Русский ремесленник

Wooden toy - a bright distinctive realm of folk art. "Bolvashka", "tararushka", "schepnoy goods" as they called it earlier, was created for fun for children. A gruff but expressive figures of animals, birds and man were loved by the people.
Toys made of aspen, birch, pine, linden. They were cut down or cut out of the chocks, a piece of board. The main tool is an ax and a knife in some cases used chisels. Toy skill learned in childhood, learning the wise simplicity of techniques.
Toy obeys the laws of sculpture. However, it is close folklore, fairy tales, popular prints his sense of humor and fun, typing methods of images, and sometimes satirical sharpness characteristics.

Contents toy always gave life, nature and man. Playing the man, the master knew how to show it representative of a specific environment: the peasant woman, lady, lady, peasant, master, officer, merchant. When in the XIX century, especially the increased interest in the folk art genre, to the image of household specifically, there were three wooden toys and working sled, nannies with babies, Pahari and shepherds, spinner at work, soldiers, etc.
But the possibility of reflection of reality in a toy is limited by its purpose - to be subject for the game and the fact that it is a work of decorative art. It has its own characteristics, which are precisely noticed Lunacharskii: "... toy is charged absolutely certain mentality. ... It reflects a simplistic, humorous or pathetic refracted - in short, in the broadest sense of the word is stylized object, taken from a living life.
Generalize depicted in selecting only the most important characteristic of the typical, to find the generalization of decorative art form - that basic principle of national master fully realized in a wooden toy, moreover, with great courage and imagination of fantasy.

History of wooden toys

In Russia, historically developed three major areas of manufacturing toys: the North, the Volga area and suburbs. Here affirm the technical and artistic techniques, determined the stylistic peculiarities of local produce.
Before we basically got samples of the XIX century. From the XVIII century, almost nothing. And the toys XVII century can be found only on the documents of the time. On the works of earlier eras, archaeologists reported. During excavations in Novgorod, Staraya Ladoga, River Oyat they found ancient wooden toys, well-preserved in the moist soil.
Simplest toys are slightly retouched knife knot with unexpected twists. Often, it is floating birds cautiously stretched neck or ruffled. Art forms like toys dictated by structural features of the tree. These toys have always done, and wherever there are woods, so dating these samples is difficult.
Perhaps they were made in the XIX century. These toys are connected with the ancient tradition of making stuffed-hunting "Manihi and household items from the stumps, snags and knots.
In Vyatka side appeared unusual type of toys, "mushrooms" - gloomy woodsmen and old with fagots, sverchennye of moss, bark and bast. Hand them out of spruce cones, face, wooden, penciled pencil. Their production almost nothing is known. In 1890 at the World Exhibition in Paris, these toys were "met with delight by the Parisians," - as written in the Report of the Vyatka zemstvo.
In the 1930's like toys made of moss, one craftsman in the village of Marino Kirov district. Survived isolated instances which have become unique. And in the Russian Museum possesses several Mokhovikov.
Northern toy represented the most typical examples. This doll-women, horses, birds, sleds, boats, rattles, puzzles. Their little, but the interpretation is very different.
The Onega Peninsula were made dolls "punks", stolbovatye figures with a cone-shaped or round head and flat stesannoy the front part. They strictly frontal. Eyes, mouth, nose, marked by depressions and incisions, runes sweat or they barely outlined. Miserly ornament filled with cutting, burned by a hot nail. Scientists see the harsh nature of the idolatrous Onezhskiy dolls connection with the cult figures of the ancestors.

Humpbacked Horse, carriage
Conic - this horse-pack, on which children ride on horseback, and small figurines. Their form is subject to elongated bars of wood, from which they are made. Figures heavily on these exaggerated proportions, massive. They have clearly expressed the verge of the trunk, legs kubovatye.
In the skyline is dominated by horizontal and vertical lines. Poses Konikov with Mezen, and Pechora more dynamic: their powerful necks sharply bent, feet on which the mighty body of the animal, not always fragmented, but delivered as if in a race.
Monolitnostyo, epic majesty horses close ohlupney monumental sculpture and the figures which adorn the north buckets and solonitsy. These toys were sold anywhere but. They were made for themselves and neighbors' children from the waste wood to build homes, karbasy. Therefore, these toys, although they were distributed in the North, now in museum collections are of great rarity.
Near the cities with developed crafts fairs and large hospitable handicrafts, in the XIX century there was mass production of toys. Known kadnyakovskie, Vologda, Ustyug toys. Particularly interesting Novgorod Cyrillic County. This elegant silhouette copy-pack on wheels, "carriage" with the double-headed conics and hewn out of planks flat conic curve with swan-neck with sharp ears and a characteristic protrusion-notch on the back, which means the saddle. Relative shape of Kirillov Konikov corresponds to an abstract fiery-orange colors and dotted with black painted stripes, crosses, circles.
The image of the horse deprived of his everyday life. It reflects the features of pagan symbolism and fantasy, poetic invention. When comparing the works of northern Toy XIX-XX centuries with those found during the excavations of ancient Novgorod turns out that all types of toys, already existed in those days. Kirillov conic - direct descendants of the ancient Novgorod toys.
In the north of artistic connections with the past were the most stable. Continuity, the strength of the ancient tradition of art ever found in the local art schools. The main types of northern toys lasted until the beginning of XX century, Kirillov made in 1930. And on the Onega Peninsula, on the Mezen, Pechora and now sometimes cut down from churbaka traditional archaic figure.
In Nizhny Novgorod province, has long developed a variety of industries: duzhny, carts, sunduchny, turning and painting utensils, carving and painting pryalochnyh Donets, turning spindles. We develop a toy and near the village Pureh Balakhna County - PA right bank of the Volga, in the villages Sumin, Elzelkino, Yakovlev. They made all kinds of kite, Melenki, conics. The most ancient types of toys - Saddled conic and koleski (two planes deployed in the horse's head carved from planks and set the wheels), they are decorated with symbolic ancient ornament of white concentric circles.

Conic silhouette identical Kirillov "Humpbacked Horse. Apparently, the tradition of excellence northern Toy XV century penetrated into the Volga River from Novgorod settlers who were evicted by Ivan III in Nizhegorodskiye limits in Balakhnin.
In the second half of the XIX century appeared different type purehovskoy toys, with elements of the genre: the horses, harnessed to the carriage, the carriage. Their heads are in a fierce slope movement of earth ...... - If the horses are an irresistible force. There is in them something in common with Hackney Mines, depicted on Gorodets stems. In flower paintings marked a clear relationship.
We purehovskih masters division of labor emerged: in some villages cut "underwear", that is produced figures in the other painted. In the 1930 fishery experienced a period of recovery. Toys have to do and Kurtseva, near Gorodets.
On the amazing vitality in purehovsko-Gorodets toy old traditions preserved evidence of ancient symbolic horse-sun red color and radiant stars - signs shone on the necks of the horses.