Khokhloma is a Nizhny Novgorod technique of painting and lacquering wooden objects, going back to the methods by which old icons were made.
A traditional artistic craft of the Nizhny Novgorod peasantry. It arose in the second half of the 17th century in the territory of the present-day Komerinsky District of Nizhny Novgorod Region; it was named after the trading village of Khokhloma in the same region - the centre of trade in khokhloma-painted wares in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The essence of the craft
Khokhloma painting is marked by its distinctive technique of colouring wood golden without using any gold. Objects turned from wood (mainly tableware) were primed with a mixture of clay, raw linseed oil and tin powder (in modern pieces, aluminium); over this layer a plant ornament was painted in a free brush manner, after which the pieces were coated with linseed-oil varnish (nowadays synthetic) and hardened at high temperature in a kiln. The colouring typical of khokhloma painting combines red and black with gold.
Two types of painting are widespread - "verkhovaya", or top painting (red and black on a golden ground), and "pod fon", or background painting (a golden silhouette design on a coloured ground). The craft, which was dying out at the beginning of the 20th century, has revived in modern times; in the 1920s and the early 1930s the masters joined together in artels.
In the 1960s the "Khokhloma Artist" factory was set up in the craft's homeland and the "Khokhloma Painting" production association in the town of Semenov, and they became the centres of this artistic craft. They produce tableware, spoons, furniture, souvenirs and so on.
The best-known masters are F. A. Bedin, A. T. Busova, O. N. and S. P. Veselov, E. N. Dospalova, Z. F. Kieva, O. P. Lushina, A. G. and F. N. Podogov, A. P. Savinova, M. F. Sineva, I. E. Tyukalov and others.
Origins
The khokhloma technique owes a great deal to the schism in the Russian Orthodox Church (the 17th-century split among believers caused by the supporters of Patriarch Nikon's reforms) and to the flight into the forests of numerous groups of Old Believers - adherents of the former faith.
In the forested part of the Trans-Volga Region - in the Semenov, Gorodets and Kovernino districts of Nizhny Novgorod Region - the skill of making all sorts of wooden items for every kind of farm and household need developed intensively : tableware, barrels, rakes, shoulder yokes, shovels, shaft bows, sledges, axe handles and the like.
This output acquired the general name goryanshchina - from the Old Slavonic gora in the sense of "forest", by way of the adjective goryany or goryanoy (forest-). (And not from gora in the sense of "the hilly right bank of the Volga", by way of goryanin, "an inhabitant of the right bank of the Volga", as M. Vasmer mistakenly thought.)
On the basis of goryanshchina, what is called khokhloma began to develop very early on - the craft of artistically painting household utensils and tableware using a modified icon-making technology. The craft took shape in roughly the elaborate form in which we know it from the end of the 17th century.
The khokhloma design is distinctive in that on a black, golden or red ground a leaf-and-berry ornament, known as the grass ornament, was created - images of wild strawberry, raspberry, blackberry, gooseberry, currant, rowan and so on - executed in combinations of red and gold, red and black, or gold and black.
A curious legend arose about the origin of khokhloma. It says that in ancient times some Moscow tsar had a skilled icon painter who dreamed of freedom, and so ran away from the tsar into the remote Kerzhenets forests (those standing along the river Kerzhenets, a left tributary of the Volga in the Nizhny Novgorod region) and here began to make wares of linden, aspen, birch and other wood. Further, according to the legend, when the tsar learned of this he ordered the fugitive to be brought back, but the man supposedly did not want to return and, having passed on his art to other craftsmen, vanished without a trace.
The trade took its name from the large Nizhny Novgorod trading village of Khokhloma, which became the usual place for selling "khokhloma goods". The name of the village of Khokhloma itself is linked with the name of the little river Khokhlomka. The village lies along the banks of precisely this river. Gradually the collective name for the crafts of decorating objects - by now not necessarily wooden ones - with khokhloma painting, which anyone and everyone had taken up, also became known: the "Khokhloma crafts".
