Field crops and livestock were everybody's occupation according to their abilities: men and women, children and the elderly. However, all related to cutting and hauling wood and construction belong to adult men. There were cases when a woman with an axe sat in the corner, but this was considered abnormal, as reflected in the proverb: "Women's cities don't stand for a long time."
Forrest is firmly connected with peasant's inventory: agricultural and domestic. Men's hands created all dishes, all utensils, and toys. A different domain was the flax.
Of course, the farm, diverse and unified in its many layers, was a living organism, harmonious in its not-even-perfect embodiment.
The cows, for example, were kept not so much for milk as for manure to fertilize the land. Soil, in turn, gave not only bread but also fodder for the cattle. But where there is livestock, there are food and shoes, there are shoes, and you can go into the woods to cut down the house, including a barn for cows; if there is a cow, there will be milk and manure. The circle is closed. Economic life consisted of such interacting and interconnected cycles. This situation requires not empty mechanical but a thoughtful attitude to work.
The field and livestock labour cycles rested on the age-old tradition and ruthlessness of seasonal changes. But this does not mean that the peasant labour did not require a creative attitude, that the plowman and the shepherd do not need talent, and that inspiration and joy of creation are for peasants just hollow sounds.
On the contrary: only the age-old tradition helped people quickly (usually during childhood and adolescence) learn the most rational methods of hard work, freeing time and effort, clearing the way for the individual creative impulse at first and then to action. But the skill of the individual plowman or mower, even passed to his son or grandson, has not received a meaningful expression because the grain in the barn or the cattle in the barn not only did not surprise distant descendants but did not even live to see them.
No, for the soul and memory, it was needed to build a house with a pretty carving, or a church on the hill, or weave a lace, which captures the spirit and will light up the eyes of a distant great-granddaughter. Because people do not live by bread alone.
Flax was, for many centuries, a companion of a woman's fate. It was a women's pleasure and grief, beginning with infant bedding linen, a girl's shawls and ending with a shroud - a white canvas covering the person on his deathbed.
Flax is sown in warm but slightly damp soil to ripen early. So, guess when to plant!
You must be a peasant to catch this particular moment in the year. The day before or the day after would already come out wrong. After planting flax, the hands of men rarely touch it. All the long and complicated life cycle of flax is subservient only to women. They must keep pace with flax to make all it should be, regardless of other work and family concerns. Otherwise, it could become a disgrace to the entire village. Traditionally even a girl in her early years walks around the linen strips with special reverence.
In many families, girls as young as eight or ten years began to prepare a dowry and wedding gifts made or specially ordered in a chest or box. For many years, those chests were kept till the very wedding, woven canvas, stitches, and laces. Because of that, the flax strips excite the soul of a maiden:
"Please grow well, grow well, you, my flax, and grow well, my little white,
do not get crushed, my darling."
This old choral-game song described all ways of flax, from the tiny dark seed to a snow-white lace.
But how long and complex it was that way! And how it was similar to a man's life, what a powerful pagan symbolism of sounds in each step of the closed cycle of flax!
Rhythmic, precise, and validated for centuries, this cycle is positively subordinated to a heavenly process accomplished by the eternal and generous sun. One has to keep pace with the inevitable, reliable stability change of the seasons: after all, nature does not wait; it changes not only in the seasons but every week, daily and even hourly. She is always different!
As soon as light-green herringbone stems strike up to daylight, the spring that threatened to freeze these tiny creatures ends. However, summer in the North is not always gentle: at any time, it can chill with unexpected nightly frost or cook up with heat rapidly shrinking soil. So on the first warm days, every scum climbs out of the ground: milkweed, horsetail, raps, and hundreds of other weeds. For some reason, they sit in the field so tightly, putting down roots so deep that it is not easy to take out each weed.
At such times, women and girls have to find a free day, gather small children, take big baskets and go to the field to weed flax. Every squalid, left on the row, a germ of milkweed or the other weed will grow in five to six weeks into a disgusting unapproachable, arrogant, toxic-green, double-flowering shrub, which can be removed from the flax row only with a spade. That's why they work in a hurry with bruised hands.
It is OK; hopefully, everything will wash away during the bath and heal. But how good looks the weeded outfield: young flax, trampled underfoot, tends to straighten up after the first rain. It is growing by leaps, not by days but hours: a proverb has not a figurative but a literal sense.
Summer is in full bloom. In the fields, in the forest and at home, there is so much work that one has only to turn around. At this time, flax fleas appear, they will not be shy, and they devour entirely fragile, delicate stems. Flax is sprinkled with wood ashes to get rid of fleas.
At the same time, it does not hurt to fertilize flax plots, but the peasants had yet to learn any other fertilizers but manure, slurry, poultry manure and kiln ash. When the flax was in bloom, it seemed a deep blue of northern summer skies on the fields. Indescribably beautiful is flax during white nights.
