Colours of Budy

For almost 120 years the factory in Budy was the largest producer of high-quality faience tableware in Ukraine. Its ware is still found in almost every Ukrainian family.

Products of the Budy ceramists are distinguished not only by high quality and beauty. The factory created a unique “Budy style” that combines traditional Ukrainian folk motifs in the shapes and decoration of the ware, the beauty of Ukrainian nature reflected in ornaments and painting, a distinctive Ukrainian humour and love for native Sloboda Ukraine.

At various times 18 artists, members of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine, worked at the factory. The exhibition presents the work of nine Budy masters who worked in the factory’s art laboratory from the late 1950s until its closure in 2006. Each object in the exhibition is a unique sample of the Budy artistic style.

The exhibition also shows products of the faience factory of the M. S. Kuznetsov Partnership in Budy and factory products of the 1920s–1950s, and includes a reconstruction of an artist’s workplace that helps visitors understand how an object was made in the creative laboratory.