Development
The works of khokhloma art preserved in museums make it possible to form an idea of the separate periods of its development. The earliest pieces that have come down to us date from the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. They are cups, bratina loving cups, a mug and a birch-bark tuyes. They are decorated only with narrow golden bands. Evidently silver powder was too expensive a material for colouring wooden tableware. The bratinas had the largest areas of golden surface.
The masters gilded their necks and shoulders, while the body was covered with oil paint, over which an ornament was applied with a brush or a stamp. On one of the bratinas a red flower is painted in large, spirited strokes, its petals and leaves freely spread out. The artist boldly carried the small petals over from the black ground onto the gold, and the gold sparkled all the more brightly from the fiery strokes of cinnabar that fell upon it.
White highlights, skilfully thrown onto the largest petals, make it stand out still more against the black ground. What is admirable in this ornament is not only the virtuoso mastery of the painting, but also the poetic quality of the image created, which brings to mind the fairy-tale red flower that brings happiness and which, as the legends tell, can be seen only on the night before Ivan Kupala.
Great changes in the art of khokhloma painting are connected with the first half of the 19th century. At that time, instead of silver, the masters learned to use cheap tin, turning it into a powder convenient for applying to the surface of wood. A new period began in the history of the craft. Now the masters could colour the walls of bratinas, cups, salt cellars and postavets cupboards golden almost entirely.
Designs of the Khokhloma grass ornament, which made it possible to use the "golden" colouring to the greatest effect, undergo still greater development at this time. The masters of Khokhloma come to grasp the laws of painting on a golden ground. Its ornament finally establishes the devices of a flat, silhouette treatment of the motifs, best suited to painting on a gold ground. The highlighting with white lead, which created an impression of the volume of the form, disappears from the painting. The colour range becomes restricted. Whereas earlier the masters used white, dark blue, light blue, pink, green and brown paints, now the principal colours of the ornament become red, black and gold.
One often hears that the masters used red and black paints only because they do not burn out in the kiln during hardening. This is only partly true. Brown, green and yellow paints likewise do not change their colour at high temperature, yet their use becomes very limited. The artists preferred the combination of red, black and gold above all for its special decorative qualities. Such a colour range was valued by the masters of ancient Rus as well. But there was another reason too. The golden colour the masters obtained was inferior to the colour of gold in brightness and lacked the desired shade of warmth.
The masters strove to make this shortcoming as little noticeable as possible by applying the painting in red and black paint, which formed a resonant chord of colour with the golden ground. The fiery bright vermilion lent greater warmth to the golden ground, while the black paint made it seem lighter and brighter. Executing the ornament on a golden ground led to the establishment of the type of composition characteristic of grass painting, with an openwork pattern covering a considerable part of the surface of the object. It was disadvantageous to leave the imitation gold ground bare in large areas of smooth surface. Having noticed this, the masters began to execute designs in which the ground only showed through the pattern and in the gaps between the motifs.
The restriction of the colour range of the grass ornament, the rejection of enlivening with white lead and the flat silhouette treatment of the motifs, it would seem, ought to have led to the loss of painterly qualities. This, however, does not happen. The Khokhloma grass ornament is perceived by us as painterly rather than graphic ornament thanks to the fact that rhythmically arranged patches of colour remain at the basis of its composition. Painterliness is also lent to the grass patterns by the softness of the tonal relationships, which is achieved by combining in the ornament motifs painted with a broad stroke and by introducing a fine grass addition executed with a light touch of the brush.
Of great importance for the formation of the Khokhloma ornament was its execution freehand with the brush. Now that the masters had moved on to working on broad surfaces of golden ground, the inclination towards breadth of brushwork inherent in the temperament of Russian leaf ornament could show itself still more vividly. The bold brushstroke becomes one of the principal elements of the grass pattern. Combining elongated strokes of red and black paint in various ways — large and small, rich and impasto-like and light — the masters created motifs of grasses, flowers, bushes and trees with lush curly foliage. The design was supplemented by the motif of berries and flowers, applied with the help of a stamp, a swab or a soft porous sponge. The ease and unconstrained quality of a master's ornamental handwriting becomes the criterion of a work's artistic merit.