Few noticed infinite blueness before the collective farms because the plots were too small. In the same collaborative farm sector, especially after the introduction of crop rotation, whole fields of flax and the blueness of flowering flax appeared. Only the colours of Dionysius can express the feeling of a strange combination of pale green with pale blue as if penetrating somewhere in the depth of colour. But one thing is to look at; another is to twirl flax.
Saturday 16 November 2019
Sunday 10 November 2019
LAYING OF THE ROPES
The men in the North sometimes spun yarn, but it was pretty different. If women's yarn had a thickness of the hair, men's thread was like a child's little finger. It was made for the laying of ropes.
Sitting at the large spinning wheel, on which a big beard of the tow was attached, an older man with a cracking sound dragged out of a thick strand from the tow. Then, with a special whorl, he braided flax, having something to tell or listening to another person. Finally, the yarn was stowed in large balls with holes in the middle of the whorl. And now comes - always for some reason, suddenly - the day of laying ropes.
The job was so unusual that it amused children and adults. Feelings and how children play, people quite often bring into their adulthood.
Somewhere in the middle of the street was put on a wooden sled. To the head of the sled at the waist height was tied a bar with three holes, in which the three wooden handles roll. Next, a wooden board with holes was put on the handles, through which you can turn all three handles at once. While holding the yarn ball in the basket, the weaver stretched the yarn thread far along the street, then pulled it back, and so it went a few times. Finally, the saw-horse was set up for the yarn not to fall to the ground, and it hung like telegraph wires.
An experienced weaver went to the other end of the street, taking a wooden dice with three notches. People started to rotate the handles clockwise. All three tows twist; at the same time, they are shortened. Finally comes the point when they rolled up to the limit, which inevitably had to curl between them. At that moment, people started laying off the ropes.
At one end of the team, people started twisting the yarn, and at the other, another group gently led the dice with three plaits, always counterclockwise, making it into a sturdy rope. The sled was slightly dragging on the grass.
The transformation of the yarn into a solid long rope, the reduction of yarn length and the connection of the three parts into one, stable and indivisible - all this was happening before everyone's eyes, and every time was surprising and exciting.
The finished rope up to two hundred meters was cut to the desired length, and to keep the ends from being untied, the waxed thread sealed the ends.
Usual thin ropes guys were laying from the house flax, for which it was split, and every strand was twisted by hand on the knees.
When the fingers of the left hand were unclenching, the strands of flax curled into one. These small ropes were appropriate for many needs: to tie to bags, for weaving devices, for fishing gear, etc.
For the cobblers and fishers, a more twisted thread was made. A regular thin thread was doubled, taking lines from the two coils in a water saucer. The maker put this double thread through the wooden perch near the ceiling, tied it to the end of the particular wheel and twisted it. A twister turned a horizontal spindle with the handwheel, slowly raising it, then lowering it. The thread was solid; however, the strength depended more on the quality of the flax.
There is no plowing, stumping, or building if there are no ropes. In old times peasants paid with canvas and ropes. The zenith of the rope craft coincided with the beginnings of Tsar Peter's work when the indomitable, wise and flighty king decided to put part of the Russian infantry on board. In old seamen's chant sung about how "suddenly came a change," as "a storm lifts the sea " and how "boils seafoam everywhere."
The battle of Gangut marked the beginning of the glorious history of the Russian Navy. But the fleet stood firmly not only on marine communique and charters. Without the millions of anonymous spinners and tar makers, the blue, resembling the sea linen strips flag of St. Andrew, would not be covered by the winds of all the oceans and all latitudes of the vast land. But, unfortunately, this history is little known to the romantics of "The Scarlet Sails" and countless "brigantines."
Sitting at the large spinning wheel, on which a big beard of the tow was attached, an older man with a cracking sound dragged out of a thick strand from the tow. Then, with a special whorl, he braided flax, having something to tell or listening to another person. Finally, the yarn was stowed in large balls with holes in the middle of the whorl. And now comes - always for some reason, suddenly - the day of laying ropes.
The job was so unusual that it amused children and adults. Feelings and how children play, people quite often bring into their adulthood.
Somewhere in the middle of the street was put on a wooden sled. To the head of the sled at the waist height was tied a bar with three holes, in which the three wooden handles roll. Next, a wooden board with holes was put on the handles, through which you can turn all three handles at once. While holding the yarn ball in the basket, the weaver stretched the yarn thread far along the street, then pulled it back, and so it went a few times. Finally, the saw-horse was set up for the yarn not to fall to the ground, and it hung like telegraph wires.
An experienced weaver went to the other end of the street, taking a wooden dice with three notches. People started to rotate the handles clockwise. All three tows twist; at the same time, they are shortened. Finally comes the point when they rolled up to the limit, which inevitably had to curl between them. At that moment, people started laying off the ropes.
At one end of the team, people started twisting the yarn, and at the other, another group gently led the dice with three plaits, always counterclockwise, making it into a sturdy rope. The sled was slightly dragging on the grass.
The transformation of the yarn into a solid long rope, the reduction of yarn length and the connection of the three parts into one, stable and indivisible - all this was happening before everyone's eyes, and every time was surprising and exciting.
