From Cross to Cross-Stitch

By Walter Kish

Several weeks ago in Lviv while strolling through the city’s enchanting streets and lanes with a dear cousin of mine who happens to be a Studite nun, I was introduced to a most interesting and unique art gallery. In an old building a stone’s throw from Lviv’s famous Opera Theatre, I was shown an exhibition of a unique collection of icons, some one hundred and eighty of them. 

One might well ask what is so unique about this particular collection of icons. After all, the country is one huge repository of a thousand years of icon making. Well, for one thing, they are not painted icons – they are hand embroidered. Secondly, they were not embroidered by some diligent, patient and dexterous Ukrainian woman, but by a Ukrainian priest. Lastly, and perhaps most amazing, the priest, the Rev. Dr. Dmytro Blazejowskyj is some ninety-six years old and still going strong with his chosen though uncommon craft.

The Reverend Father was born in 1910 to a Lemko family in Vyslots Horizhniy, a small town in Zakarpatia (Transcarpathia). After completing secondary school in Peremyshl’, he went on to study philosophy and theology in Rome where he was ordained a priest in 1939, and received his Doctorate in Theology in 1942 and a second doctorate in History in 1946. He moved to the U.S. where for the next twenty-five years he served as parish priest in Connecticut, Missouri, Nebraska, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Texas. In 1973 he moved back to Rome to undertake teaching duties. Throughout this period, he engaged in his two favourite pursuits – embroidery and writing. He is the author of thirteen books and six articles on Church History as well as ten on religious embroidery.

Father Blazejowskyj first started embroidering when, as a new parish priest, he ran into difficulties finding appropriate religious embroidery to adorn his church. He decided to learn the craft himself and eventually became a master at it. Over his lifetime, he has done extensive personal research, travelling through villages all over Ukraine, absorbing a rich trove of regional patterns and styles. Although Ukrainian Greek Catholic, Father Blazejowskyj considers his work ecumenical, transcending traditional confessions, and reflecting the essential spirit of Byzantine religious art. His basic technique involves intricate cross-stitching on a 40-cell per square decametre double-threaded canvas base, with the background embroidered in satin stitching. He has also done miniatures with a density of an incredible 144 stitches per square centimetre. He has made a point of passing on his acquired skill and knowledge to others, having published ten collections of his embroidery patterns. In May of 1999, a permanent gallery exhibiting his work opened at Vyacheslava Chornovola Street, 2A in Lviv.

Over his lifetime, he has completed some three hundred works, most of them icons of the saints and biblical scenes, though he has also created embroidered portraits of Ukrainian historical figures such as Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, Lesia Ukrainka and Bohdan Khmelnitskyj. His works can be found in churches throughout Ukraine as well as in the U.S., Rome, the Vatican Library, Lourdes, Munich, Melbourne and Curitiba, Brazil.

He has had more than seventy exhibitions of his work in Ukraine, and has been on tour in the United States, Canada, Italy, Germany and Belgium. Readers with Internet access can find out more about Father Blazejowskyj and his work on his web site – www.blazejowskyj.org. His e-mail address is blazejowskyj@txnet.com.  The next time you are in Lviv, make sure to stop by this unique and most delightful gallery.