Executing the painting freehand with the brush developed in the masters the habit of freely varying the ornament. The features of the grass patterns were also influenced by the forms of the turned wooden ware. The masters sought devices of decoration that were economical in terms of labour and ensured the greatest artistic effect. In the course of their work, typical painting compositions were found in Khokhloma for each kind of ware, best corresponding to the character of its form and its dimensions.
Let us tell of some of them. The designs on bowls and dishes are based on a subtle understanding of the devices of composing ornament within a circle. In painting cups and dishes, the masters clearly singled out the bottom, placing on it a rosette with lines radiating from the centre like the rays of the sun. On larger objects a square or rhombus with softly rounded corners was drawn around the rosette, which they called a "gingerbread" because of its resemblance to a real patterned gingerbread placed in the bowl. Around the centre of the cup a pattern was executed linked to the movement of the brush in a circle. The simplest design consisted of vertical or slanting red and black strokes. Complicating it, the masters placed side by side two or three red and black elongated strokes, joining their ends at the bottom. The result was the motif of the so-called "little paw", recalling a bird's track in the snow.
On large cups and dishes the masters often executed one of the kinds of grass ornament — the "osochka". This is a design of stems and elongated blades of grass, as if bent by a gust of wind. The "osochki" were placed along the rims of cups and dishes, framing the rosette with the "gingerbread". The dynamic rhythm of the stems and grasses on the concave spherical surface of the bowl was especially palpable thanks to the static pattern of the "gingerbread".
The masters' love of nature showed itself in the "osochka" designs. Many masters speak of them as the most beloved kinds of grass ornament in the craft. "We always executed it willingly," recalls the oldest craftswoman A.N. Tyukalova. "There is much space in this design, and the cup is not messed up and is very rich." The craftswoman's sparing and apt words contain the folk understanding of the beauty of ornament. The sense of spaciousness that delights us in nature is achieved in the "osochka" designs thanks to the free placing of the motifs on the golden ground of the high sloping walls of the dishes. The golden ground showing through the openwork pattern of the leaves and branches of the "osochka" gives the painting a festive and rich appearance.
One of the most beautiful dishes with the "osochka" ornament belongs to the Semyonov Museum. It was acquired together with other painted objects in the house of the former merchants Vitushkin, who traded in Khokhloma ware. The dish is among the earliest works of Khokhloma grass painting to have come down to our time. According to the recollections of its owners, it passed in the Vitushkin family from generation to generation among carefully preserved keepsakes and may have been painted in the middle or even in the first half of the 19th century.
The dish is more than half a metre in diameter. In its centre the traditional square of the "gingerbread" with golden leaves on a black ground stands out clearly, and along the rims are large branches with red and black leaves and berries, executed confidently and clearly with broad strokes. A peculiar severity, seen by the master in nature and perhaps proper to his own character, prompted the strict and solemn rhythms of the ornament.
Large dishes were sometimes also decorated with a design of a wavy stem smoothly curving around the central rosette like a wreath. The Semyonov Museum holds a dish with such an ornament, which also came from the Vitushkin house. In its time of creation it may be a contemporary of the dish with the "osochka", but it was executed by another master, whose ornamental handwriting is distinguished by particular elegance and refinement. In the centre of the dish, on a black ground, is placed the traditional quadrangular rosette of the "gingerbread" with golden leaves arranged crosswise. The ornament of the dish combines the devices of grass painting and of "pod fon" painting.
The calm shimmer of the large golden leaves of the rosette seems to pass into the radiance of the golden ground with its grass pattern. The dish is perceived as entirely golden, despite the small areas of black ground cautiously introduced into the composition of the rosette, needed so that the design of the leaves should be sufficiently distinct. The light linear drawing in this painting goes well with the rich red and black strokes of the Khokhloma grasses, thanks to the very fine little stems and twigs executed in black paint placed beside them.