The finished rope up to two hundred meters was cut to the desired length, and to keep the ends from being untied, the waxed thread sealed the ends.
Usual thin ropes guys were laying from the house flax, for which it was split, and every strand was twisted by hand on the knees.
When the fingers of the left hand were unclenching, the strands of flax curled into one. These small ropes were appropriate for many needs: to tie to bags, for weaving devices, for fishing gear, etc.
For the cobblers and fishers, a more twisted thread was made. A regular thin thread was doubled, taking lines from the two coils in a water saucer. The maker put this double thread through the wooden perch near the ceiling, tied it to the end of the particular wheel and twisted it. A twister turned a horizontal spindle with the handwheel, slowly raising it, then lowering it. The thread was solid; however, the strength depended more on the quality of the flax.
There is no plowing, stumping, or building if there are no ropes. In old times peasants paid with canvas and ropes. The zenith of the rope craft coincided with the beginnings of Tsar Peter's work when the indomitable, wise and flighty king decided to put part of the Russian infantry on board. In old seamen's chant sung about how "suddenly came a change," as "a storm lifts the sea " and how "boils seafoam everywhere."
The battle of Gangut marked the beginning of the glorious history of the Russian Navy. But the fleet stood firmly not only on marine communique and charters. Without the millions of anonymous spinners and tar makers, the blue, resembling the sea linen strips flag of St. Andrew, would not be covered by the winds of all the oceans and all latitudes of the vast land. But, unfortunately, this history is little known to the romantics of "The Scarlet Sails" and countless "brigantines."
FISHING NETS MAKING
"The thieves came, took the hosts, and left the house through the windows."
A riddle
No one knows from which antiquity rolled up to us the wheel. Nobody knows how many years, centuries, and millennia ago, from which time comes to us a common thread. But the time between the invention of the line and the mesh was very short. The mesh and the canvas appeared simultaneously, perhaps apart, but it is clear that both owe their existence to the yarn. And initially, the fabric and the fishing net were made of animal hair.
The brilliant simplicity of the mesh (loop - a knot) always gets people fish. It also gave rise to women's needlework.
People have been knitting fishing tackles from time immemorial. For the prudent farmer, this occupation and hunting were not a burden or a pure amusement. Fishing in the North has always been an excellent economic help. The aesthetic and emotional in this activity are firmly connected to the practical (economic goal).
A genuine and close communion with nature nullifies the fear of nothingness, death, disappearance, rivalry with nature, the joy of recognition, risk, physical conditioning, strange self-disclosure and self-determination - all of these and much more have been experienced by hunters and fishermen.
In anticipation of the test, a person can stoically, all evenings knit fishnets, procure in the deep snow spruce stakes for the vertices, and twist an infinite linen thread. The tool knitter is simple: it is the bifurcated stick like a women's spinning spindle, then the gauge - a plate, the width of which defines the mesh width, and which befits the loop—finally, a flat juniper shuttle with a slot where the thread is put. Everybody was knitting for children and the elderly, young and healthy bearded men!
Knitting was done in free time, during the bad weather or low season, and at organized gatherings for knitting. However, some self-respecting women avoided such events. They were looking at this occupation with reverence but with slight mocking. And why that attitude existed, we would understand if we take a closer look at textile artistic creations, which complete the entire complex and long path of flax - a satellite of woman's fate. The end is the crown of the process. Creative weaving, braiding, knitting, and embroidery of the linen crowned the cycle, taking the creation by human hands from the annual cycle very often, even beyond the length of human life.
A riddle
No one knows from which antiquity rolled up to us the wheel. Nobody knows how many years, centuries, and millennia ago, from which time comes to us a common thread. But the time between the invention of the line and the mesh was very short. The mesh and the canvas appeared simultaneously, perhaps apart, but it is clear that both owe their existence to the yarn. And initially, the fabric and the fishing net were made of animal hair.
The brilliant simplicity of the mesh (loop - a knot) always gets people fish. It also gave rise to women's needlework.
People have been knitting fishing tackles from time immemorial. For the prudent farmer, this occupation and hunting were not a burden or a pure amusement. Fishing in the North has always been an excellent economic help. The aesthetic and emotional in this activity are firmly connected to the practical (economic goal).
A genuine and close communion with nature nullifies the fear of nothingness, death, disappearance, rivalry with nature, the joy of recognition, risk, physical conditioning, strange self-disclosure and self-determination - all of these and much more have been experienced by hunters and fishermen.
In anticipation of the test, a person can stoically, all evenings knit fishnets, procure in the deep snow spruce stakes for the vertices, and twist an infinite linen thread. The tool knitter is simple: it is the bifurcated stick like a women's spinning spindle, then the gauge - a plate, the width of which defines the mesh width, and which befits the loop—finally, a flat juniper shuttle with a slot where the thread is put. Everybody was knitting for children and the elderly, young and healthy bearded men!
