A neighbor stops by to visit in the village of Kopachiv. He was on his way to do some errands, possibly to buy bread, which is no longer made in the home (please note his bag), saw the car of some people from the city (us) and stopped in.
Nataliia Havryliuk talks to Kateryna Petrivna Vashchenko in her home. Please note how heavily decorated the home is. There are embroidered cloths over everything: the painting, the doorway, the table.
Another home in the Kyiv region. The couch with the lace coverlet and the rug on the wall over it can serve as a bed at night should someone, relatives or even strangers, come to visit. The cabinet stores good cups and other china and is used to display family photos. It, too, is decorated with crocheted and embroidered cloths.
Every house, and sometimes every room, has an icon corner. The icons are hung kitty-corner and draped with a ritual towel. A table can stand under the icon corner as it does here. Here it holds family photos. Sometimes the Psalter is kept here, as are ritual breads.
In the Kyiv region, favorite wall decorations include printed wall paper. In the Chornobai region, people would whitewash their walls. One cannot lean against a white-washed wall without becoming covered in a chalk-like white powder.
Even the kitchen, which tends to be the plainest room of the house, is decorated. This one has wallpaper, embroidered hangings and purchased print curtains covering a stove.
The mayor of Svitilne. With the energy crunch, houses and offices are poorly heated and many people work in coats.
A still in a village home. For obvious reasons, I will not give the location or the name of the still's owner. The still was made out of a tub used for bathing small children.
Little pieces of embroidery or lace work are everywhere. There is indication that magic power was assigned to cloth, especially embroidered cloth, and that one of its powers was to ward off evil. This is why cloths are given on all ritual occasions and displayed throughout the home.
In a home in Svitilne. This home was unheated even though the owner was relatively well-to-do and the outside temperature was well below freezing.
A very fancy icon corner. Here it is recessed in a specially made frame, sometimes called the icon "window." Please note the many cloths around the icons. Underneath is a fairly cheap and aesthetically not very pleasing plastic apple. The folk do not always have good taste.
A set of modern marriage towels made by Halyna Kapas'. These would be given to the couple during the wedding and hung around the icons they would receive from their parents, as in the photo above.
