Saturday, June 30, 2001
Icons and other unrecognized Russian folk-art collectibles
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis:
One of the pleasures of country living is the weekly antiques and books fair, held on the green or in the school house of some pretty town in NY or Mass. We go there for books, and neat things that will enhance the ambiance of our existence, at negotiable prices. Meanwhile, we have acquired a new taste, for Staffordshire 9 1/4 inch historical porcelain plates of local subjects, a thing that the wily Brits made a pretty penny off of, from the 1700s until WWII. .Our few pieces are largely early 20th Century blue Wedgewood plates of Albany, van Rensselaer mansions and such. There are no sleepers here, only decorative values. The rare ones have been bought up long ago, or are out of our reach.
Scarcity of goods, in the face of growing collector interest has brought new kinds of country rarities into the market - old furniture and household goods from the former USSR Huge armoires with carvings and painted pictures from Belorussia abound. But the truly interesting items are Russian icons, paintings of saints and patriarchs, once used in churches and for family prayers.
We had seen fine icons in Sitka, Alaska, settled by Russians before the US bought it for pennies per acre. (Seward’s Folly was the smartest move US made). The wooden and metal images were worn down by kisses of the faithful, an had been covered by glass (plastic, in modern days). Finding old icons in the Sheffield, MA antiques fair was a new experience .
There we mer Dennis and Penny Easter of Palm Beach (www.russianstore.com), knowledgeable dealers in Russian art who have been making buying trips to Eastern Europe for 12 years. Many icons, painted since the 10th Century, were destroyed during the anti-religious Communist era, when houses of worship in the former USSR were burned down or turned into social clubs, therefore church-quality art is scarce. What typically survives is the 18th-19th Century family icon, hidden in the home, a small (8 ½ x 11 paper size) wooden block, 1-2 inches thick, of two heavy hardwood rectangles joined by a wooden crosspiece or strap in the back, and warped, nevertheless. Created mostly in the Golden Circle of some four villages an hour away from Moscow, the Byzantine portrayals of haloed saints and holy persons were strange presences in Sheffield, among the pieces of country furniture , Empire chairs and Victorian glassware that most dealers show.
Old and beautiful, icons are hard to come by. Russia controls the export of these national treasures. Consequently, smugglers bring them out of the country, much the same way as the Etruscan grave and Egyptian pyramid robbers of yore moved the relics of classical antiquity to Western Europe and America. [Actually, the rulers of the USSR had done their share of pilferage too, selling the treasures of the Tzars to the West before WWII, through Armand Hammer, subsequently the Tzar of Occidental Oil.] An icon, bought in Lithuania, where it was brought in from Russia through Belorussia, will carry legitimate export documentation from the Baltics - the Lithuanians don’t care, it is not their national treasure.
Icons rich in art are costly. A 19th Century household icon seen recently, priced at $1,900 had five Metropolitans in the center frame, surrounded by eight little pictures illustrating events in saints’ lives, the detail drawn with with a thin squirrel-hair brush, much of it in gold paint, covered with many layers of lacquer. The four villages produced good art - Fedoshino artists painted in oil, while egg tempera was predominant in Palekh, Khouli and Mstera - and they still do. You see, under the repressive USSR regime the village artisans switched their main effort from icons to manufacturing miniature lacquered boxes, also a Russian tradition of several centuries.
The boxes are of paper-mache, layers of paper and glue, sandpapered, painted black on the outside and red inside, receive 20 layers of lacquer before they are turned over to the painters, who decorate them with miniature paintings, mostly scenes of Russian mythology and village life. The artists work under large magnifying glasses with small brushes, some of them holding only one or two squirrel hairs. The artists (there are around 200 of them in the "factories") must have college degrees and 10 years of apprenticeship The boxes, which cost upwards of $300, are signed in bottom right, in tiny Cyrillic script, with the town identified on the left and the scene in the middle. "Street boxes," made of wood and painted by lesser artists, known as "the school of..." type, sell for $30-50 in the streets of Moscow.