Knitting was done in free time, during the bad weather or low season, and at organized gatherings for knitting. However, some self-respecting women avoided such events. They were looking at this occupation with reverence but with slight mocking. And why that attitude existed, we would understand if we take a closer look at textile artistic creations, which complete the entire complex and long path of flax - a satellite of woman's fate. The end is the crown of the process. Creative weaving, braiding, knitting, and embroidery of the linen crowned the cycle, taking the creation by human hands from the annual cycle very often, even beyond the length of human life.
INVISIBLE STREAMS
The image of a river in folk poetry is powerful. Like poetry, this image is beyond analysis, deduction or explanation. However, analyze it all you want, pick it up to the bones and explain how you want - it will not resist. But it never reveals itself until the end, always the image keeps the right to live and does not succumb to dissection, surprising its ripper with new abysses of the inexplicable. Of course, it will die after it becomes easy to understand and explain, but fortunately, this does not happen because it cannot be ascribed to the end and be understood by the rational collective mind.
The image is alive as long as human personality. But how could there be a likeness of perception if the people are men and women, girls and boys, children and old, beautiful and not, sick and healthy, prosperous and poor, weak and strong?
If nature is changing all the time: the heat, then cold, then rain, then snow, and life moves swiftly, and yesterday is so unlike today, and years never repeat each other.
The river flows. It twinkles in the sun, bubbles in the rain, is covered with ice and snow, overflows, and turns into ice. Fish spawn at the meadows site, where today creaks a corncrake; not long ago, the blizzard howled. Something native, ever-changing, careless and flowing, renewed every time and never-ending, connecting the living with the already dead and yet unborn, one can imagine and hear in a stream of water. Everybody hears it, but everyone sees the image of water flowing in their way.
The image of the road is no less prevalent in folk poetry. Yet, is it possible to agree at least briefly to think of a river as an emotional entity and the road as a rationale? After all, the former is created by nature and has constantly flowed, and people made the latter out of necessity.
People needed to go somewhere (albeit for mushrooms), ride (for hay), trample the trail and build the road. Often, a road ran along a river ...
The road looks like it tried to be shorter and more accessible, while the other side of the river, for some reason, always seemed more beautiful and dry. The road made mistakes, extending its length with appearing entirely inappropriate ferries once or twice! But from these errors, the human soul has often won something more valuable and unexpected.
Invisible streams lay present at the intersections of the material and spiritual, mandatory and desirable, beautiful and necessary. To understand this, it suffices to recall that most folk art items were essential in life as everyday objects or tools.
Here are some of them: women's threshers, ceramic and wooden utensils, buckets, salt and pepper dispensers in the form of birds, rosettes on wooden blocks crossing, and cast and bent candelabras.
With a natural hook of wood (carved from the spruce root ) that supported a wooden tray on the roof, the carpenter turned into a pretty chicken with few axes blows; only two or three stitches of the needle added elegance to the sleeve of the women's clothing. With a change of potter position of fingers, a clay vessel acquired impressive interception, elongated or increased in breadth.
Elusive and uncertain is a boundary between manual labour and creative effort. The master doesn't understand even himself: how, why when an ordinary lump of clay becomes a beautiful vessel. But in all the folk crafts, there is this subtle change from obligatory, common labour to creative, unique work.
People cannot deduct the artistic image entirely from attempts to rationalize it.
Similarly, the nature of the transition from conventional to creative work is inexplicable. The monotony or severity of labour pushes a worker to the art, cause to diversify not only the product but also the methods of their manufacturing.
In addition, for the Northern people, life has always been characterized by competition and competition, not by quantity but by quality. I want to go on holiday all dressed up, better than anybody else - then please spin and weave many beautiful things. If you wish to pass for an excellent possible husband and then build a durable and pretty house, do not spare the effort on the carvings and architectural gems.
Beauty is present in work. The beauty in the fruits of labour has many faces, but it is also self-affirmation, the assertion of own ego, and the formation of personality.
Know-how, skill, and art are alive in any work. Therefore, the artists who are equal in artistic power to Dionysus can be at the immense apex of the pyramid, the base of which rests the rest of the people.
So everything begins with the irresistible and inexplicable desire to work.
The desire makes a person, an ethnic group, or even the entire nation predisposed to creativity and, therefore, viable. Such people are not threatened with extinction from internal decadence.
Creativity stems from a desire to work and a thirst for action. In the life of the northern Russian peasantry, work was the most critical condition of moral equality. The willingness to work was equated with ability.
So encouragingly generous, noble and straightforward was the popular opinion that somebody who is not lazy and willing to work with people immediately, in advance, called the craftsman. And he had no choice but to become one quickly.
But to be a craftsman does not mean to be a master or an artist (in our modern sense). Everybody had to become a craftsman eventually. While striving for the best work, everyone did according to their strength and natural abilities. Both qualities are different for different people.
