Miniature Rynka

Poltava Huberniia. 

The vessel is made of terracotta. Its rounded body gradually widens towards the upper part and terminates in a broad open rim covered with green glaze. The exterior surface is decorated with a raised ornamental band beneath the rim. The light natural colour of the fired clay emphasises the simplicity of the form and the restrained decorative treatment of the object.

Despite its small size, the potter accurately reproduced the structural features of a traditional rynka, a type of vessel widely used in Ukrainian households for storing and preparing dairy products.

Objects of this type belong to traditional miniature ceramics and reproduce forms of household pottery on a reduced scale. In the folk environment, such objects could have been used as children's toys, practice pieces for learning pottery techniques, or decorative objects.

Provenance: The object comes from the collection of the renowned patron and collector Kateryna Mykolaivna Skarzhynska (1853–1932). A Ukrainian landowner, patron of the arts, and founder of the first publicly accessible private local history museum in Left-Bank Ukraine, in 1906 she donated her collection to the Natural History Museum of the Poltava Huberniia Zemstvo, now the Vasyl Krychevsky Poltava Local Lore Museum.