On postavtsy and salt cellars, which had a cylindrical form, the masters created designs of four "flowers" or "trees", depicting shoots rising from the earth. On a golden ground they placed two red and two black stems with patterned foliage on the branches, as if stretching towards the light and the sun. Even in our day the oldest artists of Khokhloma remember how they were taught to paint this design: "Do not paint it crowded — let each of the flowers spread its leaves freely and widely, like a man whose life is free and easy." On flour scoops they usually painted stems weighed down with fruit — a design prompted by a long-forgotten symbolism of the harvest. Almost all the motifs of the Khokhloma ornament had their own names, which were connected with the masters' poetic notions of nature.
Knowing the traditional motifs and the typical compositions, even ordinary executants of the painting could create highly artistic works. Their work — and this is perhaps the most valuable thing — never turned into the labour of a copyist. The typical compositions served only as guidelines that made the work easier.
Plant ornament in the "pod fon" technique and "kudrina" designs were executed by the masters in the 19th century considerably more rarely than grass patterns, and therefore in this field the artistic heritage of Khokhloma is far poorer. Both these kinds of painting were more labour-intensive than grass painting, and for a long time only the most experienced masters had command of them. Designs with the "pod fon" ornament are found on objects made to special order or as gifts. These objects sometimes preserve an inscription giving the date of creation, the name of the owner and sometimes the name of the master. Among them are the bottom boards of spinning wheels and sewing stands, bast baskets for berries, small benches, yokes and shaft bows.
Dated wares with "pod fon" painting belonging to the middle of the 19th century are almost unique. The Nizhny Novgorod Museum of Local Lore holds a shaft bow marked with the year 1857. Its painting has a composition widely used in decorating such kinds of ware: paired heraldic golden lions at the base and a rosette at the top by the opening for attaching the bell. The main part of the surface of the shaft bow is decorated with an ornament recalling the designs of patterned fabrics, with golden leaves and bunches of grapes. The painting was executed by the hand of an experienced ornamentalist. The intricate curves of the vines are drawn carefully and finely. And although the painting is interesting in its elaborateness, it nevertheless lacks that boldness and freedom of brushwork which we especially value in Khokhloma.
On later shaft bows the "pod fon" ornament is executed in a more unconstrained manner. Only in the second half of the 19th century, in connection with the development of furniture production in Khokhloma, does the "pod fon" painting technique become more widespread. Ornaments with golden flowers and birds on a black ground, executed especially often on children's tables and chairs, attract attention by the beauty of the pattern applied with free movements of the brush. As in the grass designs, in "pod fon" painting its own clearly worked-out devices of ornamental shorthand appear. The compositions become stricter, more laconic and at the same time more emotionally expressive.
The devices for executing the "kudrina" ornament are less labour-intensive than "pod fon" painting. From the middle of the 19th century many Khokhloma masters already had a wide command of them. "Kudrina" designs were painted on cups and on large "artel" dishes. In their large monumental forms they recalled the patterns of Volga house carving. In the second half of the 19th century "kudrina" motifs were often executed in the painting of spoons as well. In every workshop they were painted by the most skilful masters on the so-called spoons with a "face", which were laid one at a time on top in the box with cheap plain spoons in order to show the abilities and skill of the "scribes".
As documentary materials testify, already in the middle of the 18th century the inhabitants of several dozen villages were engaged in Khokhloma painting. Turned wooden ware was brought in large quantities to the Makaryev Fair. Bright patterned golden bowls and bratinas stood in rows on the Volga bank, gleaming in the sun. From there they were carried on barges all over the country and beyond its borders.
In the second half of the 19th century quite a few kinds of ware were made in Khokhloma. Here they made large plank dishes reaching a metre in diameter, known as artel or burlak dishes, cups and plates of various sizes, postavtsy, salt cellars, kandeiki, flour scoops and other articles. For themselves and to the order of fellow villagers the masters painted shaft bows, spinning wheels and sewing stands, baskets for berries and mushrooms, and bast mochesniki for keeping spindles.
At that time the craft represented a grandiose handicraft production of painted ware. A division of labour had clearly taken shape between the inhabitants of the different villages. In some settlements they prepared the timber, in others they engaged in turning, in a third they carved spoons out of wood, in a fourth they painted the wares. This whole complex system of production was managed by the buyers-up. They bought semi-finished goods from some masters and resold them to others, and bought up the finished production.
