Chest of the Sokirinci vertep

The oldest vertep, in the museum`s collection, is Sokirinci, or Galagan’s vertep. He belonged to the family of Galagan’s landowners (descendants of Cossack officers). The puppets, chest, as well as the lyrics and the sheet music, were brought by the Kyivan bursaks to the landlord Galagan’s manor in the village of Socirinci in Poltava region (now Chernihiv region) in 1770. The chest is made of wood, as a model of a two-store house. A puppeteer used special rods to move the puppets along the slots in the floors of the house.