Today I added to the library catalogue a 2021 book about the icon collection of the Transcarpathian Museum of Folk Architecture and Life.  Earlier this year, I wrote about another book from the same museum (about vyshyvanka embroidered shirts and blouses, here), but it certainly feels worth writing about this one too.  I’ll also write about the city in which it was published (Uzhhorod, or Uz︠h︡horod for the cataloguer following Library of Congress romanisation rules).

As with the vyshyvanka book, the new arrival provides its texts in Ukrainian and English.  Beautifully illustration-heavy, it has the following sections:

• Icons on wood
• Icons on metal
• Lithography
• Icons on canvas
• Icons on glass
• Icons in the interior

Icons painted on glass were new to me, so I was particularly interested in these.  The book’s introduction explains that icon-painting on glass (technically on the back of the glass displayed) took root in Transcarpathia thanks to Romanian influence – which explains why the two books I could easily find in iDiscover about glass icons both focus on Romania (Icoane pe sticlă and its English translation Romanian icons painted on glass).  Uz︠h︡horod, in the furthest west corner of Ukraine and, since February 2022, a major posting stage for Ukrainians leaving the country or returning to it, is closest to Slovakia but also very close to the borders of Hungary, Romania, and Poland.  The glass icon examples in the book are all from the early 20th century.  Here are a couple:

Only yesterday, I was talking at a library conference in Oxford about correcting historical mistakes in library catalogues for Ukrainian words incorrectly transcribed using rules for the romanisation of Russian Cyrillic.  Today, it struck me that Uz︠h︡horod is a prime example: if you read Ужгород as Russian, the romanised form would be Uzhgorod (no ligatures for ж; g instead of h for г).  A search for Uzhgorod + language of book=Ukrainian provided a couple of titles that clearly needed to be revisited (note that their iDiscover records won’t show improvements until tomorrow).

• Istorii︠a︡ Ukraïny, 1917-1923 rr. / Dmytro Doroshenko. (1930-1932)
• Syntaksys ukraïnsʹkykh pivdennokarpatsʹkykh hovoriv : tekst lekt︠s︡iĭ / V. I. Dobosh. (1971)

Another book not listed above but needing to have its catalogue record corrected has thrown up such a number of questions that it will need to wait for its own blog post.

The UL holds nearly 70 titles published in Uz︠h︡horod, the vast majority printed after 1960 and with 25 titles printed in the last 25 years.  In terms of language, a few books are in Russian and therefore do bear Uzhgorod as their place of publication correctly, but by far the majority are in Ukrainian.

Mel Bach