Some buyers-up maintained their own workshops, where turners, spoon makers and painters worked. The largest village in which the painting masters lived was formerly called Bezdeli (now it is the village of Novopokrovskoye). That is how it is named in historical documents of the 18th - 19th centuries. Nor has this name been forgotten today. The masters explain its origin as follows: "The ploughmen envied our occupation with art. They considered our labour idleness. 'They do not work, they only play about with a brush,' they said of us, and so they nicknamed the village Bezdeli."
But in the memory of old residents and in documentary materials much evidence has been preserved of the hardship of the masters' forced labour for the buyers-up. The buyer-up was the full master of the craft; he strove in every way to cut the workers' pay. In the dye-houses they worked from two o'clock in the night until late in the evening. It was especially hard for the children to work. Often on dark winter nights they fell asleep with the brush in their hands. Their earnings were barely enough for food. And in spite of all this, the art of Khokhloma lived on. In almost every village there were masters who composed new patterns. They decorated with painting spinning wheels, sewing stands, baskets and postavtsy.
The old residents of the village of Novopokrovskoye even tell of how Ivan Mikhailovich Krasilnikov, locking himself in the workshop, painted Zmey Gorynych on a piece of bast matting. They also remember Ivan Mikhailovich's father, Mikhail Krasilnikov, who dreamed of going to Petersburg to study in order to become an artist. He decided to show his mastery at the exhibition of 1884 and painted on a table top a picture, "A Peasant Morning". He depicted a village, a shepherd with a horn, peasants driving out the cattle, and surrounded the whole picture with a frame of golden "kudrina" curls. It is said that the work was a success at the exhibition: the master was summoned to Petersburg and rewarded with a watch and a sheepskin coat. However, no one offered him the chance to study in the capital. Out of grief the master drank away both the watch and the coat.
Yakov Marusin was also considered an excellent painter in Novopokrovskoye — a man of rare all-round talent, a joker and a freethinker. A mochesnik of his making has been preserved in the Semyonov Museum.
In the former house of the buyer-up Tyukalov, where he long lived as a farm labourer, there are to this day doors painted by him, on which are depicted a man in an oriental turban with a sabre and a woman in a kerchief and a sarafan. Yakov Marusin died in 1916 in Siberia, having gone there in search of happiness, which he never managed to find.
At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century hard times came for Khokhloma. Demand for painted wooden ware began to fall rapidly, as it was gradually displaced more and more by factory production. The importance of the craft as a supplier of objects for everyday peasant use declined. Trade in the wares grew especially worse in the years of the Russo-Japanese and the First World War. Many dye-houses closed. Some of the masters were sent to the front.
The difficult situation in the folk crafts compelled the Nizhny Novgorod zemstvo to take emergency measures. It gave special attention to Khokhloma. Artists were sent there who attempted to adapt its wares to the tastes of urban buyers.
At that time a deep interest in the monuments of Russian antiquity arose among the Russian intelligentsia. People began to study and collect them. This brought popularity to the wares of folk crafts as well. In order to secure sales of Khokhloma wares, artists began to make "antique-style" models for it.
Thus there appeared at the craft ladles of fanciful shapes resembling snakes and dragons, chairs and sofas with horses' heads, bulky tables and sideboards with heavy turned legs, needlework boxes that looked like cast-iron weights. In decorating these wares, the motifs of the "background" and "kudrina" paintings were distorted. An ornament of "Slavic interlace" appeared - an unsuccessful imitation of the designs of old manuscript headpieces. It was marked by dry stylized forms and coarse, gaudy colouring.
It could not be painted by the techniques customary for Khokhloma, and so stencils appeared in the craftsmen's work. At that time grass painting was performed only in those workshops where cheap bowls and dishes for the village market continued to be painted. The "grass" pattern acquired the disdainful name of plain colouring, or "peasant" designs. For grass painting they paid half as much.
The folk art of the craft did not perish in those years either. The influence of the models imposed by the zemstvo affected mainly the craftsmen who worked in the dye-shops of wealthy owners. It scarcely touched the hovels of the poor, where the traditional grass ornament was painted.
