Calendars
2025 — “The Watercolor Travels”
The 2025 calendar “The Watercolor Travels” presents the works of a member of our large creative family, Yulia Tolmacheva. You can see Yulia’s watercolors on our family website “The Chronicle of My Family”
https://www.mychronicle.ru/inspiration/gall/Tolmacheva.php
"Novosibirsk, Odessa, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Pavlovsk... Places that I saw in my travels and captured on paper in watercolor. Some places, like Odessa, I visited many years ago; some trips took place quite recently - but in any case, all these cities, their streets, parks, palaces and ordinary houses left their mark on my memory. Therefore, preparing works for the calendar, I chose the subjects and moments that evoked the most vivid emotions and continue to excite me.
I hope that you too will be able to feel the spirit of a particular place and moment on each page of the calendar and feel as if you were there with me. That is where the name of the calendar comes from – “The Watercolor Travels”."
Yulia Tolmacheva
2024 — “Based on the 22nd...”
We kindly ask you to take this calendar not only as a calendar. Do you know how to listen to artist albums? They are listened from the beginning to the end, because any album contains a plot and meaning that runs like a red thread through every song. And after listening to everything in a certain order you begin to see the whole picture. And only then does it look like a finished work.
Of course, it’s easier with a calendar... March does not come later than April. However, in order for the puzzle to be completed, it is worth flipping through the calendar at least once from the beginning to the end.
Poems written by Russian poets of the Silver Age around 1922 fit perfectly into our perception of 2022. And the previous calendar, which grandmother Galina Kurlyandchik entrusted to us, was for 2022. In general, everything has already worked out, and we are already adapting to the new reality. And on this pages of the calendar, as in a diary, we tried to show what emotions and sensations we experienced.
Alisa Lopatkina, Anna Braginova
2023 — “Among Enchanted Grasses”
The 2023 Calendar “Among Enchanted Grasses…” has been composed of the embroideries by Svetlana Babushkina (1926–2015) and accompanied with the verses of Nikolay Zabolotsky (1903–1958), an outstanding Russian poet of the 20 century. The needlewoman, with a needle and threads, and the poet, with a pen and word, put their thoughts and feelings into their creations:
How the world changes! And how I change as well!
I am known by one name only, yet
That which is named by me
Is not I alone. We are many. I am a living being.
«Metamorphoses»: Translated into English by Daniel Weissbort
Let us live through 2023 with these creators.
Galina Kurlyandchik
2022 — “New Generation 2022”
Svetlana Babushkina's great-granddaughters Anna and Alisa Lopatkina released a new family calendar “New Generation 2022” with their works in different painting techniques. The calendar is accompanied by poems by their grandmother Galina Krulyandchik and friends Artem Lyskov, Grigory Alenitsky, Valery Kazakov-Bogatyrev. The designer Polina Shcherbakova gave a great help in the production of the calendar.
Galina Kurlyandchik
The calendar for 2021 “Flowers are tender and so beautiful” is made up of embroideries by Svetlana Babushkina and poems written by Olga Loginova, a longtime admirer of her needlework and translated by Alex Romanovsky.
Where did Svetlana walk the many miles
That left these gifts, abundant and luxurious?
With a procession of designs and styles
I am enraptured first - and then I'm curious:
A Soviet life, a life of shades of gray,
Like ours, her days and daily hits and misses...
What inspiration spark pulled her away
And pulled her thread creating masterpieces?
Our joy is pure, and our thanks are with her,
For flowers she has grown will never wither.
The idea to publish a calendar with poems for the great-grandmother’s embroidery belonged to her great-granddaughter Alisa Lopatkina. Olga Loginova responded to Alisa’s idea, who put together the calendar by months.
Galina Kurlyandchik
I worship you, O crystal stones,
Sea shells, starfish, anemones
Plants, mountains - epitomes
Of beauty, Nature's silent dreams;
Her fossilized imagination.
Maximilian Voloshin
“The Letter”, Verse 17
The nature of the Crimea inspired creative people with its uniqueness from ancient times. In the calendar for 2020 “Crimea. Here, in these folds of the sea and land ... ” you will find landscapes of the Crimea, decorated by Leocadia Chikalina with pebbles, shells, blade of grass, carefully collected on the Black Sea coast and on the footpaths of the coastal mountains, which gives the familiar images the volume and the author's mood. All landscapes are accompanied with poems by Maximilian Voloshin, a Russian poet and artist, whose paintings you will also find in the calendar, named from the line of his poem. Great assistance in publishing this calendar in two languages was provided by his translations of Maximilian Voloshin’s poems from Russian into English by Alexey Romanovsky. Full translations of Alexey can be found on the website: https://allpoetry.com/Maximilian-Alexandrovich-Voloshin. The only translation of another translator that we used for this calendar is the English version by Igor Larkov for the poem “Wormwood” for the month of October.
