Some Examples
In the home, rushnyky must be draped around the icons in the icon corner. Other uses of rushnyky are optional, but extensive. Typically, rushnyky are draped around pictures, be they family photographs or images of important persons such as the poet Taras Shevchenko. The most basic rushnyk to be used in the home is the one with the embroidery motif that is called the tree of life. As its name implies, the tree of life insures the longevity and prosperity of the inhabitants of the household. The tree of life is believed to connect all realms: the underworld, this world, and heaven. Because of this, the tree of life also symbolizes continuity between the past, current, and future generations of a family and between people and the natural world.
Examining the rushnyky made by a single artist gives us a good sense of that person’s aesthetics and it also allows us to see the range that can be found in one person’s creativity. Natalia Petrivna Ponomarenko (born April 10, 1928) is an especially gifted embroiderer, well known in her village of Velykyi Khutir. She likes to embroider flowers and her favorites are roses and pansies, though she executes other flowers with great skill and artistic effectiveness. Her sense of color is exquisite and she has not switched to the acrylic threads and brighter hues that have become popular elsewhere. She works in both satin stitch and cross stitch and claims not to favor one over the other, though, when we visited, we saw more satin stitch items. Her satin stitch peacock is spectacular. It is a picture rather than a ritual towel, meant to be framed and hung on the wall. Her work is much sought-after, but she likes her work so well that she is reluctant to sell. She was convinced to part with a number of her works to pay for her grandson’s cleft palette operation. A rather unusual item is shown in the next two pictures of a text towel. It looks quite different from her other works and does not have the same exquisite sense of color or the same fine stitchery. This towel is not meant for display. Natalia Ponomarenko made it to commemorate the death of her son who died at a young age. She died in ????
We close this section with some other pictures. While these are not rushnyky, they are made by the same people using the same embroidery techniques. The last two rushnyky presented here were collected by Halyna Kapas’ in the area where the Kyiv, Poltava, and Cherkasy regions meet.
