Museum of Family Professions, Ivano-Frankivsk

The author of the idea, as well as the owner of numerous exhibits, is Roman Fabryka, an Honored Journalist of Ukraine who has also mastered about 20 professions in his life. The veteran reporter, known far beyond the Prykarpattia region, has long been harboring the idea of opening such a museum center. Recently, the idea became a reality.

Hundreds of tools, devices, apparatus mechanisms, numerous attributes of many professions, and household items have found their home in a specially built room. Roman Mykhailovych has been restoring all of this for years to preserve these relics for future generations, not only for his family, but also for the general public of visitors to the original museum. Everything in the exhibition is filled with the good Ukrainian spirit, fatherly and maternal warmth.

When you look at these seemingly ordinary, long-familiar things and objects, you feel as if you are seeing the tanned hands of famous and unknown farmers, weavers, carpenters, shoemakers, and joiners. The museum's motto is "From Plow to Computer." The museum exhibition tells about 150 family professions over the past two hundred years. The family had its own beekeepers and architects, blacksmiths and doctors, builders and geologists, miners and musicians, as well as agronomists, zootechnicians, teachers, gardeners... And of course, good hosts, skilled people who knew how to "make something out of nothing." The Museum of Family Professions presents a well restored plow and harrow, an ancient spinning wheel and ceramic dishes, artistic weaving, and blacksmith's tools.

The Focus magazine recognized the museum as one of the seven most unboring museums in Ukraine, as the owner proudly tells us. However, the museum is unique not only because of its idea to collect objects related to the family's professions.

The idea for this museum came to its founder in a dream at three in the morning. Having no money, he did everything with his own hands. The architecture is Hutsul, in the form of a pyramid with a high ceiling of six meters (to accommodate the exhibits), plus all the energy comes from space.

Roman Mykhailovych was awarded the Golden Pen of Prykarpattia (in 1984, he was the first journalist in the region to receive the Golden Pen Award in Kyiv).

After graduating from high school, he wanted to study journalism at university. However, due to his lack of work experience (which was a prerequisite for admission to the university at the time), he was denied. In order not to waste his time, Roman went to his brother's house in Vorkuta and learned a new trade. To this day, his helmet, which occupies a place of honor in the museum, reminds him of his mining days. A year later, he was drafted into the army, where he learned the profession of an aircraft mechanic.

However, even while serving in Barnaul, he contributed to the military press. Later, the soldier was transferred to a unit in the Lviv region to work as a Komsomol instructor. In the end, fate smiled on him: after three years of service, he became a student at Lviv University and never turned off the journalistic path. Although, while already on this path, Roman Mykhailovych tried his hand at being a cinema and radio mechanic, a lithographer, a gold miner, a builder, a gas meter, a watchmaker, and so on.

An old plow attracts attention at the entrance to the museum. Roman Mykhailovych comments: "The motto of my museum is 'from plow to computer'." Going inside, we can see that it is true. Interestingly, some of the objects are symbols, the meaning of which our guide reveals to us: "The wheel is eternal movement" or "This is Ukraine, fenced with barbed wire, but I cut it. Freedom cannot be stopped, because there is always a way out that must be used."

Roman Mykhailovych is an avid collector. He collects bells, first-day envelopes, bookplates, mini-books, cameras, watches, unique photographs, etc. Among the new items in the museum is a collection of embroidery. Most of the exhibits are tools used by Roman Fabryka and his relatives in their daily work, as well as awards. Among the latter are his mother's order and the Mother's Glory medal. On the day of the centenary of Roman's mother's birth, the museum was consecrated. One can feel that each object is part of history not in a general sense, but in a deeply intimate one. The guide has warm feelings for each of them, and therefore cannot single out any of them so as not to humiliate the others.

When I created the museum, I set out to immortalize the memory of our entire large working family. About the near and distant ones, about people known and little-known - to name their professions, to tell what they did, what tools and implements they used, what they lived on. Time does not stand still. Grandchildren and great-grandchildren, I hope, will add to the exposition, and perhaps expand the museum's premises. After all, over time, these family relics - things that we call antiquities that have served people for decades - acquire a special value. And, believe me, not as antiques, but because they keep the spirit of their predecessors, the living memory of grandparents, parents, brothers, sisters... They were not just folk craftsmen, but real engineers-inventors. Unfortunately, no one in those distant times registered or recorded their inventions and developments.

Everything in the exhibition exudes the good Ukrainian spirit, fatherly and maternal warmth. You look at these seemingly ordinary, long-familiar things and objects and seem to see the tanned hands of famous and unknown farmers, weavers, carpenters, shoemakers, mechanics...

The Museum of Family Professions features a well restored plow and harrow, an ancient spinning wheel and ceramic dishes, artistic weaving and blacksmithing tools, an ancient device for roasting coffee beans, and familiar millstones. You remember Vasyl Symonenko's words about them: "I kiss the hands that turned the millstones on the eve of the space age..."

The Museum of Family Professions is most often visited by children. They come in groups, sometimes with teachers, and sometimes with their parents. Thus, in recent years, Roman Fabryka says, the museum has been visited by up to 6 thousand young tourists. Roman is convinced that they grow up together with the museum, where they learn about things that are not taught at school or in colleges. Once, the owner says, a girl he didn't know even counted the number of clocks on display. Roman Fabryka says that no one had ever done this before. It turned out that there were 43 of them, and the exhibition is dedicated to the watchmaking profession and takes visitors back to the postwar years.

It is better not to talk about museums, public or private, but to visit them. So take this opportunity to meet face to face with the things, objects, and tools of former and current craftsmen, engineers, and scientists whose symbols of their professions are collected in this museum, located at 6-A Kyivska Street in Ivano-Frankivsk.

Opening hours: seven days a week