums typical of the entire Ukraine?

“Yes, we can see the same patterns in the Kyiv, Cherkasy, Polissia, and Central Ukraine regions as we can in Volyn.”

What is the range of colors in the embroideries shown in the publication?

“Most typical of our lands was red-color embroidery which was done using marjoram or an insect called waxen cochineal. Sometimes there were inclusions of blue – but not black, for we had no dyes that could color a thread black. There were gray or blue shades. For this reason, the shirts embroidered with the addition of black color in Central Ukraine or Polissia cannot be more than 150 years old. It also often happens today that the black thread loses its color very quickly. Very affluent people used to buy dyes and embroidered their shirts with blue or other threads, while the vast majority of Ukrainians embroidered in red and white (gray). And red-black embroidery was introduced in our country on a mass scale when we began to have cheap embroidery threads and Brocard embroidery patterns (a cross-stitching technique brought by Brocard from France). Before that, embroidery had been done with home-spun threads which were usually used to weave cloth. There has been quite a lot of research into natural dyes. Also widespread were yellow-brown and grayish shades.”

And what about the well-known saying “Red is love, and black is sorrow”?

“This is a line from a popular Soviet-era song (music by Oleksandr Bilash, lyrics by Dmytro Pavlychko). As for Western Ukrainians, they used to wear multicolored embroideries. Their territory was under the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s rule, and they began to receive French, including black, threads and high-quality dyes earlier [than the other regions]. DMC threads remain very popular among embroideresses even today. And the well-known poems ‘Two Colors’ by Dmytro Pavlychko or ‘A Girl Was Embroidering, Laying a Black and a Red Thread’ by Mykola Som are an attempt to follow that day’s fashion. Cross-stitching became popular – it has been classical for several generations.”

“IT IS IVAN FRANKO WHO SET A FASHION FOR THE EMBROIDERED NECKTIE”

What embroidering techniques do you propagate?

“We apply various techniques, such as darning, cutting-out, drawn thread, grain stitch, etc., i.e. all the techniques that we forgot in the Soviet period. Olena Pchilka tried to popularize everything that cross-stitching had superseded. We are doing the same today.

“As part of the project ‘Ethnographic Embroidery,’ we not only have embroidered the pages that Olena Pchilka and then her daughter Olha had published, but are also planning to republish the edition so that people can turn to the original source. We are aspiring to reproduce the things kept in museums and private collections. The embroideries listed in the album can be used as an attribute of not only folklore feast costumes, but also as modern-day clothes.”

Who, in addition to Olena Pchilka, popularized embroidered clothes?

“There are very many Ukrainian intellectuals who glorified Ukraine all over the world, and most of them lived in cities under the strong influence of European fashion. If we look at the Kosach and Drahomanov families, we will see that they also identified themselves as Ukrainians through the clothes they wore. They had a tradition: whenever they were going abroad, they carried a suitcase with folk apparel. When Maksym Rylsky, a member of the USSR Supreme Council, was traveling abroad, he always put on an embroidered shirt or necktie under a lounge suit. Incidentally, it is Ivan Franko who set a fashion for the embroidered necktie. We found that the Drahomanovs and the Kosaches had been wearing embroidered shirts and neckties 20 years before Franko. Mykola Lysenko used to wear an embroidered shirt at home (as his relatives recalled), although we failed to find any photos of this. The Cherniakhivsky and Starytsky families also used to add some elements of embroidery to their European suits. There are some well-known photographs of Lesia Ukrainka, Olena Pchilka, Vasyl Symonenko, and Volodymyr Korolenko in embroidered shirts. The Museum of Pereiaslav-Khmelnytsky displays a lot of European-cut clothes embroidered by means of old Ukrainian techniques.

“Today, the project ‘Ethnographic Embroidery’ aims to show some well-known Ukrainians who, as bearers of national culture, glorified their country in the word, and to show the clothes they wore. We are trying to show them as true Ukrainians.”