Navahrudak’s traditional vycinanka-vybivanka is a distinctive technique of punching of a particular image on paper using special homemade tools, such as chisels, flattened nails, metal tubes (empty cartridge cases), sharpened aluminum tubes, etc.
The foundation for such creations is a diamond-shaped network that imitates cells of lace curtains. Symmetrical large flowers or bouquets are placed on it, and the edges are trimmed to give them the shapes as little crescents or triangles. Such curtains create the illusion of lace fabric. Today Navahrudak style vycinankas-vybivankas are used in the design of ethnographic corners as elements of interior decorative finishes.
Paper designs created in the genre of vycinankas-vybivankas adorned the interiors of homes in some villages in Navahrudak area in the 1930s – 1950s of the 20th century. This method of making vycinankas was quite rare, since paper is not a lasting material, and the few surviving specimens made in this technique were created by some craftswomen, who were remembered by villagers, and years later their art became the basis for the recovery of vycinankas-vybivankas, which for some time had been lost. Nina Šurak was the one who revived this unique kind of vycinankas. Today, the main bearer of the tradition is one of her students, Natallia Klimko, who passes on her know-how of punching lace patterns on paper to teenagers, youth, and the elderly during master classes, workshops, and at exhibitions and open apprenticeship classrooms
Every year on Pentecost, when people in the Village of Papšyčy celebrate Zialionyja Sviontki, the day of appearance of the Holy Spirit to the Apostles, they get together to carry a namiotka. This Rite has been performed continuously since its beginning.
The Rite starts with the participants’ singing a special song ‘Krуlu nieba wysokiego’ (The King of the High Sky), after which a procession is formed and people unfold a namiotka, a cloth 5—6 meters long, which is carried by the youngest people of the community, preferably children.
Local people gather at the village cross, where the Rite begins, and put their sacrifices onto the namiotka. Today, they sacrifice money. Then people carry the namiotka over young children and their parents, which is thought to improve their health and well-being. Then the singing procession marches through the village towards the chapel at the cemetery. It is a long distance to go, and on the way to the destination the procession is joined by other Papšyčy residents.
Once the namiotka is delivered to the cemetery, it is consecrated and the Holy Mass starts, during which people keep the namiotka spread. Everyone, who has come to the cemetery and walked in the procession, puts his or her sacrifice on it. After the Mass, the namiotka is donated to the Catholic Church in the Village of Udzela.
The villagers believe in the power of the Rite, ‘Well, nothing has ever happened in the village, nothing special. No suicides, nothing at all.’