Almost all the craftsmen became apprentices, but only part became real masters. Legends of the "secrets" that masters supposedly kept from outsiders have been invented by lazy or incompetent people to justify themselves. None of the Russian craftsmen and artisans held their skills in vain if they were genuine craftsmen and artisans!
Another thing is that not every apprentice was gifted with remarkable abilities; meanwhile, the master was strict and jealous. He allowed getting in trade to a genuinely interested man who was patient and not big-mouthed. Typically, self-interest does not motivate the master when he shuts his mouth.
According to ancient beliefs, people could find hidden treasures only with "clean" hands. The secret of mastery is a unique treasure accessible to honest and selfless workers. But many people judge others by themselves!
To a greedy person always seems that the masterworks well and hard for the money, not because of a love for art.
But, on the other hand, a mediocre and lazy person needs to understand why people can work on a small object for hours, even days and weeks. But, unfortunately, he does not have the sense to understand even the meaning of this patience, and now he insults the master with suspicion of greed and unwillingness to share his secrets.
Master's vulnerability was also aggravated because people paid more for the beautiful and solidly made things. But, of course, the master did not refuse the money: he had a wife and children.
The art also sometimes requires substantial resources: need to buy paint, well-aged wood, bones, etc. But it is ridiculous to think that the master or the artist is driven by selfishness!
The paradox is that the less the artists think of money, the more valuable products they produce and the more contracts they have. Then, some artists and artisans became concerned with cash only. But the talent quickly abandoned them.
The secret of any skill and artistry in trade is simple: Patience, hard work and excellent knowledge of the tradition. And if all of this nature adds more talent and individual ability, we will inevitably face an extraordinary artistic event.
Art makes work palatable, but the inspiration doesn't come from the lazy. Mastery reduces the time it takes to complete work; skill is not art. Of course, not everyone can become a master. But many tried this, maybe everyone because no one wanted to be worse than the others!
Therefore, an ordinary skill, which has yet to become unique (i.e., art), can depend on tradition. Knowledge of a practice, polished by centuries, was required for each artisan because the leap across an accumulated treasure of people is impossible. Because of that, an apprentice was valued above all the care, diligence, and patience.
First, learning how to do things that can do all tradesmen were necessary. Only then does one begin to learn professional techniques and skills?
Young icon painters were first allowed to mix paints and for young shoemakers to wet and knead the skin, only after a long apprenticeship was painters permitted to pick up a brush or trowel. The ability to do the traditional, standard, yet artistic skill makes masters out of traditional apprentices.
The master, if he were endowed with natural talent and if tens of circumstances were favourable, very soon became an artist, a creator who creates beauty. Such a person would be dissolved in his painting, and he does not need fame and glory. He felt even something shameful and bothersome in the worldly fame of his paintings. Creativity and knowledge that the art will live and make people happy filled the life of an artist with a high and joyful sense.
The image is alive as long as human personality. But how could there be a likeness of perception if the people are men and women, girls and boys, children and old, beautiful and not, sick and healthy, prosperous and poor, weak and strong?
If nature is changing all the time: the heat, then cold, then rain, then snow, and life moves swiftly, and yesterday is so unlike today, and years never repeat each other.
The river flows. It twinkles in the sun, bubbles in the rain, is covered with ice and snow, overflows, and turns into ice. Fish spawn at the meadows site, where today creaks a corncrake; not long ago, the blizzard howled. Something native, ever-changing, careless and flowing, renewed every time and never-ending, connecting the living with the already dead and yet unborn, one can imagine and hear in a stream of water. Everybody hears it, but everyone sees the image of water flowing in their way.
The image of the road is no less prevalent in folk poetry. Yet, is it possible to agree at least briefly to think of a river as an emotional entity and the road as a rationale? After all, the former is created by nature and has constantly flowed, and people made the latter out of necessity.
People needed to go somewhere (albeit for mushrooms), ride (for hay), trample the trail and build the road. Often, a road ran along a river ...
The road looks like it tried to be shorter and more accessible, while the other side of the river, for some reason, always seemed more beautiful and dry. The road made mistakes, extending its length with appearing entirely inappropriate ferries once or twice! But from these errors, the human soul has often won something more valuable and unexpected.
Invisible streams lay present at the intersections of the material and spiritual, mandatory and desirable, beautiful and necessary. To understand this, it suffices to recall that most folk art items were essential in life as everyday objects or tools.
Here are some of them: women's threshers, ceramic and wooden utensils, buckets, salt and pepper dispensers in the form of birds, rosettes on wooden blocks crossing, and cast and bent candelabras.
With a natural hook of wood (carved from the spruce root ) that supported a wooden tray on the roof, the carpenter turned into a pretty chicken with few axes blows; only two or three stitches of the needle added elegance to the sleeve of the women's clothing. With a change of potter position of fingers, a clay vessel acquired impressive interception, elongated or increased in breadth.
Elusive and uncertain is a boundary between manual labour and creative effort. The master doesn't understand even himself: how, why when an ordinary lump of clay becomes a beautiful vessel. But in all the folk crafts, there is this subtle change from obligatory, common labour to creative, unique work.