During the Great Patriotic War the craft lost a considerable number of the artists who had shown themselves brilliantly in the art of the preceding years. The talented ornamentalist Anatoly Grigoryevich Podogov was killed in the battles on the Dnieper. Arkhip Mikhailovich Serov, Semyon Stepanovich Yuzikov and Ivan Yegorovich Tyukalov were gone. Many craftsmen did not return from the front.
The modern approach
In the first postwar years the chief task of the craft became the restoration of its creative body of artists and the training of young people. A great deal of work in this direction was done by the experienced masters of the Semyonov art school. In the Kovernino district of the Gorky region, remote from Semyonov, the young craftsmen were taught by the oldest artists - Nikolai Grigoryevich and Nikanor Grigoryevich Podogov and Fyodor Andreyevich Bedin. Mastering the traditional foundations of the craft's art was helped by the collection of Khokhloma ornaments assembled by Nikolai Grigoryevich Podogov.
Aware of the importance of passing knowledge on to new generations of artists, the master began work on an album of Khokhloma ornaments back in the years of the Great Patriotic War. Over several years he drew the plates, recalling the patterns he had seen, and wrote down everything he had heard from his father and grandfather. He was helped in this work by his daughter Anna, who by that time had already become an experienced master. In this way four copies of the album were created, capturing many ornaments of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This most valuable collection of drawings helped to preserve the traditional painting techniques in the art of Khokhloma.
At the exhibitions of applied decorative art held in 1945 - 1946 many works by Khokhloma artists were shown. Like the masters of other crafts, they strove to create works imbued with the spirit of patriotism. Floral ornament acquired a new meaning for them. It became a means of a particular ornamental narrative about the wealth and beauty of their native countryside.
The enthusiasm for grass ornament characteristic of the preceding period gave way to a search for new designs in the "background" technique, whose possibilities matched the masters' wish to create a richer and more festive painting. Many works at that time were executed on a red cinnabar background.
A new understanding took shape of designs with a golden pattern and the joyful, resonant combination of cinnabar and gold, linked with ideas of the natural riches of the Russian land. The "background" painting also interested the masters because it made it possible to strengthen the role of graphic drawing in a composition, which broadened the pictorial possibilities of ornament.
The desire to give ornamental painting a new resonance showed itself in the choice of ornamental motifs and their treatment. The masters were especially drawn to motifs of ripe ears of grain, branches weighed down with fruit, bunches of grapes and lush floral garlands symbolizing abundance. In depicting them the role of hatched highlighting increased, strengthening the sense of the volume of the form. This was something of a departure from the flat treatment traditional for Khokhloma.
Bolder combinations of motifs appeared in the painting. This can be seen, for example, in one of the most interesting works - a large standing cupboard made for the exhibition in honour of the victory in the Great Patriotic War. Its author was the talented Kovernino artist Lidiya Ivanovna Maslova, one of Anatoly Podogov's pupils.
On a black background, beside the red berries of the rowan, she painted its white flowers on supple, slender branches with green and golden foliage. Her ornament, combining spring blossoms and ripe autumn fruit, turned out remarkably elegant. The appearance of such painting caused great argument among the Kovernino masters. Many doubted whether an artist had the right to depict what cannot be seen in nature. Defending her position, Lidiya Maslova explained: "In an ornament you can tell more about nature than we see at any one moment. So if we are drawing a rowan and thinking about the forest, we are not violating the truth by drawing flowers and berries together. It helps us convey the beauty of the forest and show it in a single design both blossoming in spring and golden with red autumn berries."
The artist's idea interested other masters as well. Designs with flowers and berries appeared in the works of L. A. Belyanina, Ye. A. Belova and N. P. Kudryashov. In those same years they were often executed by the Semyonov artists Ye. F. Sennikova, N. A. Chikalova, A. P. Savinova, A. Ye. Muravyov and others. A distinctive ornamental suite on themes of Russian nature sounded in the cheerful and slightly naive paintings executed by A. V. Podogova on bowls. Her designs of "wild strawberries on black ground", "gooseberries on golden ground", "raspberries on yellow ground" and "a red apple on brown ground" are imbued with a deeply individual poetic feeling.
