On July 12, 2024, the Lesia Ukrainka Literary and Memorial Museum in Kolodiazhne hosted a presentation of an updated exhibition of memorial houses restored in 2021. The event celebrated the 75th anniversary of the opening of the Lesia Ukrainka Literary and Memorial Museum and the 175th anniversary of Olena Pchilka’s birth. The Edelvika’s team, led by CEO Yuriy Perekhodko, Marketing Director Olga Kasyan and designers Yulia Stakhiv and Olga Sosnytska, participated in the festivities. This is the place where Lesia Ukrainka, a prominent Ukrainian writer, found inspiration and composed her remarkable works.
We were pleased to receive a valuable proposal to recreate the Kosach family rushnyks, especially those from the “gray” house. Without hesitation and with respect for the heritage of the past, we embraced the idea and made every effort to bring it to life. The museum staff of Kolodyazhne allowed us to work with samples of embroidered rushnyks that adorned the home of the creative Ukrainian family. Rushnyks were used to frame the doors and windows of the house, serving as a form of spiritual protection and decoration. Our team at Edelvika endeavored to preserve the authenticity and convey the atmosphere of that time.
Our designers have thoroughly studied the ornamentation on the samples. The vintage Kosachs’ items featured a distinctive symbolism – the tree of life, which represents the past, present, and future. It is one of the most symbolic elements of the Ukrainian rushnyk. This embroidery embodies the ancient and meaningful heritage of the Ukrainian people. The tree needed to be symmetrical and have at least three tiers. The number of tiers depended on the information the owners wanted to sew into the rushnyk.
Three levels represent the holy trinity, happy, peaceful family life; four levels represent the realization of ideas, family welfare and prosperity; five levels represent the embodiment of creative ideas, spiritual values; six levels represent unity with God, spiritual and physical perfection; seven levels represent access to the invisible worlds, the secrets of the universe.
The Kosachs’ rushnyks depict a four-tiered tree with intertwining flowers, stars, and buds, and a bezkinechnyk (an ancient ornament, a wavy line with no beginning and no end is a symbol of endless life) along the edge of the old rushnyk. The stars and represent harmony, stability, prosperity, and life. The buds – the beginning of life. Embroidered flowers represent happiness, love and fertility.
The symbolism inherent in the rushnyks tells about the rich traditions of the family, its customs and aspirations, imprinting a story on a smooth canvas with each stitch.
Edelvika has been inspired to recreate those ornaments. Our designer, Olha Sosnytska, shares her impressions and nuances that arose in the process of recreating the patterns with machine embroidery: “This work was special for me, I realized that my task was not only to create a design and convey the authenticity of the patterns and stitches of the old rushnyks of the Kosach family, but also to preserve family values and carry on the history that is priceless.”
Olha also talked about the four important stages of design development and transferring it to the canvas, it was important to “start well and finish well,” so the focus was paramount. At the first stage, the main emphasis was on embroidery along the edge of the rushnyk. Looking at the patterns of the original product, the embroidery designer tried to reproduce the traditional type of stitch, its shape, and size as much as possible.
The second stage was to create the embroidery of the middle part of the rushnyk. The difficulty was to adapt the designed pattern to our equipment and make the embroidery continuous. We used a “manual” machine embroidery stitch, which required a lot of time. The third, special stage was the reproduction of the “tree of life”.
On the Kosachiv rushnyks, the patterns of flowers, branches, stems, and buds were of different shapes and sizes, so it was important to convey all the elements as they were in the original version. This part of the rushnyk required considerable effort to perfectly transfer the original ornament to the new canvas. It was at this stage that two sides of the towel were embroidered simultaneously. And the third and final stage was stitching together the embroidered rushnyk.
Edelvika has skillfully adopted and recreated the symbolism of Kosachiv towels on exquisite linen fabrics. Each product is created with the desire to preserve the ancient heritage of the famous Ukrainian family. Edelvika is grateful to the organizers of the Volyn Museum for the opportunity to be part of this unique project.
We invite you to visit the Lesia Ukrainka Literary and Memorial Museum in Kolodiazhne – you will not regret it! The coziness, harmony and beauty of this place will inspire you. The updated exposition is a great opportunity to feel the spirit of the time in which Lesia Ukrainka lived and worked and to see what her surroundings looked like.