Spotlight on... where MUM shares items of interest and features highlights from our galleries and collections.

Reminiscences on a Labour of Love...

Our beautiful Ukrainian dolls now present themselves together on one stage where they proudly showcase their exquisite detail for you to see up-close. You may remember some of this collection from the 2025 Museum Lottery Calendar which featured a selection of these dolls. Now - see them all together and reflect on how much love went into the details to create this festive and colourful parade.

Marusia Kobrynsky tells the story of how her mother's idea became a reality.

In 1973, our house in Canora, Saskatchewan was invaded by an army of dolls. Now, this will take some explaining, but bear with me.

My mother, Lillian Kobrynsky, who never walked if she could run, had conceived of a special project to mark the 30th anniversary of the UCWLC in 1974: the creation of a collection of dolls dressed in traditional Ukrainian clothing representing different regions of the country. Her idea was to engage the local UCWLC members to embroider and sew the dolls' clothing and then to donate these dolls to the UCWLC Museum (now Musée Ukraina Museum) in Saskatoon.

My mother embarked upon this project with a vigour that could only be matched by an army general commanding a carefully planned military campaign. Despite her extensive prior knowledge of Ukrainian embroidery, she started by meticulously researching embroidery stitches and patterns from various regions in Ukraine. Books were spread out all over the floors and tables of our home as she selected a wide range of regions that would be represented by the dolls and the specific apparel, both everyday and formal wear, that she wanted to recreate.

Then, like any good leader, before expecting anyone else to do something she did not know how to do, she learned how to embroider new types of stitches which were required for some of the costumes. Words of specific stitch names like yavoriwka, nyzynka and peretiahanka became commonplace in our home. My mother's motto was, "If we are going to do this, we are going to do this right!" And of course, it was a matter of "we".

Everyone in our household was expected to be fully involved in the project. My sister and I were expected to learn all of the new embroidery methods too, since cross-stitching alone was not sufficiently culturally enriching. My baba was expected to undertake any miscellaneous task that she could do at home and my father was enlisted as the official driver. You might well ask - why did we need a driver? Well, I will tell you.

All good military generals know that they must have everything they need at their disposal to succeed in any campaign. Thus, the next stage of the project involved the collection of the necessary equipment. Firstly, we needed the dolls; but, not just any dolls - 45 identical 12-inch dolls with curly black hair and flat feet so that the dolls could stand on their own without a support. In other words, these were definitely NOT Barbie dolls. We must have gone into every five-and-dime shop and department store within a 100 mile radius of Canora before we collected enough dolls - 2 or 3 here, maybe as many as 5 there... you get the picture.

Then we needed all the trappings of the apparel for the dolls. My mother scrounged through remnant bins in fabric stores, upholstery stores, tailor shops, and department stores for bits and pieces of fabric (that woven piece would just be perfect for the plakhta of the Poltava wedding doll skirt). She also sought out ribbon, leather or faux leather for boots, chamois for postoly (special from the Hutsul region), sheepskin for coats and hats, and miniature flowers for headpieces.

All of these treasures made their way into our living room where they were spread out and sorted into groupings to be assigned to various ladies in the League. My mother and baba took it upon themselves to cut the hair of the dolls that were to be dressed in male apparel and to glue on bits of the hair as moustaches. They also made most of the footwear as that was really finicky work.

My mother's primary goal in this project was to ensure the regional and cultural accuracy of the costumes. Therefore, when it came to the embroidery, everything had to be done in miniature to ensure that the embroidered patterns actually resembled life-sized articles of clothing. My favourite shirt was the shirt for the doll from Stanislaviv, present day Ivano-Frankivsk. I remember that, applying the minimum wage at the time, the labour cost of that shirt was over $500.00.

My mother's second-in-command throughout this endeavor was Iryna Lazurko. In addition to helping with the assignment of duties and the distribution of materials, Mrs. Lazurko was the main cheerleader, ensuring that everyone's spirits were kept high as they struggled to complete their respective parts of the project. In addition to my mother, my baba, my sister, and myself (the four of us worked on bits and pieces of many of the dolls), there were 27 other women involved. In total, we fashioned 45 beautiful and authentic dolls from 16 different regions of Ukraine: Lviv, Kharkiv, Ternopil, Kyiv, Chernihiv, Poltava, Polissia, Chernivtsi, Zakarpattia, Volyn, Boykivshchyna, Lemkivshchyna, Hutsulshchyna, Podillia, Yavoriv, and Zaporizhzhia.

Some might call us crazy, but I look back on this time with many fond memories. Whisperings of strange happenings from those days in Canora abounded. Legend has it that Mrs. Kobrynsky was spotted in the trunk of the family car (supposedly to keep the dolls from being damaged as they were transported for a display at the parish hall) while Mr. Kobrynsky gingerly drove down Main Street to prevent the trunk cover from bouncing off her head. It was also rumored that, on the same occasion, she was seen running down the street chasing a rolling object which turned out to be a very small straw hat!

As our lives became consumed with these dolls, our appreciation for the elegance and the rich variety of regional clothing within Ukraine grew. This cultural project involved hundreds, perhaps collectively thousands of hours of labour. What else could it be but a labour of love?

The dolls, which have been in storage at the Musée Ukraina Museum for many years, have recently been put out on display. Featuring photographs of these dolls on the Museum's 2025 Lottery Calendar 50 years after they were made is a true honor to all who were involved in this incredible project!

The above reflection is reprinted from the MUM Spring 2025 Newsletter.

Previous postings of Spotlight on...
Life and Art of Theodore Baran
St. Nicholas
Pokrova