Olena Tarasenko

A doll-maker from Lviv, she never knows what her next doll will look like. In advance she chooses only the color palette. Each doll tells her what it wants to be: a young girl, a young married woman, a mother with her child; blond or dark-haired, with flowers in the hair or wearing a shawl. The process of creation lasts till the doll starts shining and smiling from satisfaction – says the master.

Creative work

The master makes dolls the traditional way: without a needle and scissors and sews only the clothes for them. She uses exclusively natural fabrics: cotton, flax and likes to work with home-woven fabrics very much. Olena works at her dolls a little every day and it takes about 5-7 days to complete one.

Beside motanka-dolls the master also makes knot-dolls, dolls of cruciform shape and “garrot” dolls traditional for Russia. Yet it’s only motanka among all the kinds of dolls that arises the greatest admiration of the master.

In the doll decoration the master does not set it as a goal to reproduce styles of definite Ukrainian regions. She stylizes things on the basis of ancient techniques and likes it when dolls are decorated with embroidery. It can be used on their aprons, hems of the skirts or plakhtas (over-skirts). The master uses not only the kind of embroidery characteristic for Lviv region but of Gutsul, Khmelnitsky, Poltava regions as well. In the process of doll-dressing Olena cooperates with her mother who joins the creative process and embroiders different components of clothes for the dolls.