atiana Emelyanova
Decorative wood painting “Golden Khokhloma”, Moscow 2001
Translated by Oleg Glebov
The Khokhloma painting on wooden articles is, perhaps, the one type of Nizhni
Novgorod folk craft that became most popular in Russia and foreign countries.
The Khokhloma handicraft became known as early as the 18th century.
The lush “grass-leaves” decorative ornaments and their peculiar color scheme
suggest that the Khokhloma art is rooted in the ancient Russian decorative
culture while the imitation of gilt ornaments on wood dates back to the medieval
handicraft skills. The painting technique has been somewhat upgraded but remains
essentially the same as in the ancient time. The gilding effect is produced by
means of the following process. The walls of the wooden containers are first
primed with clay in water, impregnated with boiled linseed oil, and dusted with
aluminum powder (tin powder was used in the 18th – 19th centuries). The
silvery-looking surface is painted over, the article is varnished and heated in
a special oven. The varnish acquires a yellowish tint with heating and the
silvery ornaments under the amber-colored varnish layer look gilded.
Most art historians date back the origin of the Khokhloma painting style to the
17th century. At that period the northernmost lands of the Nizhni Novgorod
province were just starting to recover after the desolation brought by the
Mongol invaders. New settlers moved into the ravaged area beyond the Volga. New
estates were parceled out there to the feudal nobility, and the monasteries in
Moscow and Nizhni Novgorod. New settlers built villages, hermits found refuge in
the dense forests where the fanatical followers of the rebellious Old Believer
groups hid from the relentless persecution by the official Russian Orthodox
Church.
Many of the new settlers were skilled in various handicrafts. It is
traditionally believed that the Khokhloma handicraft was originated by the Old
Believers. In the 1880s the historian V.P. Bezobrazov studied the industries of
the Old Believer communities in the Semenov district and concluded that the
Khokhloma handicraft originated from the wooden spoon manufacturing skills that
had been brought over from the village of Purekh near the town of Balakhna on
the Volga that had been settled by Old Believer in an earlier period. A
Khokhloma expert V.M. Vishnevskaya suggested that the Volga craftsmen could have
learned how to emulate gilding on the wooden articles from one of the fugitive
Moscow icon painters known from the Old Believer legends.
There exists documentary evidence, however, that the Nizhni Novgorod artisans
employed a technique for painting the wooden utensils which was similar to the
Khokhloma technique as early as 1640-1650s, that is, well before Old Believer
faith became widespread.
The Old Believers made a special contribution to the local arts traditions. The
Old Believer communities carefully preserved the treasured possessions they had
brought from all corners of Russia, including icons, richly ornamented
manuscripts, jewelry, and gold embroideries. The communities had their own icon
painters, embroiders in gold, book decorators, calligraphers, miniaturists, and
engravers. A historian of Nizhni Novgorod folk art D.V. Prokopiev suggested that
the painting skills had been most widespread in the villages with the Old
Believer religious communities and they had made the primary contribution to the
birth of the folk arts and handicrafts.
It is not accidental that the Khokhloma painting motifs remind one of the lush
grassy ornaments executed in cinnabar in the ancient manuscripts or the painted
frames of the icons representing scenes from saints’ lives with their golden
curled leaves weaving against the scarlet or black background. The Khokhloma
style generally exhibits a combination of the red, gold, and black typical of
the decorative painting of that region in late 17th century and first half of
the 18th century. The three colors had a profound symbolism for decorating the
sacred church vessels and the dishes and cups used in the monasteries and
nunneries, as well as in icon ornaments. The red color represented the beauty,
the gold color symbolized the spiritual heavenly light, while the black color
signified the gracious grief cleansing the human soul. The religious symbolism
of colors was lost in the Khokhloma art but the precise and solemn scheme of
colors inherent in the festive design of the “gilde
d” dishes grew to be traditionally used for decorating all wooden Khokhloma
articles and made them especially favored by the customers.