At the same time the Khokhloma masters attempted to introduce into floral ornament images of coats of arms, emblems, architectural monuments and even portraits. In creating such paintings the masters could not be helped by their previously accumulated experience, and so they were compelled to turn to the artistic means of other kinds of art, and above all to graphic art. Thus in the 1940s and early 1950s a whole series of works appeared: A. Ye. Muravyov's goblet with a portrait of Alexander Nevsky, two large decorative dishes by Ye. F. Sennikova with a design of the Order of Victory and the coat of arms of the USSR, a casket by N. A. Denisova-Chikalova with the Order of Victory, plates depicting Red Square by O. S. Bulganina and A. P. Kuznetsova, F. A. Bedin's large decorative vase "Victory Salute" and others.
All these works were created by talented masters who worked with enthusiasm in a field of composition that was new to them. But in resorting to the artistic language of graphic art, the masters inevitably went beyond the customary bounds of their own art. And they were not yet able to find techniques closer to Khokhloma for depicting the new motifs. For that reason the paintings lacked wholeness of artistic solution.
Of the works named, the most successful was Ye. F. Sennikova's dish with the coat of arms of the USSR, shown at the exhibition in honour of the thirtieth anniversary of the Soviet state. However, even in its composition it was still the ornament that came out best. Surrounding the image of the coat of arms with a wreath of light, luxuriant flowers, Sennikova managed to convey the exultant flowering of nature. There are no repeating forms in the ornament. Peering at each branch, at each flower, you make out ever new motifs, united into a common pattern by the rhythm of the movement around the circle.
In the 1940s and 1950s two independent directions already stood out clearly in the art of the craft, in each of which the common artistic traditions lived on in their own way. One of them was connected with the work of the masters of the Kovernino district of the Gorky region, and the other with the collective of the Semyonov factory and art school.
As in the 1930s, the Semyonov masters showed an inclination towards ornamental fantasy. On their wares they painted exotic flowers of complex shapes, resembling the lilies, dahlias and tulips they are so fond of growing in their front gardens. Characteristic of them is a turn towards ornamental graphic art. The masters' paintings are distinguished by a particular delicacy and meticulousness of the contour linear drawing with hatched highlighting.
At that time the artists executed the paintings for the "Tabaktorg" store and the "Moskva" restaurant in Gorky. In them the striving for a particular exoticism to some extent revived the not yet wholly forgotten "pseudo-Russian" style with its deliberate patterning and gilt prettiness.
Some large exhibition works the masters executed jointly. The deadlines for such works were usually very tight, and a single artist could not manage them. On such days only the word "we" was heard in the workshop. Everything of interest that anyone managed to devise added to the common design. N. A. Chikalova was better than anyone at drawing the shapes of large vases. Spreading out sheets of paper, she confidently sketched the silhouettes of goblets, caskets and vases, recalling the shapes of objects she had liked at exhibitions or in museums. The best of them were selected.
.."Paint more simply," Stepan Pavlovich Veselov often said. "In our trade there is great beauty in restraint. A good master draws the very simplest sprig of grass with feeling. We see many beautiful grasses and flowers in nature and we admire them all, but a true master will choose a few and express the main thing. Art is the ability to choose."
Criticism
Like any other worldwide phenomenon, Khokhloma has entered the ironic folklore of Nizhny Novgorod's urban milieu.
It contains the non-artistic expression "to paint someone Khokhloma-style", meaning to inflict multiple bruises that stand out vividly on an opponent's body.
Interesting facts
- For President Medvedev's inauguration a Khokhloma wooden spoon taller than he is was made.
- For the fiftieth birthday of the director Mikhalkov, held to be a descendant of a high-ranking nobleman - a tsar's bedchamber attendant - a special Khokhloma set was made, comprising the "Tsar's Repast" table service, a moustachioed matryoshka (archived) , a wooden hat with the inscription "To Nikita Mikhalkov on his anniversary", a decorative walking stick and a plate depicting a family scene.