People cannot deduct the artistic image entirely from attempts to rationalize it.
Similarly, the nature of the transition from conventional to creative work is inexplicable. The monotony or severity of labour pushes a worker to the art, cause to diversify not only the product but also the methods of their manufacturing.
In addition, for the Northern people, life has always been characterized by competition and competition, not by quantity but by quality. I want to go on holiday all dressed up, better than anybody else - then please spin and weave many beautiful things. If you wish to pass for an excellent possible husband and then build a durable and pretty house, do not spare the effort on the carvings and architectural gems.
Beauty is present in work. The beauty in the fruits of labour has many faces, but it is also self-affirmation, the assertion of own ego, and the formation of personality.
Know-how, skill, and art are alive in any work. Therefore, the artists who are equal in artistic power to Dionysus can be at the immense apex of the pyramid, the base of which rests the rest of the people.
So everything begins with the irresistible and inexplicable desire to work.
The desire makes a person, an ethnic group, or even the entire nation predisposed to creativity and, therefore, viable. Such people are not threatened with extinction from internal decadence.
Creativity stems from a desire to work and a thirst for action. In the life of the northern Russian peasantry, work was the most critical condition of moral equality. The willingness to work was equated with ability.
So encouragingly generous, noble and straightforward was the popular opinion that somebody who is not lazy and willing to work with people immediately, in advance, called the craftsman. And he had no choice but to become one quickly.
But to be a craftsman does not mean to be a master or an artist (in our modern sense). Everybody had to become a craftsman eventually. While striving for the best work, everyone did according to their strength and natural abilities. Both qualities are different for different people.
Almost all the craftsmen became apprentices, but only part became real masters. Legends of the "secrets" that masters supposedly kept from outsiders have been invented by lazy or incompetent people to justify themselves. None of the Russian craftsmen and artisans held their skills in vain if they were genuine craftsmen and artisans!
Another thing is that not every apprentice was gifted with remarkable abilities; meanwhile, the master was strict and jealous. He allowed getting in trade to a genuinely interested man who was patient and not big-mouthed. Typically, self-interest does not motivate the master when he shuts his mouth.
According to ancient beliefs, people could find hidden treasures only with "clean" hands. The secret of mastery is a unique treasure accessible to honest and selfless workers. But many people judge others by themselves!
To a greedy person always seems that the masterworks well and hard for the money, not because of a love for art.
But, on the other hand, a mediocre and lazy person needs to understand why people can work on a small object for hours, even days and weeks. But, unfortunately, he does not have the sense to understand even the meaning of this patience, and now he insults the master with suspicion of greed and unwillingness to share his secrets.
Master's vulnerability was also aggravated because people paid more for the beautiful and solidly made things. But, of course, the master did not refuse the money: he had a wife and children.
The art also sometimes requires substantial resources: need to buy paint, well-aged wood, bones, etc. But it is ridiculous to think that the master or the artist is driven by selfishness!
The paradox is that the less the artists think of money, the more valuable products they produce and the more contracts they have. Then, some artists and artisans became concerned with cash only. But the talent quickly abandoned them.
The secret of any skill and artistry in trade is simple: Patience, hard work and excellent knowledge of the tradition. And if all of this nature adds more talent and individual ability, we will inevitably face an extraordinary artistic event.
Art makes work palatable, but the inspiration doesn't come from the lazy. Mastery reduces the time it takes to complete work; skill is not art. Of course, not everyone can become a master. But many tried this, maybe everyone because no one wanted to be worse than the others!
Therefore, an ordinary skill, which has yet to become unique (i.e., art), can depend on tradition. Knowledge of a practice, polished by centuries, was required for each artisan because the leap across an accumulated treasure of people is impossible. Because of that, an apprentice was valued above all the care, diligence, and patience.
First, learning how to do things that can do all tradesmen were necessary. Only then does one begin to learn professional techniques and skills?
Young icon painters were first allowed to mix paints and for young shoemakers to wet and knead the skin, only after a long apprenticeship was painters permitted to pick up a brush or trowel. The ability to do the traditional, standard, yet artistic skill makes masters out of traditional apprentices.
The master, if he were endowed with natural talent and if tens of circumstances were favourable, very soon became an artist, a creator who creates beauty. Such a person would be dissolved in his painting, and he does not need fame and glory. He felt even something shameful and bothersome in the worldly fame of his paintings. Creativity and knowledge that the art will live and make people happy filled the life of an artist with a high and joyful sense.
SEWING
In the thirties, the prewar years in some Northern villages spread a girlish custom long before the wedding to give her boyfriend scarves. Embroidered pouches and shirts were usually given only to husbands. Unsuccessful or disliked gentlemen caught these scarves by force, "snatched." The famous limericks of the time were reflected even in this tiny part of national life:
"My dear one is so broken and distorted,
Broken for my handkerchief,
He is distorted in the mirror".
What to do with this mischief?"
