I.N. UKHANOVA
Wood has always been a traditional material used for the building of houses, forts, churches and for making household items such as furniture, dishes, or children's toys; many tools such as looms, distaffs etc. were also made of wood. The utensils were often decorated with primitive geometric patterns as well as more complex designs. Wooden artefacts were often painted, which gave them a festive and colourful look.
The State Hermitage possesses samples of 18th-c. architectural carvings: fragments of palace decor and sculpture, as well as carved friezes and other decorative details of peasant houses typical for the folk crafts of the Volga region.
A special group of sculptures used to decorate the wooden churches of the North.
The department has an extensive collection of carved and painted 19th-century distaffs from the Vologda, Arkhangel, Nizhny Novgorod, Yaroslavl and other provinces. Each of them is interesting in its own right, since they were traditionally made as personal gifts to daughters, brides or wives. This explains the endless variety of patterns and ornaments, both floral and narrative, sometimes accompanied by inscriptions. A woman's domestic work required the use of wooden rollers and paddles for washing and pressing canvas clothes, towels, curtains and veils. Their artistic value lies in the diversity of carved ornaments. Some unique items are as early as the beginning of the 18th century.
Just as diverse is the collection of carved and turned ware of the 18th-19th cc., mostly originating from the Arkhangel and Vologda provinces. Especially interesting are the skobkars - vessels shaped as waterfowl.
The Hermitage collection also contains a number of children's toys made of wood and papier-mache by the 19th-c. craftsmen of Sergiev Posad, as well as factory-produced dolls. This group also includes clockwork musical toys, usually in the shape of monkeys or birds, which could move and play music when winded. Such rare decorative toys were made by Swiss craftsmen in the 19th century. Some toys were mass-produced and widely used, although still deemed worthy of collecting by antiquarians interested in Russian folk art; some were enjoyed by wealthy townspeople and aristocrats.
The collection of wooden artefacts and toys was transferred to the Hermitage from the Museum Fund which contained nationalized items from St Petersburg mansions. Some items were discovered in the course of field trips intended to gather rare Russian folk artefacts.
