The carpet is, perhaps, the most ancient piece of interior. It has gone from a simple mat, through all sorts of complications of weaves and knots, to the very idea of weaving.
Carpet making as a part of weaving art has being developed since ancient times. The earliest of the remaining carpets, dating back to approximately V century BC, was found in one of the graves in the Altai. Tapestry weaving is even more ancient. A linen shroud woven with multicolored lotus flowers and scarabs was found in the tomb of the Egyptian pharaoh Thutmose IV, dating back to about 1400 BC.
The carpet was created not only as a practical thing, protecting from the cold, but also as a decoration, giving solemnity to the temples and palaces of the rulers.
As carpet-craftsmanship developed, magical, symbolic, well-known and hidden drawings, signs, letters appeared on carpets. Probably the most common patterns were tree of life, the fruit of a pomegranate or almond — a possible “apple” from the tree of knowledge, Phoenix rising from the ashes.
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At first sight it seemed odd that there should be such an abundance of roses on Pavlovsky shawls. One would expect to find in this dour wooded region to the east of Moscow more ordinary and more modest blooms, the kind an artist might paint from life. Yet here the artist who designed the first Pavlovsky shawl lighted upon precisely this luxurious flower. That established the rose once and for all on the Pavlovsky shawl. But there is an explanation. It stems from the traditions of Russian folk art, with its predilection for images that are bright, festive and magical.
It is more than a century and a half ago since the first patterned shawls were woven in the little village of Melenki, near Moscow, marking the origin of the well-known Pavlovsky shawls and kerchiefs. In 1865 these shawls and kerchiefs won a silver medal at the All-Russia Exhibition of Russian Manufactured Goods. A century later, they were awarded the Grand Gold Medal and a first class diploma at an exhibition in Leipzig.
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The artist and thinker, man of great talent, Vasily Surikov (1848-1916) went down in history of Russian art primarily as a history painter. In his works, he showed history created by the people themselves, in contradictory phenomena he revealed its natural objective character.
Vasily Ivanovich Surikov was born on January 12, 1848 in Krasnoyarsk, into a family of hereditary Cossacks who came to Siberia in the 16th century. There he gained his first impressions and the first artistic images were formed. On the one hand, Siberia of the XIX century was a living history, preserving the patriarchal features of the XVII century and many customs. Actually, Siberia did not know serfdom. On the other hand, because of its remoteness from the center of Russia the tsarist government turned Siberia into a prison for its political opponents, who were sent there for free-thinking and protest against oppression. The artist said about his countrymen: “They were mighty, strong-willed people”.
Surikov lived in Siberia for twenty years. He absorbed and loved what he had seen, and the precious store of impressions became an inexhaustible source of his future creativity.
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Lace is a beautiful and delicate textile. It is used to make clothing and to decorate household objects. The most delicate and artistic kinds of lace are made by hand with either needles or bobbins (spools). There are many different styles of lace and each has a different pattern of flowers, leaves, or other designs.
Handmade lace took a long time to make, and only skillful people could do it. For these reasons, lace was very expensive.
When and by whom the complex art of lace making was introduced to Russia will probably never be known—it has occupied a firm place among the handicrafts in this country from time immemorial.
Thirteenth-century chronicles record that Prince Daniil Romanovich impressed foreign ambassadors with his proud bearing and splendid garments. The princely attire, it appears, was trimmed with lace made from extremely fine silver and gold thread and embellished with a wide variety of spangles, feathers and pearls.
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The doll is one of the most favorite children’s toys. Did you know that the history of this indispensable attribute of children’s games began more than 30 thousand years ago? And there are a lot of interesting facts in the “biography” of the doll.
The oldest doll made for children’s games is considered to be a toy made of mammoth bones. This doll’s legs and arms moved. The estimated age of the figure found in the Czech Republic is about 30-35 thousand years. Historians believe that such a difficult toy could hardly be the first.
The first dolls were not intended for games. Most often they were used in rituals. For example, in Egypt, the dolls were supposed to “accompany” the deceased in his afterlife travels. The Slavs made dolls as a talisman. According to legend, the doll presented at the wedding ceremony protected the family home of the newlyweds.
The Greeks forbade their children to play with dolls. Even in ancient Greece, wealthy citizens decorated their homes with dolls, made by skilled craftsmen. They sewed luxurious costumes and made kitchen utensils and interior items. The material from which the figures were made was very fragile, so parents very rarely allowed their children to play with such dolls.
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Konstantin Yuon was a Russian painter, landscape master, theater artist, art theorist. By the way, he was academician of the Academy of Arts of the USSR, People’s Artist of the USSR (1950). In 1943 Konstantin became a winner of the Stalin Prize.
Konstantin Fedorovich Yuon was born on October 24, 1875 in Moscow into a German-speaking Swiss family. His father was an employee of the insurance company and later became its director, and his mother was an amateur musician. There were four sons in the family. And what is most interesting, all four brothers after marriages had only sons. His brother, composer Paul Yuon, a professor at the Berlin Conservatory, stayed in Germany after the revolution. When Adolf Hitler came to power, he emigrated to his historic homeland, to Switzerland, where he died. By the way, people called Paul Russian Brahms.
From 1892 to 1898, Konstantin studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. His teachers were great masters Konstantin Savitsky, Abram Arkhipov, Nikolai Kasatkin. After graduating from school, Yuon worked in the workshop of Valentin Serov for two years. Then he founded his own studio in which he taught from 1900 to 1917 together with Ivan Dudin. His pupils were Alexander Kuprin, Vladimir Favorsky, Vera Mukhina and many others.
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Vladimir Makovsky (1846-1920) is one of the most famous Russian artists of the second half of the XIX century. He was an active participant of the famous Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions. His work was highly valued by Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Peter Tchaikovsky, Ivan Kramskoy. Vladimir Stasov called Makovsky a true national painter and claimed that he occupied a particularly significant place as an artist of the main, universal stream of people’s life.
His father Yegor Ivanovich was friends with the famous Moscow portrait painter Vasily Tropinin and famous Karl Brullov. Also he was a collector of paintings of Russian artists and ancient European engravings and drawings. By the way, he took an active part in the organization of the first art class in Moscow, from which the famous Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture began. And it is not surprising that his sons Vladimir and Konstantin became artists, whose work was widely recognized by contemporaries.
In 1866 Makovsky graduated from the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and in 1869 the Academic Council awarded him the title of a class artist.
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