Русский ремесленник

Arts and crafts is the soil and the foundation of any national culture, from his stretch yarn to all kinds of artistic activities of people.
Spinning wheel and rollers, baskets and baskets, legs and kokoshniki, gingerbread and printed boards, arcs and Kvasnikov and other folk crafts - it's all gone out of life and become the property of museums. But increasingly now we are talking about Vologda lace, khokhloma painting, Dymkovo toy, Palekh lacquer miniature - the crafts of our days, the heirs of arts and crafts of the past.

Arts and crafts is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon of culture. The concept is very broad and deep. Broad because encompasses many kinds of folk craft - architecture, music, dance, folklore, household arts. Profound because it lives with the people, rooted in hoary antiquity and evolving in our days.

Already in the forms of stone tools of primitive man, in the simplest geometrical figures ornament on ancient ceramics apparent beginnings of creativity that accompanied the life of the people throughout its history. As time passed, gave way to historical eras and many generations of people, but has always existed among the people need to decorate your life, make a joyful work, to complement his hard life beauty.

Most artfully decorated with things not everyday use, and holidays are designed for specific, often complex rituals and traditional ceremonies. From ancient times to the present day there are folk tradition in a special way to celebrate all the most significant events in life. In the family they were born, weddings, funerals, and in labor and farming - sowing, mowing, harvesting - holidays agricultural calendar associated with the cultivation of grain, harvest. They were accompanied by ceremonies and more popular festivities, which along with music, singing, dancing, a considerable role given to household items.

At the wedding, for example, the tables were huge battering painted buckets in the form of birds or drifting boat, in which guests were served beer, Braga, kvass. Red corner of the hut was decorated with long, embroidered towels or tissue ends. The most elegant suit worn woman of the people once in a lifetime - to the wedding, and kept and treasured all his life, sometimes willing to daughter and granddaughter.

We almost do not know the names of craftsmen. But the story does not condone anonymous creators of arts and crafts - farmers, rural and urban artisans, whose work and talent, and created perfect product. His skills are passed from father to son, from grandfather to grandson, literally "hands". From generation to generation were selected and improved luck and finds some, inventions and innovations of others. Time threw all random, imperfect, polishing and keeping only the valuable and highly artistic. So the search for and achievement of individual artists joined in the collective treasure of folk art, continuously replenished by many dynasties of craftsmen.

Embellishing everyday life, works of decorative art lived and died along with generations of people. They reflected the era, lifestyles, tastes and ideals of the people some time.

Typically, folk artists create things for themselves and a limited number of villagers. We used them in a peasant family and farm. So did many of the items of wooden utensils, tools, toys, fabrics, embroidery.

Master put in the product veto his love and talent. Works of applied art sometimes naive, but sincere and simple. They express the wise simplicity of views, thoughts, feelings and aspirations of the people.

Another group of items produced in the organized centers of artistic crafts that have erupted close to natural sources of raw materials: pottery from deposits of clay, and metal products in the local development of various ores, carved bones involved in the north, where it produces the "fish tooth" - ivory, have long served the basic material of Russian bone carver. Works of arts and crafts were on sale and were famous not only in Russia but also abroad. They are more affected time trends, the vagaries of fashion tastes of customers. Peasant art is developed in keeping with tradition, due to steady, measured way of life of the people, which is largely defined and specific art commissioned handicrafts, especially its form and content.