Gunia Project | Ukrainian Artists Reinterpret their Artisanal Heritage

About the Gunia Task

GUNIA Challenge is a Ukrainian model of fantastic interior objects & add-ons targeted on crafts and important decor — it expands and rethinks classic craftsmanship through effort and hard work and creativity. The founders are two Ukrainian designers, Natalia Kamenska and Maria Gavryliuk. 

Their major target is to protect Ukraine’s nationwide values and convey to the environment about the country’s beauty in a modern-day way. Influenced by their ancestors’ deep and abundant cultural heritage, Natalia and Maria produce ceramics, glass, homeware, and equipment.

 

The most important philosophy of the brand is not to restrict alone.

The word “Project” in the identify stands for the want of the manufacturer to interpret Ukrainian heritage in a variety of varieties and without having boundaries.

For instance, the brand name makes candles, sculptures, carpets, and jewelry, makes educational content through social, shares information about artisanal crafts — and is planning to expand the wide range of functions even more in the long run. The model utilizes folks crafts to encourage and considers the slightest particulars of regular tradition to develop designer items.

Ukrainian Heritage

Ukraine has huge cultural possible, loaded with wealthy traditions and cultural manifestations, regrettably primarily unfamiliar to most folks. Therefore, 1 of the most important aims of Ukrainian manufacturers is to spread correct data about our countrywide masterpieces by overturning stereotypes and current artificial perceptions. 

 

GUNIA Challenge is amongst the brands that aim to alter the world wide sights about our country shaped in the previous and clearly show its new and modern present. From time immemorial, several stereotypes have gathered close to Ukraine GUNIA Job attempts to affect human thoughts about Ukraine and adjust them.

The most important compass of the brand’s work is the modernization of artwork and supplying a next everyday living to those people neglected points and meanings. With its cautious approach to resurrecting traditions in style, GUNIA Undertaking develops a culture of caring for crafts, materials, and traditions, nurturing mindful usage and psychological attachment to things.

About the Founders 

The founders and art administrators of GUNIA Venture — Natalia Kamenskaya and Maria Gavrilyuk worked jointly for a prolonged time in the trend sector and, in 2019, joined forces to make GUNIA Task.

The central vision drives the resourceful duo to produce the long term encouraged by the finest techniques of the past and its present day interpretation. 

The first item introduced under the manufacturer title was the Hutsul wool coat gunia, handmade in the Carpathians. It is in honor of this solution that GUNIA Challenge bought its title.

Artists

Ukraine has a rich and historic tradition of handicrafts, many thanks to the country’s deep history and the artists that have entangled that account into their masterpieces with their individual palms. GUNIA Undertaking supports Ukrainian artisans and revives historical Ukrainian approaches to uncover the underexplored earth of Ukrainian craft for people interested in art and its roots and for aesthetic connoisseurs.

The lookup for artists specializing in uncommon methods is a very responsible course of action. Still, the founders prepare cautiously and never restrict the purpose of the hunt because they normally obtain even more than just proficient men and women. They typically come across a fantastic addition to the group, a interesting tale driving it, or an inspiration for the new assortment.

 

Through the brand’s journey, the GUNIA Job workforce has worked with different tactics to develop many objects. Between them are the guta glass, ceramics, gunia’s, and textile items.   

Tempered glass

One particular of the unique tactics is the creation of Guta glass which then can take the kind of clever homeware. It is historically built in the Carpathiansthe mountainous region in the Western section of Ukraine by a especially special approach. Anything is done delicately by hand to generate goods of the suitable form, then colour is extra. 

It is truly worth noting that glass has its traits. Therefore, it is really demanding to function with, so the craftsmen can rightly get in touch with themselves true artists as they have a established of distinct strategies and techniques of manual processing of glass in a hot state that are fairly intricate to replicate.

 

Ceramics

Building clay dishes or ornamental objects is a meticulous multi-move procedure into which artists make investments all their expertise and expertise. In Ukraine, ceramic plates usually utilised by Ukrainian housewives were created by hand and adorned with hand-painted ornaments and patterns. GUNIA borrowed and adapted the thought to the modern day entire world, developing goods that can look wonderful in the kitchen area and when utilised as decor. 

These dishes can turn out to be a genuine jewel in the residence, introducing a contact to the age-outdated expertise of our ancestors. The GUNIA Venture founders designed special types encouraged by Ukrainian stained glass, antique towels, and Ukrainian folklore.

 

Gunia weaving

The most iconic detail for the brand is a classic Hutsul fur coat called “gunia”, woven from sheared sheep’s wool identified as gunia. That is where by the brand name identify arrived from. 

Making such a fur coat normally takes many months and is carried out exclusively by hand. Gunias ended up worn as perform dresses when folks tended to sheep in the mountains. The artists with extraordinary know-how and techniques emphasize that making gunia gorgeous and lush is critical. Each and every depth in this delicate operate is essential, especially generating yarns on ancient treasured musical devices utilizing systems handed down from older generations.

Textile

The founders’ release of the initial assortment of ornamented silk scarves by GUNIA Task was in 2018, encouraged by Ukrainian embroidered towels of the XVIII century from the archives of the Ivan Honchar Museum.

The To start with Gunia Selection

When preparing the very first assortment, Maria and Natasha established an inevitable and near relationship with other arts — portray, icons, woodwork, and ceramics. Scarves and bandanas of the brand produced of silk and wool adorned with ornaments dependent on naive folks paintings or ceremonial holiday sewing are all handmade and stand out with a special color palette.

Wickerwork

In Ukraine, there are total villages where the major action of the populace is wickerwork. In historical times, the overall relatives took portion in this system. Each and every product or service is a exceptional development that reflects the author’s mood, talent, and character. The system of wickerwork is genuinely magical, particularly the particular preparing of slender cane or whole vines for weaving. The artists make a basket with their have palms and put soul into each product, which ordinarily can take a total working day of really hard get the job done. 

GUNIA Undertaking shows us consistently that every little thing created by the artists is constantly specific and one of a kind mainly because it has its power, heritage, and soul. Masterpieces of wickerwork, stuffed with important written content, could grow to be a talisman for any house.

GUNIA Task is a brand that has absorbed traditions, customs, and inventive heritage and turned these masterpieces into present-day features of our life. The high top quality and particular character of each individual item are of the essence. 

Undoubtedly, the toughness of every nation is in its primary background, and people who emphasize and guidance this with their creativity, like GUNIA Job, are worthy of specific emphasis and admiration.

Find all the collections and Store on the Gunia Venture web site >