OUR COAT OF ARMS. Ukrainian symbols from princely times to the present day | Andriy Hrechylo, Bohdan Zavitii

This 400-page album, containing over 700 illustrations from over 50 museums, archives, and libraries in Ukraine and the world, is dedicated to the history and meaning of the Ukrainian coat of arms — the Trident. A hundred years ago, when the Trident was approved as the coat of arms of the UNR, Mykhailo Hrushevsky called it "a characteristic, not borrowed decoration, connected with our thousand-year state, political, and cultural history." Interestingly, Hrushevsky himself was inclined to the idea of a new symbol of "creative peaceful labor in the new Ukraine" — a golden plow on a blue field.

During the discussions at that time about the main symbol of the new Ukrainian statehood, the main "contenders" were: the Galician golden lion on a rock, the Kyivan arch-strategist Michael, who at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries began to be perceived as the coat of arms of the Dnieper region, and the Cossack with a musket from the Hetmanate times. Dozens of pages are devoted to each of these symbols in the album.

The own sign from the coins of Prince Volodymyr the Great, previously known only to a narrow circle of specialists, was initially considered a compromise option. However, it turned out to be extremely successful. The book explains in detail the factors that then prevailed in its favor. The forgotten but rediscovered Trident quickly took root as the national-state emblem of Ukraine, displacing all other symbols that had a stronger position and a longer, though not deeper, tradition. The graphically beautiful, laconic, original and, most importantly, ancient sign of the Trident actually legitimized the historical connection of modern Ukraine with Kievan Rus.

Throughout the 20th century, the Trident inspired many artists to create artistic interpretations of it. Numerous pages of the album are dedicated to the works of Vasyl Krychevsky, Heorhiy Narbut, Yulian Butsmanyuk, Oleksa Novakivskyi, Pavlo Kovzhun, Petro Kholodnyi, Robert Lisovskyi, Mykola Bytynskyi, Nil Khasevich, Mykhailo Mykhalevych, Mykola Butovych, Myron Levytskyi, Mykhailo Dmytrenko, Sviatoslav Gordynskyi and many others. More than half of this book is dedicated to the Trident.