The Memorial Estate Museum of POSHYVAILO Pottery Family

Potter Havrylo Poshyvailo (07.04.1909 – 24.01.1991) – one of the most famous creators of Ukrainian folk ceramics of the late 20th century, and one of the most original representatives of the Opishne school of art ceramics.

He was born in Opishne in the family of Nychypir Poshyvailo (the late 1880s – 1936), a hereditary potter-crockery-maker, a peasant of average means, and Hanna Poshyvailo (Onachko) (the early 1890s – 1964), a potteress, whose father was a famous brickmaker in Opishne. His grandfather, Taras (the mid1860s – early 1900s) produced glazed pottery in the late 19th century, and his wife Kylyna (the late 1860s – 1930) modeled children’s toys. Members of the family made pottery since the 18th century, at least. How Havrylo Poshyvailo himself mentioned, «they were busy only with pottery: produced, carried to fairs and markets. And that from one generation to another…».

The fundamentals of pottery craft were adopted from his father. He began to work at a potter’s wheel very early. His first works were little crockery for children’s games («monetka (coin)») and, of course, whistles. He worked as a potter-handicraftsman (1922–1933, 1941–1943), a potter in the co-operative «Art Ceramic» association (1934–1941), a potter of the industrial co-operative «Art Ceramic» association (1946–1960); a potter (1960–1965), a creative master (1965–1969, 1970–1971) of the Opishne «Art Ceramic» plant, and potter of the Opishne Keramik plant (1971–1987). He produced painted pottery (pots, jugs, jars, vases, barrels, pitchers, basins, dishes), zoomorphic pottery (rams, lions, bulls, birds), ritual earthenware (incense-burners, candlesticks), decorative anthropomorphous sculpture on the topics of folk way of life (ladies, horsemen, compositions with plots), children toys («monetky (coins)», «solov’yi (nightingales)», whistles). There is no such a thing in pottery craft, which Havrylo Poshyvailo couldn’t make. And not only make, but put into these surprising and marvelous clay creatures all the breadth of the inspired soul, and fill them with high human feelings. He has created compositions about Hohol’s characters of the Sorochyntsi fair, for the first time in Ukrainian pottery. When Havrylo Poshyvailo sat down to the wheel, it was as if the time itself would come to a halt. He modeled clay sculptures, children’s toys, up to the last month of the 82nd year of his life.

During the late 1970s – 1980s, the Maestro was a regular participant of the Sorochyntsi fair, different festivals of folk cultures, days of crafts, ethnographical fairs in Kyiv and other cities of Ukraine. He promoted the establishment of children’s pottery schools in Opishne and Kyiv in every possible way.

His peak creative achievements have been awarded with the honorary title «The Honoured Folk Artist of the Ukrainian SSR» (1989), numerous awards of art exhibitions, competitions and symposiums. He was a member of the Artists’ Union of the USSR (since 1970).

Potteress Yavdokha Poshyvailo (Borodavka) (06.03.1910 – 27.04.1994) – one of the most interesting pottery paintresses in Ukraine, a brilliant representative of the Opishne school of artistic painting. She, on the unquestioning view of art critics, was a paintress with a God-given talent.

She was born in Opishne in the family of the peasant of average means. Later she remembered: «I became an orphan. I do not know my parents: people have taken me, and with this people I grew, and learned to paint. Then I have learned and went to handicraftsmen – painted at Horiley…, at Makar Pruhlo and the other ones. And then I was married, and then we began to work two together: he produces, and I paint…».

There is an ancient tradition in Opishne: the works of a potter should be painted by his wife, which is a paintress. Therefore Yavdokha Poshyvailo decorated his husband’s works with vegetable and zoomorphic decorative compositions. She painted on wet clay masterly and quickly. Motifs of painting were born instantly. Flowers, vines, fishes and birds sprang into life n bowls, dishes, vases, jugs, poppy- basins, barrels, pitchers. The Yavdokha Poshyvailo’s pottery patterns, made with the so-called Flandres method and hornpainting, were dense, rich, bright, and her decoration motifs were truly inimitable. All the merits of the Ukrainian nature, all her love for life, for people and surroundings, she put into that confessionary drawing.

Yavdokha lived for pottery to her last breath. She worried about its misfortune and was sincerely glad for the sake of everyone, who made progress in the comprehension of the mystery of clay. Even in some months before her departure into another world, when she was infirm, as pottery made her life: she took a piece of paper, felt-tip pens or pencils and drew pottery ornaments on the paper.

