Gunia Project | Ukrainian Artists Reinterpret their Artisanal Heritage

About the Gunia Venture

GUNIA Project is a Ukrainian brand name of excellent inside objects & accessories concentrated on crafts and substantial decor — it expands and rethinks classic craftsmanship by exertion and creativity. The founders are two Ukrainian designers, Natalia Kamenska and Maria Gavryliuk. 

Their key aim is to preserve Ukraine’s countrywide values and tell the environment about the country’s magnificence in a present day way. Impressed by their ancestors’ deep and abundant cultural heritage, Natalia and Maria deliver ceramics, glass, homeware, and components.

 

The most important philosophy of the brand name is not to restrict by itself.

The word “Project” in the name stands for the wish of the manufacturer to interpret Ukrainian heritage in several sorts and with no boundaries.

For instance, the brand creates candles, sculptures, carpets, and jewelry, generates educational content by way of social, shares facts about artisanal crafts — and is arranging to increase the assortment of activities even more in the future. The brand name utilizes people crafts to encourage and considers the slightest particulars of common tradition to develop designer goods.

Ukrainian Heritage

Ukraine has broad cultural prospective, stuffed with loaded traditions and cultural manifestations, regrettably predominantly unfamiliar to most individuals. Consequently, one of the major ambitions of Ukrainian models is to spread exact information and facts about our nationwide masterpieces by overturning stereotypes and existing artificial perceptions. 

 

GUNIA Project is amongst the brand names that purpose to adjust the world-wide views about our country formed in the earlier and clearly show its new and modern-day current. From time immemorial, a lot of stereotypes have collected all around Ukraine GUNIA Challenge attempts to influence human ideas about Ukraine and alter them.

The main compass of the brand’s operate is the modernization of art and giving a 2nd daily life to individuals forgotten items and meanings. With its careful method to resurrecting traditions in structure, GUNIA Venture develops a tradition of caring for crafts, materials, and traditions, nurturing conscious consumption and psychological attachment to factors.

About the Founders 

The founders and art directors of GUNIA Venture — Natalia Kamenskaya and Maria Gavrilyuk worked alongside one another for a extended time in the manner market and, in 2019, joined forces to build GUNIA Task.

The central vision drives the creative duo to produce the future impressed by the very best procedures of the previous and its modern day interpretation. 

The very first products released less than the manufacturer name was the Hutsul wool coat gunia, handmade in the Carpathians. It is in honor of this product or service that GUNIA Task received its name.

Artists

Ukraine has a wealthy and ancient culture of handicrafts, thanks to the country’s deep historical past and the artists that have entangled that account into their masterpieces with their individual arms. GUNIA Task supports Ukrainian artisans and revives historic Ukrainian strategies to uncover the underexplored environment of Ukrainian craft for men and women intrigued in art and its roots and for aesthetic connoisseurs.

The lookup for artists specializing in rare tactics is a very liable system. Even now, the founders get ready diligently and never ever restrict the objective of the hunt due to the fact they typically locate even additional than just talented people. They normally locate a fantastic addition to the team, a intriguing story powering it, or an inspiration for the new assortment.

 

All over the brand’s journey, the GUNIA Venture staff has worked with many procedures to generate many things. Amongst them are the guta glass, ceramics, gunia’s, and textile objects.   

Tempered glass

A single of the one of a kind strategies is the generation of Guta glass which then requires the form of clever homeware. It is traditionally created in the Carpathiansthe mountainous area in the Western aspect of Ukraine by a notably exclusive approach. Every little thing is completed delicately by hand to develop products of the good condition, then color is additional. 

It is truly worth noting that glass has its traits. Thus, it is fairly complicated to work with, so the craftsmen can rightly simply call by themselves true artists as they have a established of specific strategies and strategies of manual processing of glass in a warm condition that are rather difficult to replicate.

 

Ceramics

Producing clay dishes or attractive things is a meticulous multi-phase course of action into which artists spend all their knowledge and knowledge. In Ukraine, ceramic plates traditionally employed by Ukrainian housewives were being designed by hand and decorated with hand-painted ornaments and patterns. GUNIA borrowed and adapted the concept to the present day earth, creating items that can glimpse excellent in the kitchen area and when utilized as decor. 

These kinds of dishes can turn into a true jewel in the residence, including a touch to the age-old practical experience of our ancestors. The GUNIA Project founders made unique types inspired by Ukrainian stained glass, antique towels, and Ukrainian folklore.

 

Gunia weaving

The most legendary matter for the brand is a common Hutsul fur coat known as “gunia”, woven from sheared sheep’s wool identified as gunia. Which is exactly where the brand name identify arrived from. 

Creating these kinds of a fur coat can take a number of weeks and is performed solely by hand. Gunias have been worn as do the job clothes when men and women tended to sheep in the mountains. The artists with outstanding technological innovation and skills emphasize that generating gunia beautiful and lush is vital. Each individual depth in this fragile function is critical, particularly making yarns on ancient treasured musical devices utilizing systems passed down from more mature generations.

Textile

The founders’ release of the very first selection of ornamented silk scarves by GUNIA Task was in 2018, inspired by Ukrainian embroidered towels of the XVIII century from the archives of the Ivan Honchar Museum.

The To start with Gunia Assortment

When preparing the 1st selection, Maria and Natasha proven an inescapable and shut relationship with other arts — painting, icons, woodwork, and ceramics. Scarves and bandanas of the model made of silk and wool embellished with ornaments primarily based on naive folks paintings or ceremonial holiday getaway sewing are all handmade and stand out with a distinctive colour palette.

Wickerwork

In Ukraine, there are complete villages the place the principal action of the population is wickerwork. In historical occasions, the whole household took aspect in this method. Each and every product is a distinctive generation that demonstrates the author’s mood, talent, and character. The process of wickerwork is truly magical, particularly the unique preparation of skinny cane or entire vines for weaving. The artists make a basket with their personal arms and place soul into every item, which generally requires a total day of challenging operate. 

GUNIA Task demonstrates us regularly that every thing designed by the artists is usually exclusive and exceptional since it has its strength, history, and soul. Masterpieces of wickerwork, filled with crucial articles, could come to be a talisman for any home.

GUNIA Project is a brand name that has absorbed traditions, customs, and inventive heritage and turned these masterpieces into up to date elements of our life. The substantial excellent and personal character of just about every merchandise are of the essence. 

Unquestionably, the power of each and every country is in its unique record, and those who emphasize and help this with their creative imagination, like GUNIA Venture, are worthy of distinct emphasis and admiration.

Discover all the collections and Shop on the Gunia Challenge internet site >