Collection group
Wood
Household items of the 19th and 20th centuries are represented first of all by furniture, mostly of the mid-19th to early 20th century, which represents peasant folk life, elite urban life and also “official” service life; there are even furnishings of a prison cell.
About the group
In general, the makeup of the storage group reflects the economic development, the evolution of agricultural and industrial production, economic and cultural ties, features of everyday life, and the spiritual and cultural life of various social strata of our region in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The economic development and the evolution of agricultural and industrial production in the region are reflected in the collection of farm implements and tools of traditional household economy, and craftsmen’s and workers’ tools of the late 19th to mid-20th century.
The oldest examples of furniture in the museum’s collection were made in the second half of the 18th and early 19th century: a banquette in the style of A. N. Voronikhin imitating a medieval “curule chair”, three armchairs and a card table that at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries belonged to S. I. Vasylkivskyi. Several items, namely a clock, a table, a bureau, a wardrobe, a sofa, an armchair and a mirror, make up the “study” of Andrii Ivanovych Stakenschneider, Academician of Architecture.
Interesting attributes of the Soviet era are awards and various souvenirs. Among them are artistic and decorative items made by Soviet industry and by folk craftsmen, notably the woodcarvers M. F. Kolenov and P. K. Fomenko, authors of works devoted to the life and work of H. S. Skovoroda and H. F. Kvitka-Osnovianenko.
Another group of souvenirs consists of gifts from foreign citizens (students) and delegations, and items brought from abroad. The countries of Comecon (Central Europe) are widely represented, East Asia (China, Vietnam), Western Europe, Latin America (Cuba) and Africa in part; from Africa come interesting examples of wooden sculpture.
The third subgroup among the souvenirs is personal mementoes and gifts; of interest among them are gifts from servicemen to their patrons, military commanders and designers of military equipment, and some rarities of natural origin.
A separate place is taken by the collection of musical instruments. Zithers are the most widely represented; also worth mentioning are two bandura belonging to the kobzar Hryhorii Ilchenko, made by the Poltava master Domnenko in 1925 and by the Chernihiv factory in 1952.