Of course, it is a comic rhyme. But through it, one can judge the rapidly changing mores: barrack life in the lumber camps forcing girls to behave with rudeness and man's manners.
Yes, and not very easy to find time for sewing when there is a plan for cutting and hauling, and gloves and boots break apart every now and then, and the horse took off, or lost horseshoe, the village did not send food and in the barracks is the smoke of the yoke: men mixed with women, old and young.
Yet many girls found time to embroider a handkerchief and sing this ditty. Singing and crafts since ancient times complement each other in a woman's life. Exiled to the Goritskiy monastery, Xenia Godunov was famous for her handwork and singing songs when standing and working. During that time in Russia, songs accompanied the flourishing art of ecclesiastical embroidery, presented by numerous tangible pieces of evidence.
There are several ways of sewing; the main is satin-stitch embroidery which is parallel stitches. For this purpose were used silk and linen threads. The canvas was embroidered with simple, often double-cross, later replaced by square waffle fabric. Embroidery by Tambora used rounded ensiform stitch, and "the "hen's feet" style was pulled in line with geometric angle stitch.
Finally, sewing was done in the embroidery frame after removing weft threads from the tissue. Collars, sleeves, towels, scarves, jackets, pouches, and hats were usually embroidered. Occupies a unique place a gold embroidery. Exquisite embroidery in red on the black, white and dark blue background and green on the red and pink. However, everything depended on the artistic flair of embroiders.
ETERNAL MOMENTS
Who of us, especially in childhood or adolescence, was not terrified and not despairing at the sight of a woefully immense pile of wood that should be sawed first and then chopped and put in the woodpile? Or a vast field, which you must plow? Or a dozen fat wool tows, which must be spun by the holiday? My heart sank at how much had to be done. But, as always, there is a consoling and encouraging proverb. It is like this: "The eyes dread, but the hands do."
One of the elders mentions it, and behold- it is not so scary to begin a task which has no end in sight. So much for the material power of the word…
"The initiative is more valuable than the whole affair," - recalls another, no less critical, saying later: "It should be a beginning, and an end will come." If, however, you undertook to do something, you can see how much is done and how quietly the result grows and grows. And suddenly, you'll be surprised to see what has not yet been made has departed, though not by much, it became less!
You did half, and the second half has its half. The eyes dread, but the hands do ... But this proverb is accurate in terms of volume, the quantity of work, and its quality, that is, on the skill, ingenuity, creativity, and - not afraid to say - art.
The young beginner could be afraid, and the other not-so-young could be frightened, even having natural talent. But how do you know whether there is a talent, if not, to start doing something? In art, the risk is necessary for the beginner, even to a certain extent - the folly!
It may be one way for the initial identification of gifted people. Need courage and the daring impulse to understand whether you can do something. Try to start, to dare! And there, in the course of work, there is an inspiration and a worker, if nature invested in him a talent, at once or gradually becomes an artist.
Of course, you should not try without ending all your life, turning persistence into dull stubbornness. The uniqueness of the Northern peasant labour code was that all tried to do everything, and among these, many were born and original masters.
Skills are the basis on which great masters develop. But for a man who already believes in himself, convinced in his ability every time something is done, needs to take the risk of heart, justified, and every second controlled by the mind, he needs boldness, balanced by a careful unhurriedness. Only then would inspiration come to him, and precious moments stood, cast in advanced art forms.
It is not true that these moments, this high enthusiasm and inspiration are possible only in certain specified types of work and professional work! Art can live in any profession. Another thing is that, for example, a plowman or a farmer's work is not embodied in art. Because of that, people respected artisans and artists who create art.
Peasant artisans and artists from time immemorial have been nameless. They created their art pieces to meet only aesthetic needs. Art of Craft was born on the border between man's aesthetic and economic conditions, when the master begins to create art, not for himself, and not as a gift to friends and family, but by the order and for sale.
Art of trade… The combination of words lays a contradiction: trade involves mass, serial, that is, sameness and art is always a unique way, never duplicated. And whatever we come up with for the salvation of artistry in the trade, the trade will always seek to erode it, and art will always resist occupation. The image dies in the multiplicity of identical items, but this does not mean that art objects cannot be created in different ways in their diversity. At least until there is little difference between objects, trade can be called art...?
For crafts, it is typical to use traditional technologies and imagery with the obligatory artistic individuality of a craftsman. A master journeyman whose work is identical to his neighbour, a man indifferent to his art, who mastered the traditional techniques and the images but strives for quantity - a man impels artistic craft to degeneration and extinction. With machine production, creative individuality disappears, dissolving into mass production and kitsch. Amid all this, the seemingly miraculous existence of crafts overcomes the "gross" mentality.
Accountants and economists plan not to interfere with beauty and aesthetics in their business. Nothing often exists for their "gross" psychology except the cash payment and the bottom line. Is the survival of beauty in such conditions not remarkable? Nevertheless, some Northern crafts are unwilling to concede the onslaught of gross anonymity and pressure of aesthetic dullness.
