Collaboration of Icon painter Kateryna Hryshko and
Jewelry designer Polya Medvedeva in cooperation with creative studios.

These icons were inspired by the trips to Italy. The significant fragments of icons or frescoes known and revered in Italy, were chosen and were created as individual pieces of art, or fragments of memory. Such as touching moment of tenderness between the Mother of God and the Divine Infant, their hands, and their faces, transferred though old encaustic painting technique.

Years of creation

2020 – 2022

The time of creation of these icons fell on the beginning of the Covid 19 quarantine, and the end of the work coincided with the February 2022 escalation of the war in Ukraine. The icons were in the Kyiv region during the attack on the city. The shell exploded not far from the house, but the house remained unharmed. The entire territory around was occupied, but the village, where the icons were located, was never captured. In the ancient times the prototypes of these exact icons were believed in stopping the wars and epidemics.

Icons are painted on linden boards on lekasu, in the technique of cold encaustic painting.
Encaustic is a painting technique in which the binding substance of paint is wax. Painting is carried out by paints in the melted form. A variety of encaustic painting is wax tempera, characterized by brightness and richness of colors that do not change their properties over the centuries. Many early Christian icons were painted in this technique.

The peculiarity of these collectible icons is that the gold stars decorate the maforion of the Mother of God are in the form of small gold flowers with precious stones. They symbolise the Most Holy Trinity, otherwise interpreted as a symbol of the «Three Virgins of Mary: before Christmas, at Christmas, and after Christmas».
The frames and decoration for each icon were chosen and made individually and are an integral continuation of the composition.