THE EARTHENWARE IN BIRTH AND BURIAL RITUALS

Abstract

The given article highlights functions and artistic peculiarities of the earthenware of the late 19th – first half of the 20th cc. in birth and burial rituals. Birth rituals can be subdivided into three major cycles, i.e. the delivery process, post-delivery time and christening. While helping a woman to give birth the midwife followed all the traditions and often used earthenware items. Therefore, in various cycles of birth-related rituals people made use of ceramic bowls, jars and pots. In Ukraine as well as in other countries of the world, particularly the Czech Republic there used to be a tradition to bring food for the new mother. It was usually done by her neighbors or godmother of her child. For instance, pots served for the grain, twin-jars for two types of dishes, jars for the broth etc. While christening the baby people used a pot with porridge that was eventually crashed. This honorable duty was assigned by the midwife to the person who put the biggest sum of money for the baby іnto the plate, in most cases it was the baby’s godfather. Sometimes all the guests together hit the pot with a stick, a rolling pin or crashed it at the corner of the table. During christening the midwife treated the guests to homemade vodka (“varenukha”) pouring it from ceramic jars. In burial customs and rituals people used mugs or cups, bowls for “kolyvo” (i.e. a dish based on boiled wheat that is used liturgically in the Eastern Orthodox Church for commemoration of the dead), large pots for the night requiem, jars with “lanterns” etc. People in Hutsulshchyna, Boykivshchyna and other regions of Ukraine believed that the soul of the deceased person stays at home for three days after death and that is why they usually put a jar (or a cup) with water (more rarely vodka) at their head for the soul to be able to drink whenever it flies back home. Mugs by potters from Bubnivka in Vinnytsya region were also connected with burial rituals. These earthenware items served two purposes: people filled them with water and put on the window near the dead person’s body; besides that, during the night requiem people used them for kolyvo and put on the table. In the late 20th c. a round loaf of bread (“kalach”) was put on top of the mug and a candle was attached to the side. Since the early 20th c. potters started producing rather large jugs with a nose and a wide neck with a special “lantern” for the candle (such works can be found in museums in Kyiv, Vinnytsіa, and Saint-Petersburg). People often called them “jars with lanterns” and used for honey and kolyvo. The surface of these vessels had an orange background and was lavishly decorated with geometrical and vegetative ornaments and the motives that were typical of local works. There was a small “nest” for the candle near the handle or in the middle of the corpus under the nose. It is interesting that an orange-glazed jar from Cherkasy region has four “nests” for candles. After washing the dead person’s body in a special vessel (mostly a pot) people sometimes put it at the crossroads, on the border of villages, buried in the house (under “the red corner” to keep the house spirit in), in the yard or under the shed, threw into the river, put on a very high pole etc. In Mykytyntsi in Ivano-Frankivsk region when the dead person was brought outside people surrounded the coffin with nicely decorated bowls that were later given away for free. In some villages of Zakarpattya (to the east of Khust) all the participants of the funeral received little cups. As a reverberation of the old Slavonic burial ritual we can name such actions as putting a bowl with a dish into the grave, crashing a pot after the dead person’s body was taken outside the house, leaving a pot upside down on the grave etc.