Making the best use of their own technique of forming and decorating, Havrylo and Yavdokha Poshyvailos remained faithful to ancient Opishne traditions, strengthening the inexhaustible energy of ancient roots with it. They felt preconsciously about their own roots, the Ukrainian ones, and paid attention to borrowings from other ethnic cultures in the least possible degree. It is especially felt in the old-looking forms of crockery, decorative sculpture, and baroque painting.

The long life of the artists in the daily routine of clay and the creative work were similar to saints’ lives. They both were great righteous people. They had to survive revolutions, Bolshevik economic experiments, the Holodomors, repressions, genocide, and hard wartime. There were months without bread and wages in the cooperative association, but never, under any everyday troubles, they did complain about their choice of destiny and their self-devotion to clay. They have demonstrated an example of adherence to the pottery craft for everyone around them, and had given themselves entirely to their nation not unhanding «the sacred earth», up to their last breath. Their life is a majestic act of self-sacrifice in the name of spiritual clay. It is no coincidence, that the Foundation of International Prizes has posthumously honoured the Havrylo Poshyvailo’s life great deed with a special decoration «For Life, Worthy of a Human Being» (1998).

One day, Yavdokha admitted: «That’s the way we live with a potter’s wheel by the bed, because a wonderful thought used to come to you in the night too. Then you get up noiselessly; reach out for clay, beginning to communicate with it…». Something mystic could be discovered in the fact, that in exactly three years, three months and three days after the Havrylo’s death the Yavdokha’s soul departed on the wings of love to her husband, where they are already forever together.

Earthenware of Havrylo and Yavdokha Poshyvailos were exhibited in Poltava (1948) and Kyiv (1949) for the first time. Later they were displayed in regional, republican, all-USSR and international exhibitions (about 90) every year. They were exposed on art exhibitions in Belgium, Canada, Japan, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Poland, Hungary, France, the Netherlands, the USA, Norway, Great Britain, and other countries, representing broadly the Ukrainian art, surprising foreign connoisseurs of the arts with an inimitable beauty. Now they could be seen in the biggest museums of the world, but obviously in the Ukrainian ones first. Many of them spread from lavish hands of the owners to private collections.

As far back as in the mid-1970s, a correspondent of one of the central Moscow newspapers after a sojourn in Opishne, and becoming familiar with the masterpieces of Havrylo and Yavdokha Poshyvailos, has named his reportage «From Opishne to Paris», that signified both the quantity of pottery heritage of the artists, and exposing their works nor only in the former USSR, but in the biggest European capitals as well.

The pottery couple knew about the fickleness of all the material things on earth, and therefore aspired to preserve reminiscences and notions of Opishne’s 20th century’s achievements in pottery in human memory as long as possible. To that end, in the early 1970s, they created the private museum of pottery craft, a first in Ukraine. This museum for Yavdokha and Havrylo Poshyvailos was a peculiar philosophical category of the objective reality, a symbol and a way to preserve and increase the best property of native handicraft. The museum as a generator of the national cult of pottery, the museum as the reserve of inviolable pottery canons, without of which the Ukrainian pottery cannot exist; a unique phenomenon of world culture. The family museum of the Poshyvailos, dating as far back as the time of the Soviet totalitarianism, became the centre of the apotheosis of the folk art, the distinctive outpost of Ukrainian spirit. In the provincial town, it played the same patriotic, Ukraine-asserting role, as the famous metropolitan museum of Ivan Honchar in Kyiv. The visitors went to it in the search of the ancient background of the native culture, and foreign delegations arrived to cognize better the Ukrainian soul.

The National Museum of Ukrainian Pottery in Opishne, the State Specialized Art Boarding School The College of the Arts in Opishne, the Ceramology Institute – the branch of the Ethnology Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine have arisen later, on the basis of their directives and precepts in pottery capital of the country – Opishne.

In 1999, the Memorial Estate Museum of the Pottery Poshyvailo Family was opened as a structural unit of the National Museum of Ukrainian Pottery in Opishne. The biggest collection of earthenware, archivalias and audiovisual materials, which reflect the course of life and the creative development of outstanding folk craftsmen is kept in it. The collection of ceramics of Havrylo and Yavdokha Poshyvailos alone numbers about 1400 works. All the interiors of dwelling and outhouses have been preserved untouched.