Do you know about the history of the Guardian Motanka Dolls of Ukraine?

Its name derives from the verb motaty—to wind, to wrap—and already one senses the rhythm of hands at work, circling fabric into form. No needle pierces, no scissors sever; for destiny, it was believed, must not be cut. Instead, strips of cloth—often taken from the garments of loved ones—are twisted and tied into the semblance of a human figure, most often a woman or a child. Thus the doll becomes a vessel of continuity, its very body composed of the lives it seeks to protect.

Photo credit: Ganna Yaroshenko, 2026

Each Motanka is singular. It is made slowly, with care, and always with intention—good intention, for anything less would weaken its quiet power. For these dolls were not toys alone, but guardians of the household, watchers over its inhabitants, companions to their unseen fears and hopes.

Most striking, perhaps, is the absence of a face. Where one might expect eyes, a mouth, a likeness—there is instead a cross of coloured threads. This is no omission, but a protection. To give a face, it was believed, might tether a human soul to the doll, binding life where it should not be bound. And so the cross remains: an ancient, pagan symbol of the sun, its horizontal lines aligned with the feminine, its vertical with the masculine—a quiet balance inscribed across the blankness.

Photo credit courtesy of a private collector

Motankas fall, broadly, into three kinds: ceremonial, guardian, and those made for

children’s play. The ceremonial dolls appear with the seasons and the sacred calendar—Kolyada, Vesnyanka, Kupavka—each named for the festival it accompanies, each woven into the rhythm of communal life.

Guardian dolls, or Berehynya, are made with purpose: for health, for fertility, for prosperity, for harmony. Within them might be placed herbs or coins, small hidden offerings to strengthen their charge. And then there are the dolls of childhood—simple, soft forms that teach the hands their first acts of care.

Yet even within these categories, there is a rich specificity. One finds the Ochysna, a cleansing doll to banish ill energy; the Desyatyruchka, with its many hands, aiding the mistress of the house; the Kapustka, set in the window to beckon a good marriage; the Nerozluchnyki, given at weddings to bind a couple in fidelity; the Narechena, the bride, with her long braid promising enduring union. There are dolls for fertility, for travel, for protection of the newborn—small swaddled forms placed in cradles, sometimes filled with breadcrumbs, sometimes with herbs, each absorbing illness and, when their task is done, given to the fire.

Colour, too, speaks its own language. Red wards off evil and disease; yellow carries the life-giving force of the sun; green breathes of renewal and youth; blue of water’s healing movement; brown of the earth’s fertility; white of the heavens, of purity, of quiet harmony. Nothing is arbitrary; everything is chosen.

The making of a Motanka is itself a ritual, known as kutannya—a swaddling, like that of an infant. Women worked by the lunar calendar: on the full moon for protection, on the waning moon to ward off illness, on the waxing moon to call success into being. Certain days—Friday and Sunday—were set aside, belonging to Makosha, the goddess of women’s labour and craft. A doll must be completed in a single day, fashioned only from natural materials, and always wound clockwise, the hands guided by thoughts that are calm, generous, and full of light.

There was a time, during the Soviet years, when these traditions fell quiet, nearly lost beneath other urgencies. But they have returned, as such things do—softly at first, then with growing certainty. Today, Motankas once again find their place in homes across Ukraine and far beyond, carried with those who have left but not forgotten, small embodiments of an enduring cultural memory.

We have been fortunate to encounter this tradition through the work of an artist, GannaYaroshenko, film maker, artist, teacher now living in Poland with her family.

She is the creator of the film “Mama’s Voice” currently making the rounds of film festivals. In her hands, the old practices are neither relic nor performance, but living craft—each doll made with patience, with care, and with that essential quality without which the Motanka cannot exist: love. And so no two dolls are alike. Each is a singular gathering of threads, of histories, of hopes—bound together, quietly, into form.