Dispatches from Ukrainian Designers: Maria Gavryliuk and Natasha Kamenska

Maria Gavryliuk and Natasha Kamenska: We worked for a long time in the fashion industry, but our creative duo was formed doing volunteer work with the Ivan Honchar Museum National Centre of Folk Culture in 2017. We had the idea of modernizing Ukrainian art and creating a modern Ukrainian souvenir. Our first product was the Hutsul wool coat gunya, which is created by hand on machines in the Carpathian Mountains. The Gunia Project got its name from this product, and we founded the brand in 2019. Today, we represent exquisite collections of handmade tempered brown glassware, ceramics, carpets, and accessories with a touch of details of Ukrainian ethnic culture.

In 2021, we moved to a new showroom in the center of Kyiv, twice the size of our first store. After the start of the war, we were forced to close the showroom and production facilities and move to Western Ukraine to save our lives. We planned to transport the artists we work with to western Ukraine as well. But today we have moved away from that idea and left the ceramic production in Kyiv. Artists of other categories are located in different cities, and most of them have already resumed their work. We’ve partially resumed production in Kyiv and are beginning to process orders made before the war and accept new ones. We are looking for production opportunities in Europe, but are doing everything possible to provide work for craftsmen in Ukraine in the first place. Western Ukraine is safest now, and we have manufacturers of glass and vines there. It’s so difficult to predict the future, but the team is doing everything we can. We’re already seeing support and growth in international orders, and most of them are from the United States.