One of the elders mentions it, and behold- it is not so scary to begin a task which has no end in sight. So much for the material power of the word…
"The initiative is more valuable than the whole affair," - recalls another, no less critical, saying later: "It should be a beginning, and an end will come." If, however, you undertook to do something, you can see how much is done and how quietly the result grows and grows. And suddenly, you'll be surprised to see what has not yet been made has departed, though not by much, it became less!
You did half, and the second half has its half. The eyes dread, but the hands do ... But this proverb is accurate in terms of volume, the quantity of work, and its quality, that is, on the skill, ingenuity, creativity, and - not afraid to say - art.
The young beginner could be afraid, and the other not-so-young could be frightened, even having natural talent. But how do you know whether there is a talent, if not, to start doing something? In art, the risk is necessary for the beginner, even to a certain extent - the folly!
It may be one way for the initial identification of gifted people. Need courage and the daring impulse to understand whether you can do something. Try to start, to dare! And there, in the course of work, there is an inspiration and a worker, if nature invested in him a talent, at once or gradually becomes an artist.
Of course, you should not try without ending all your life, turning persistence into dull stubbornness. The uniqueness of the Northern peasant labour code was that all tried to do everything, and among these, many were born and original masters.
Skills are the basis on which great masters develop. But for a man who already believes in himself, convinced in his ability every time something is done, needs to take the risk of heart, justified, and every second controlled by the mind, he needs boldness, balanced by a careful unhurriedness. Only then would inspiration come to him, and precious moments stood, cast in advanced art forms.
It is not true that these moments, this high enthusiasm and inspiration are possible only in certain specified types of work and professional work! Art can live in any profession. Another thing is that, for example, a plowman or a farmer's work is not embodied in art. Because of that, people respected artisans and artists who create art.
Peasant artisans and artists from time immemorial have been nameless. They created their art pieces to meet only aesthetic needs. Art of Craft was born on the border between man's aesthetic and economic conditions, when the master begins to create art, not for himself, and not as a gift to friends and family, but by the order and for sale.
Art of trade… The combination of words lays a contradiction: trade involves mass, serial, that is, sameness and art is always a unique way, never duplicated. And whatever we come up with for the salvation of artistry in the trade, the trade will always seek to erode it, and art will always resist occupation. The image dies in the multiplicity of identical items, but this does not mean that art objects cannot be created in different ways in their diversity. At least until there is little difference between objects, trade can be called art...?
For crafts, it is typical to use traditional technologies and imagery with the obligatory artistic individuality of a craftsman. A master journeyman whose work is identical to his neighbour, a man indifferent to his art, who mastered the traditional techniques and the images but strives for quantity - a man impels artistic craft to degeneration and extinction. With machine production, creative individuality disappears, dissolving into mass production and kitsch. Amid all this, the seemingly miraculous existence of crafts overcomes the "gross" mentality.
Accountants and economists plan not to interfere with beauty and aesthetics in their business. Nothing often exists for their "gross" psychology except the cash payment and the bottom line. Is the survival of beauty in such conditions not remarkable? Nevertheless, some Northern crafts are unwilling to concede the onslaught of gross anonymity and pressure of aesthetic dullness.
Friday 8 November 2019
BLACKENING ON SILVER
Like the city of Novgorod, the City of Ustug the Great was the center of Russian culture, commerce and industry for a few centuries. Ustyug could do everything: fight, trade, and farm...
Many of its citizens came to Alaska and California and settled there, while others travelled through Siberia and traded with India, China, and other countries. But those who did not like to travel and stayed at home did not sit idly by.
The people of Ustug town knew almost all the trades that had flourished in Russia and medieval Europe.
A man with the divine spark in the soul could take on all kinds of available crafts, but it was impossible to do a little of everything and nothing for real. Usually, one would choose an ancestral trade, building and perfecting a tradition or ignoring it. In both cases, the craftsman or the artist could manifest himself fully as a person. But in the second case, the craft would go down quickly, and skills and professional taste for beauty would disappear. It was enough for one generation that a canon of high beauty and a particular aesthetic "ceiling" would be lowered to the extreme. This would destroy the craft's artistic and aesthetic foundation, which is the primary condition of its scale, fame, and economic survival. A craft perishes…
On the approach to the XX century and early XX century, blackening on silver would suffer the same fate if a few enthusiasts' patience and energy had exhausted. Therefore, we should be thankful for preserving the city of Ustug's magnificent art.
Its essence is that the artist initially engraves silver and then fills the engraving with a special compound - blackening. This "tattoo," so to speak, is fixed by high temperature, i.e. the usual fire.
Ustuyg's plant "Severnaya Chern" produces good products in high demand at home and abroad. This compels our economists to increase the output to promote uniformity. The danger for artistry lies in mass production. Previously, the artist worked by himself from beginning to end (trusting no one, even his tool, not only products), and now the product is touched by many indifferent hands. For art to survive in such circumstances is incredibly difficult. Yet it survives.
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