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ABSTRACT
Over the course of the last several years I have made significant donations of Ukrainian and Russian books, manuscripts, art works, and ephemera to a number of institutions, most notably to the Bakhmeteff Archive/Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Columbia University, the Museum of Russian Icons (Clinton, MA), the Museum of Russian History (Holy Trinity Monastery, Jordanville, NY), and Special Collections at Hamilton College (Clinton, NY). The materials gifted to Columbia have been described as “probably one of the more significant collections of early imprints to come available in recent memory.” This memoir-essay explores my early and mature stages of collecting and the growing impact of study, teaching, and research at Columbia, in the Soviet Union, and at Hamilton College on subsequent focused acquisition of items, in particular relating to Pochayiv Lavra and Ukrainian rushnyky (ritual textiles).
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2 (Belknap Press, 1996), 486.
2 It is amusing to keep in mind that while in the Soviet Union in 1927–8, Benjamin famously focused on collecting old Russian toys. See Annie Pfeifer, “A Collector in a Collectivist State: Walter Benjamin’s Russian Toy Collection,” New German Critique 45, no. 1 (133) (February 2018): 49–78. Benjamin also penned a short praise of folk toys. See “Russian Toys,” in Moscow Diary, ed. Walter Benjamin and Gary Smith (Harvard University Press, 1986), 122–4, with some photos of toys he collected.
3 https://blogs.cul.columbia.edu/global-studies/2019/10/28/columbia-receives-early-slavic-books-and-manuscripts-from-alumnus-franklin-a-sciacca/?fbclid=IwAR0OxknNilRgfw0EK4oygPn4zqfC4tf_q7nfcKqjFYquW1-NgvECDhPNfmo; see also https://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/13793035
4 In the late Imperial period, Pochayiv was a significant shrine housing the miracle-working icon, a sacred spring, and the relics of Hegumen Iov (Job). It was also an outpost of the pro-Czarist Black Hundreds.
5 See Franklin Sciacca, “The Icon of the Pochayiv Mother of God: A Sacred Relic between East and West,” accessible on the Museum of Russian Icons site, http://www.museumofrussianicons.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Sept_2016_Sciacca_Franklin_The_Icon_of_the_Pochayiv_Mother_of_God.pdf. During an NEH Institute co-directed by Edward Kasinec and Robert H. Davis, Jr. in 2008, I had the opportunity to consult with Helen C. Evans, the Mary and Michael Jaharis Curator for Byzantine Art in the Department of Medieval Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the collection of the museum’s Watson Library, I found a stunning imperial presentation album prepared for Czar Alexander III in 1889, Al’bom fotografii k arkheologicheskoi poezdke prof. A. V. Prakhova na Volyn’ v 1886 godu, which included a unique photograph of the Pochayiv icon without its revetment [riza]. That assisted Evans in confirming that the icon was most likely a 16th century panel from the Balkans, no doubt acquired by Metropolitan Neofit there en route from Constantinople to Ukraine. For a photograph of the icon without its riza, see Sciacca, “The Icon of the Pochayiv Mother of God …, ” 11.
6 Harold B. Segel, Turn-of-the-Century Cabaret: Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Cracow, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Zurich (Columbia University Press, 1987), xi.
7 Fekula’s book collection was cataloged in 1988 and required two volumes with a total of over 800 pages. After his death, the collection was unfortunately dispersed and mostly sold at auction. There is a large body of literature on Fekula and the “Fekuliada.”
8 See Tanya Chebotarev and Jared S. Ingersoll, Russian and East European Books and Manuscripts in the United States: Proceedings of a Conference in Honor of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Bakhmeteff Archive of Russian and East European History and Culture (New York: Haworth Information Press, 2003) and Robert Davis and Edward Kasinec, “Romanov and Elite Provenance Books in New York and the Public Library,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 43, no. 1–4 (2009): 445–74.
9 An autographed copy of Anno Domini sold at Christie’s London for 50,000 pounds sterling in 2019.
10 This valuable first edition, as it turned out, has been donated to the Rare Book Room of Hamilton College.
11 A copy sold at Christie’s London in 2006 for close to $45,000.
12 For a discussion of ephemera, see https://www.trussel.com/books/lucas07.htm
13 The NYPL catalog description refers to them as “miscellaneous newspapers issued in the Soviet Union in 1990.” https://www.nypl.org/research/research-catalog/bib/b15887847#tab2
14 Vladimir Teteriatnikov, Icons & Fakes: Notes on the George R. Hann Collection (Teteriatnikov art expertise Ltd., 1981). For a comprehensive study of the Soviet marketing of icons, see Wendy Salmond, “Russian Icons and American Money, 1928–1938,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 43, no. 1–4 (2009): 273–304.
15 Decades later, in conjunction with an NEH Institute co-organized by Edward Kasinec and Robert Davis at the NYPL (“Sources for Russian and Soviet Visual Cultures, 1860–1935: Study, Teaching, and Education,” 2008), I had the opportunity to revisit A La Vieille Russie and closely examine the icon collection. Among other artifacts of note, I located a medallion of the Pochayiv icon in a gilded silver mount (Moscow hallmarks, 1910), which was undoubtedly created to honor the “visit” of the icon to the capitals during the commemoration of the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty.
16 See Yevhen Prychepiy, Embroidery of Eastern Podillia (Rodovid, 2007).
17 https://www.artfixdaily.com/artwire/release/6010-museum-of-russian-icons-presents-rushnyky-sacred-ukrainian-textil. Also see my article that analyzes the iconography and ritual functions of a number of rushnyky in my collection, “Ukrainian Rushnyky: Binding Amulets and Magical Talismans in the Modern Period,” Folklorica: The Journal of the Slavic, East European and Eurasian Folklore Association 17 (2013): 1–36. I have yet to identify the best institution to which to offer this collection.
21 For example, https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/figure-bobby-s-world-intertube-submarine-mcdonald-s-corp/PAGRuH4G0inoKQ?hl=en
23 https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/08/nyregion/outsiders-art-is-saluted-at-columbia-then-lost-anew.html
25 Benjamin, Selected Writings, 487