Ornament on buildings

A traditional house here was rarely left plain. Decoration was applied to the parts that were most exposed and most seen, and the material determined who did it.

Carved wood

Window surrounds, eaves boards, gable ends, porch posts, gate posts. This is the tradition of the wooded regions, where the carpenter who built the house also decorated it and the decoration was cut with the same tools as the joinery.

The motifs are geometric — rosettes, sun wheels, chevrons, chip carving — because that is what a chisel does quickly and repeatably.

Painted plaster

The tradition of the central and southern regions, where houses were built of clay and lime and rendered white. Painting was done by the women of the household, usually annually before a major holiday, around windows and doors and along the base.

The Petrykivka style is the best-known development of this and grew out of exactly this practice: decoration painted with a brush made from cat hair and a finger, in fluid plant forms, on a white wall.

Because it was repainted every year, the tradition stayed alive in a way carved wood could not — a repainted wall is a practised wall.

Decorative brick

Later, urban and small-town, from the late nineteenth century: patterned brickwork, corbelling, contrasting bands, made by bricklayers showing what the material could do without any plaster or paint.

What they have in common

All three concentrate on openings and edges: doors, windows, roof lines, gates. The decoration marks the boundaries of the building, which is the same instinct that put a rushnyk over a threshold.

Three materials applied by three different trades with different rhythms of work is a description of site organisation — the carpenter, the plasterer and the bricklayer still arrive in that order. What they have in common the piece says itself. What I would add is this: ornament is the part that shows the work is finished, and showing that is a function too.