Ivyanets

Ivyanets has made pottery from local clay for generations, black-fired and glazed ware turned on the wheel and fired in the town, and a museum of traditional crafts keeps the tradition with workshops where the wheel and the kiln can be watched and pieces bought. The town's other feature is its two churches, standing close together and immediately contrasting: the white baroque Franciscan church of St Michael from the 1740s, and the red brick neo-Gothic church of St Alexis of 1907, so that photographs of the pair are the town's calling card. Ivyanets sits on the edge of the Naliboki forest, and craft festivals are held here in summer.

History

The town, first called Givenech, was founded in 1444 as a private settlement of the Sologub family on the Volma, and by 1522 it was a town of Minsk county, home to a Calvinist community with schools and a hospital; a wooden church was built in 1606, Theodore Vankovich founded a Franciscan monastery in 1702, and in 1745 the town's owner Jan Michał Sologub, treasurer of the Commonwealth, built a stone church. Russian forces badly damaged it in the war of 1654-1667, and it passed to Russia in 1793; by 1880 it had 288 houses, two schools, 35 shops and 17 potteries, two churches and two synagogues (Wikipedia, Ivyanyets).

Highlights

• The white and red churches - the baroque and neo-Gothic pair.
• Pottery workshops - the wheel and kiln work at the crafts museum.
• Black-fired ware - the local pottery tradition and its products.
• The forest edge - Naliboki beginning outside the town.

When to go

May to September for the town and the festivals; the museum keeps daytime hours and closes on Mondays. Weekday visits are when the workshops are working. Craft festivals fall in summer.

Practical notes

Workshop demonstrations depend on who is present and may need arranging. Church interiors follow service hours. The town is small and takes half a day. Labelling is in Belarusian and Russian.

Nearby

Naliboki forest lies west; Minsk is east.