Rushnyk: can you dry your hands on it?

No: a ritual rushnyk is not a tea towel. The gesture of mundane drying would be seen as profanation in contexts where the textile marks the sacred or mourning.

This distinction rests less on the material than on the social status of the object: what is given, venerated or laid on a coffin does not follow the same rules as kitchen linen.

Museums and collectors stress this: conservation begins with respecting that symbolic separation, even when older use is lost.

If the question makes you smile, it still reminds us why these textiles deserve serious description — and precise vocabulary.