On May 18, on the International Day of Museums, the exhibition “From the Home Treasury” was exhibited on the territory of the Reserve.

The main exhibit of the exhibition was an old wooden chest from the village of Vilshany (now an urban-type village of Zvenigorod District, Cherkasy Region), built at the beginning of the 20th century. The family heirloom was transferred to the Reserve in 2004 by Svitlana Musienko, a resident of Korsun-Shevchenkivskyi. A box with a convex age, low legs, an incised lock, and metal handles, inside on the side – a traditional box for money, documents, and jewelry. The color of the chest is brown-red, with a simple geometric pattern formed by wide stripes. Dyes of burgundy-red and brown shades for painting chests were obtained from a decoction of elderberries or alder bark. The chest was quite well preserved, because this type of furniture was expensive, it was carefully used and handed down through the female line. Gradually, in Ukrainian families, the chest turned from a utilitarian thing into a treasury of traditions and spiritual values.

The exhibition exhibited things related to the working days of Ukrainians: hemp fiber and threads, home-spun canvas and products made from it (sacks, rows, tablecloths, runners, shirts, woven ornamented towels). Almost everything that was used in rural life was made by the hands of family members. In the Korsun region, until the middle of the 20th century, hemp (much less often flax) was sown in order to have raw materials for the manufacture of fabrics. Narrow and long tablecloths made of a thin shaft – coarse hemp thread – were very common in everyday life. The edges of such a tablecloth are woven with red and black stripes across the width. It was used to cover not only the table but also the chest and the bench. Checkered or striped red-black, green-black, and blue-black rows were woven from gross and woolen threads and sewn from two parts. They covered the stove, the bed, and the pile (the wooden floor on which they slept). Thread dyes for homemade products were also made by hand from natural raw materials: oak bark, onion husks, elderberries, green skins of young nuts, and insects.

The visitors to the exhibition were very interested in bright factory-woven towels, Krolevetsky and Boguslavky, which were used in everyday life and ceremonies. In the Reserve, there is a small collection of items of elaborate weaving of the Kralevetskyi, which is an element of the intangible cultural heritage of Ukraine. These are towels made in Krolevets, Sumy region. The oldest of the Krolevets towels, presented at the exhibition, dates back to 1880. No less beautiful are the Boguslav towels, made at the Boguslav factory of artistic products. Both Krolevets and Boguslav towels in the Korsun region were indispensable attributes of the wedding ceremony. In particular, the bride and her friend girded themselves with a towel so that its edges formed a festive apron.

For many visitors, the exhibition became a good reason to remember their family treasures and spiritual traditions of their kind.

The author of the exhibition is Olena Raykova, senior research associate