The ceramic rooster from Borodyanka, by the will of fate, became a symbol of the resistance to life of the Ukrainian people. Therefore, it is unsurprising that we set out to digitize the majolica collection from the Museum of Decorative Arts of Ukraine.
A Kuman rooster survived the bombing of residential buildings by Russian troops in March 2022. A photo of the rooster standing on an almost untouched kitchen cabinet with dishes hanging on the wall went viral worldwide.
The author of the famous photo, Yelyzaveta Servatinska, a correspondent of “Suspilne”, while taking the picture, immediately thought that we should take an example from the shelf, which is holding, even though the whole house collapsed.
With the permission of the owner of the apartment, the locker with the rooster was carefully removed by the employees of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine and handed over to the National Museum of the Revolution of Dignity.
Whose rooster?
More than one such rooster was made at the Vasylkiv majolica factory. Copies of the rooster were produced in the 1960s and 1980s, which was the heyday of this large enterprise of artistic ceramics. Vasylkiv artists had their own workshops and were free in their creativity, so they managed to leave many original products. Although the catalogs of these products of the majolica factory simply do not exist, discussions have arisen regarding the authorship.
At first, the rooster was attributed to the authorship of Prokop Bidasyuk. However, Serhii Denysenko, the chief artist of the factory during the last years of its existence, suggested that the author of the rooster was Valery Protoriev. The majority agreed with this statement. Valeriy worked in collaboration with his wife Nadia, and they were leading artists of Vasylkiv majolica in the 1960s-1980s. And they signed their works simply “Protoryevs”.
The indomitable rooster
The story of the second similar rooster that survived the bombing is less known. And if the first is stored in the Maidan Museum, the second is stored in the Museum of Decorative Arts of Ukraine.
Volunteers from Helping Hand and Nova Ukraine dismantled the rubble of houses in the Bucha District in the summer of 2022. In Moschun they saw the same rooster on the second floor of the destroyed building. He and a faience vase stood on the tiled stove.
The owner of the house, Maria Chikalyuk, gave the whole rooster, albeit burnt, to the museum, where it has a roof over its head. According to her: “Ceramic rooster is as strong as our Ukraine. He persisted and we will persist.”
We digitized a legendary rooster from Moschun and another rooster from this edition. Now they are available for viewing on our platform. You can be inspired by sustainability and appreciate the skill of the artists of the Vasylkiv Majolica factory without leaving your home.