The gallery of Leocadia Chikalina’s works can be seen on the family’s website “The Chronicle of My Family”: https://www.mychronicle.ru/inspiration/gall/Lada.php
Galina Kurlyandchik
I recall the marvelous instant:
My mother holds the poet's portrait
Whose the great and beautiful genius
Gives me the light of the children's fairy tale.
Galina Kurlyandchik
Based on the famous poem by A.S. Pushkin "To*** (I recall the marvelous instant...")
The Picture of the Front Cover: Portrait of A.S. Pushkin, created by our skilled needlewoman according to the well-known portrait by the famous Russian painter O.A. Kiprensky.
Tne 2018 Calendar was composed of the embroideries by Svetlana Babushkina. The images of her works overlap with the verses of Osip Mandelstam, one of the greatest Russian poet of the twentieth century. The needlewoman and the author of the poems were united by the perception of their creativity, about which Mandelstam said:
I know that a deception in a vision is unthinkable
And a fabric of my dream is transparent and strong;
What we, creating, count with an amazing easiness,
And a flight of a spindle reaches stars in an azure,…
Tne 2017 Calendar was composed of the artworks by the needlwoman Svetlana Babushkina. The images of the embroideries in the Calendar overlap with the words of the famous Russian romances. They will create a romantic mood to you for the whole year.
We were preparing a calendar for 2016. when sad news came; Svetlana Babushkina had died just before her 90* birthday. It is sad to know that she will no longer be among us although her memory will grace our lives for many years to come. A talented needlewoman, her art is interesting, intricate, and charming. She devoted much of her own love, bright inspiration, and hard work into her creations. They will contunue to be treasured by a great number of people of all ages living in different parts of the world. Many people start the New Year viewing the warm, cozy and cheerful images on the pages of the calendar and retain fond memories of her throughout the year.
In memory of Svetlana, we now publish the 2016 Calendar. «The Land of Birch Trees». Her exquisite embroideries overlap verses of the great 20* century Russian poet Sergei Yesenin. Together, the images and lyrical poetry will surelly produce warm and positive feelings for all seasons.
The Calendar 2015 "The Floral Dreamings" was composed of the flowers embroidered by Svetlana Babushkina and poems devoted to flowers. All of flowers were made in silk ribbons and the petal by the petal assembled into exquisite compositions. And the lyrical lines fetched out the character of each flower. You will be pleased by these flowers and verses at any seasons.
This calendar is called "Dreams of Roses" and the embroideries in it devoted to the flower queen - rose – overlaps with the verses of World Poetry.
The calendar 2013 “The Carnival Flowers” has been composed of Svetlana Babushkina’s embroideries made in different thechniques — satin-stitch, cross-stitch and silk ribbons — and devoited to flowers overlaps with the verses of Russian poets.
The calendar-2012 “Classics of the Style” has been composed of Svetlana Babushkina’s satin-stitch embroideries and “Sonnets” by W. Shakespeare.
The calendar-2011“Days of a Solstice” combines Svetlana Babushkina’s landscapes embroidered by her skillful hands with Boris Pasternak’s lyrics. The choice of the poet is not a coincidence. The embroideress loves Pasternak’s verses from her youth and, according to Andrey Sinyavsky, the poet paid his foremost attention to the nature.
The calendar for the year 2010 is composed of decorative embroidered pillows which make our house cozy and establish harmony in our everyday life. All handcrafted pillows are embellished with cross-stitching and silk ribbons by Svetlana Babushkina.
This calendar was composed of the needlewomen’s embroideries made by silk ribbons and poetry dedicated to flowers.
Calendar 2008. Magic of Roses. In modern time embroidery brings a beauty and a joy, an elegance and a coziness, a femininity and an individuality to oue homes/ As a keen grower raises a new kind of the queen of flowers, a rose, an embroideress creates her own rose, allowing us to admire refinement and perfection in its beauty.
A poet as an embroiderers hase the same Muse — nature! The calendar was composed of landscapes made by cross-stitch and the Russian poetry dedicated to seasons.
