By Laura Kirkconnell
“Can you make a creche?” That’s the question my husband Martin Tatuch has asked during our travels, inspired by artists he’s met along the way.
He was first inspired to ask it in 1994 in Rangoon, Burma by his love of elephants. Every day as we drove to work at the U.S. Embassy, we’d marvel at the towers of stacked elephant end tables at a woodcarving shop down the street from the diplomatic compound where we lived.
Martin commissioned one elephant end table with its trunk to the right, one with its trunk to the left, and one with his trunk in the middle for our home. He also showed the wood carvers an ad from a Detroit newspaper for an Italian creche, and asked, “Can you make this creche Burmese?” Yes, they could.
On Christmas morning, I was surprised when two young wood carvers carried this gorgeous creche into our home, still wet from the lacquer.
In the creche, the three wise men are dressed in the finery of Royal Ministers of the Court from the time of Burmese kings. They are carrying special containers that are used to offer gifts to monks. The one on the end has a special tea pot, the next a small version of a special food container, the third a food vessel for monks.
On the other side, the shepherd boy and the man carrying a food basket are dressed in a special longyi that was only worn in the Royal Palace. (A longyi, the traditional dress of Burma, is a sheet of cloth sewn into a cylindrical shape that is wrapped around and tucked at the waist.) His food basket is also of a type used to give monks offerings of food. The young woman is wearing a normal longyi. She’s bringing cool water to the Baby Jesus, a welcome gift in the tropical heat of Burma. The pot she carries on her head is the clay pot many Burmese keep in the shade outside their homes to offer cool water to passers-by. Like offering food to monks, offering cool water earns merit in the deeply religious country of Burma.
The wood carving shows the different designs of the longyis worn by the woman, man, shepherd boy and Joseph. Mary is dressed as a Burmese princess, and Joseph as a dignified prince. Nestled next to Baby Jesus is a water buffalo. Looking down on the scene is a Spirit’s Daughter, a good spirit, like an angel.
Martin next asked his question in 1999 in the country now known as Northern Macedonia. Macedonia did not have creches, which are not normally part of the country’s Orthodox Christian tradition. Martin was inspired after seeing a depiction of the nativity amid the stunning deep wood carvings in the iconostasis of the Church of Sveti Spas, Holy Savior, in the capital city of Skopje. He asked the U.S. Embassy’s Protocol Assistant whether any carvers still practiced this art form that started in the 12th century. She said, of course, and introduced him to a wood carver’s guild, through which he met Zlate Jane Krsteski. They met at the Church where my husband pointed at a panel on the iconostasis depicting the “Birth of Christ,” and asked if the artists could make a copy of that panel. He made the piece in his workshop in Bitola, in the south of the country in 2000. We invited him to the Embassy staff Christmas party in our home to unveil his masterpiece so that everyone could honor and meet the artist, enjoy his work keeping alive his country’s artistic tradition.
As a traditional tool of teaching, the icon depicts not only the nativity, but also the Angel Gabriel speaking to Joseph in his dream, and the flight to Egypt. It is topped by a shepherd and an angel holding a banner in Macedonian that reads, “The Birth of Christ.”
In 2005, Martin asked Orysia Tracz, an Canadian expert on Ukrainian folklife and customs who wrote a regular column in The Ukrainian Weekly, the largest English-language Ukrainian paper in the United States, whether anybody in Ukraine carved creches. Nativity scenes are not common to Ukraine’s Eastern-rite Catholic Church, nor its Orthodox Christian traditions. But the Carpathian Mountains of western Ukraine has a strong folk art tradition of woodcarving. Ms. Tracz found a man named Bohdan, a traditional Carpathian wood-carver based in Lviv, who carved a creche in a traditional Ukrainian style. Ms. Tracz kindly brought it to us after one of her regular trips to Ukraine. One wiseman is a king, another a Cossack with the traditional oseledets or mohawk hairstyle. The third may be in the dress of Northern Ukraine. The wood carving captures the traditional embroidery on the dress of Mary and the angel.
In 2007, we were driving down a country road by the village of Santa Maria Atzompa in Oaxaca, Mexico when we saw a hand-painted wooden sign that said, “Dolores Porras, La Pionera de Ceramica.” Inspired and excited about meeting a pioneer of ceramics, we turned the car around drove to her home and studio where met Dolores Parros, a world famous, innovative potter from the Zapotec people. She and her son showed us photo albums of her trips to the United States over decades to promote her pottery, and photos of her amazing work. She had innovated a firing process that allowed production of pottery in multiple colors. Her wide range of creations included using both reliefs and painting to put human faces, iguanas, and other animals on pottery. Her amazing works even included pottery mermaids! It may have been while her son gave me a tour of their pottery ovens when Martin asked his question, “Can you make a creche?” Yes, they could!
Her creche shows how her pottery uses a range of colors and reliefs as decoration on the pieces. It also reflects the human faces she is known for putting on pots, or building into the pot itself.
The works of Big Stone Gap, Virginia woodcarver Maurice Vanhook were on display in 2017 the Southwest Virginia Cultural Center and Marketplace in Abingdon, Virginia. Martin found a contact for him and asked, “Can you make a creche?” He hadn’t yet made one, but his answer was yes. Two of his colorful wood painted Kings, and one of the shepherds, are wearing Appalachian quilts. He even added our dog! What I love most about his creche is the King presenting his gold crown to the Baby Jesus. The artist posted a photo of the completed creche on his Facebook page, and has now added nativity sets to his wide range of offerings.
At the same museum the next year, Martin admired the work of Ganell Manhall of St. Paul, Virginia, who had been making corn shuck dolls for over 40 years. He asked her, “Can you make a creche?” The result was the most detailed, creative corn husk creche I’d seen. I love how she used stitchery to make the horse and cow, her use of fibers to create a variety of beards, even eyebrows, for the wisemen, Joseph, and the shepherds. Her figures have corn husk noses or painted faces to give each its own personality, including the confident, proud angel.
So, if you are inspired by an artist’s work, or your love for someone crazy about crèches, ask “Can you make a crèche?”
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