You're reading: Made in Ukraine netsuke coveted by collectors

They do not wear kimonos to work, but these Ukrainians are no strangers to Japanese culture and art. In fact, they have enough knowledge and skill to produce valuable items on their own. 

Ukraine has a small but skilled group of artists who make netsuke, traditional miniature carved figures that were once used in Japan to secure a money sash worn over the kimono. Originally a practical item, netsukes evolved into an art form. Today, the carved nuggets are collector items worldwide, not just in Japan.

Although the little sculpture of hardwood or animal bone is usually the size of a cherry tomato, the lower-end items start at several hundred dollars per piece. Ukrainian netsuke artists have mastered the art so well that their pieces can fetch up to several thousand dollars from collectors. 

“Our masters have a God’s gift,” says Oleksander Derkachenko. The 48-year- old Kyiv native was the curator of a netsuke gallery in the capital in the 2000s. But more importantly, he is president of Ukraine Netsuke Society and one of the most successful Ukrainian carvers. 

He carved his first item in 1990 from a wooden leg of a broken chair using a simple scalpel. He calls his first piece a miniature sculpture and says it took him seven years of practice to produce his first genuine netsuke.

Derkachenko says that mastery in this peculiar art form comes from confidence, which, in turn, comes from experience. He now calls himself a netsukeshi, a netsuke carver in Japanese. 

“Every carver can become a ‘netsukeshi’ but perceiving the depth of netsuke only comes through devoted practice, thorough reading heaps of books,” Derkachenko says. 

There are only about a dozen of such people in Ukraine, most of whom consider the art a hobby rather than a job. “Our masters are self-taught men,” Derkachenko says.

Typically, like Derkachenko, they developed an interest in the dinky ornaments and then tried to learn as much as they could about the craft.

The most common type of netsuke, katabori, is three-dimensional, so all sides are equally important. Other types of netsuke can be tiny masks, often an imitation of full-size noh masks used in traditional drama performances, as well as disk-shaped or stick shapes, with carvings on top.



Made by Oleksander Derkachenko, Jurojin, a Japanese Lucky God of Longevity, travels on a tortoise.

Derkachenko’s prefers katabori. He often picks the popular seven gods of happiness. “They are vivid, they help simple people,” Derkachenko explains with a smile. 

Animals, fish and birds are the favorite subjects of another prominent Ukrainian netsukeshi Serhiy Osypov.

“The work must completely satisfy me. If I don’t like the netsuke I will throw it away,” says Osypov, who has a reputation as a perfectionist and a hermit in his community. 

He is also one of the best artists, with his works fetching close to 2,000 euros. Some of them ended up in the Japanese imperial family’s collection. Princess Takamado has more than 10 of Osypov’s netsuke, as well as some works by Derkachenko.

A proper netsuke is not just a visual art form. Tactile contact is needed to be appreciated properly. The little figure should be comfortable to handle, it mustn’t have any sharp corners or edges, despite having many intricate details. 

Old-style netsuke were mostly made of ivory and different types of wood, often boxwood. Since ivory became illegal, masters have used a wide range of materials, sometimes quite exotic like fangs of a wolf or walrus and mammoth tusks. 

In Ukraine, plenty of fossil ivory is still available for carvers.

“Recently, I was offered a huge mammoth tusk 3.5 meters long and 30 centimeters thick in root,” Derkachenko says. “There were so many fossils brought from Siberia in the Soviet times that we, the carvers, still use it.” 

The wide range of materials available now invites masters to carve extravagant pieces sometimes decorated with gold, silver and gems. They contrast with older pieces which occasionally were ornamented with horn and corals. 

In Ukraine, the largest public collection of netsuke is owned by Kyiv’s Khanenko Museum located on 15-17 Tereshchenkivska St. It has about 90 figurines on display from the 18th-19th centuries.

Halyna Bilenko, manager of the museum’s Eastern arts department museum, says the nation’s masters deserve their fame. “When (an artist) doesn’t copy some old netsuke but signs it his own work, it is a 100 percent piece of art,” Bilenko says. 

Collecting netsuke is an expensive hobby, but it’s slowly catching on in Ukraine. Lawmaker Oleksander Feldman from Kharkiv, a wealthy real estate developer, Andriy Ivanov from Kyiv and lawyer Borys Fylatov from Dnipropetrovsk are a few collectors.

Osypov jokes that netsuke admirers are “serial collectors” because they can’t stop buying new items. Likewise, the netsukeshi, or masters, can’t quit making them. 

“We share a ‘netsukephrenia’ that is resistant to a cure,” Osypov says. 

Traditional netsuke exhibition can be viewed at Khanenko Museum
15-17 Tereshchenkivska Street.
+38 (044) 235-32-90, 288-14-50, 235-02-06
Open 10:30 a.m. till 5:30 p.m, except Mondays and Tuesdays.

More info on netsuke can be found on the English language version of websites of Oleksander Derkachenko derkachenko.com.ua and Serhiy Osypov osipovnetsuke.com
International Netsuke Society also has its own website www.netsuke.org

Kyiv Post staff writer Denis Rafalsky can be reached at [email protected]