The boxes were popularized in the US starting 1966, when Lucy Maxym, an entrepreneur and writer, discovered them, then began importing and selling them. Besides her "History and Art of the Icon" (1986), the two volumes of "Russian Lacquer; Legends and Fairy Tales" (1986, 1989) are the standard works on the topic. Her collection of over 100 boxes resides in the Toy and Miniature Museum in Kansas City, MO.
The Matryushka nesting dolls, a Russian tradition since the mid-1700s, have become popular in the US.. As many as 30 hollow wooden dolls, like eggs cut in half at the waist, are placed inside each other. They too come from the Golden Circle, originating in the prestigious art center within the Sergei-Posan monastery in Zagorsk. Nowadays the shells are machine-lathed and the joining edges that twist into each other are reinforced by heat before they are turned over to artists. Traditional scenes are either painted or burned with a glowing burin into the polished surfaces. The hand-painted subjects are the real objects of art: faces, figures, architectural scenes. Since America became aware of Matryushka dolls, U.S. presidents, members of the Chicago Bulls and other sports figures have become popular, until the NBA got on the opportunistic smalltime manufacturers, accusing them of infringement of property rights. Weret the faces of Michael Jordan, Scotty Pippen and Denis Rodman at stake? No, it was the NBA uniforms and insignia. The enterprising Russians desisted, but not entirely. Some 4,000 different varieties of nesting dolls are said to be available in the U.S.
Another form of Russian lacquer, small candy bowls with red and black intricate patterns, are good holiday presents to give. We discovered them in Alaska, where many Russian art shops lure the tourists. Beautiful and a good art value, all of these varieties of artistic handwork creations will stand up for a long time (you should not untwist and rejoin the Matryoshkas too frequently, and don’t try to force them in humid weather, put them in the freezer for a spell), the dolls, boxes and bowls are true collectibles, with value easily discernible by the artistry and care of execution of the paintings..But the values of works of art as collectibles depend on popular taste, ruled by name recognition, potential of appreciation in value and liquidity Today’s baseball cards, printed paper tickets manufactured in the millions, are the perfect collectibles. Beauty cannot compete with such popularity and appreciation potential..
One of the pleasures of country living is the weekly antiques and books fair, held on the green or in the school house of some pretty town in NY or Mass. We go there for books, and neat things that will enhance the ambiance of our existence, at negotiable prices. Meanwhile, we have acquired a new taste, for Staffordshire 9 1/4 inch historical porcelain plates of local subjects, a thing that the wily Brits made a pretty penny off of, from the 1700s until WWII. .Our few pieces are largely early 20th Century blue Wedgewood plates of Albany, van Rensselaer mansions and such. There are no sleepers here, only decorative values. The rare ones have been bought up long ago, or are out of our reach.
Scarcity of goods, in the face of growing collector interest has brought new kinds of country rarities into the market - old furniture and household goods from the former USSR Huge armoires with carvings and painted pictures from Belorussia abound. But the truly interesting items are Russian icons, paintings of saints and patriarchs, once used in churches and for family prayers.
We had seen fine icons in Sitka, Alaska, settled by Russians before the US bought it for pennies per acre. (Seward’s Folly was the smartest move US made). The wooden and metal images were worn down by kisses of the faithful, an had been covered by glass (plastic, in modern days). Finding old icons in the Sheffield, MA antiques fair was a new experience .
There we mer Dennis and Penny Easter of Palm Beach (www.russianstore.com), knowledgeable dealers in Russian art who have been making buying trips to Eastern Europe for 12 years. Many icons, painted since the 10th Century, were destroyed during the anti-religious Communist era, when houses of worship in the former USSR were burned down or turned into social clubs, therefore church-quality art is scarce. What typically survives is the 18th-19th Century family icon, hidden in the home, a small (8 ½ x 11 paper size) wooden block, 1-2 inches thick, of two heavy hardwood rectangles joined by a wooden crosspiece or strap in the back, and warped, nevertheless. Created mostly in the Golden Circle of some four villages an hour away from Moscow, the Byzantine portrayals of haloed saints and holy persons were strange presences in Sheffield, among the pieces of country furniture , Empire chairs and Victorian glassware that most dealers show.
Old and beautiful, icons are hard to come by. Russia controls the export of these national treasures. Consequently, smugglers bring them out of the country, much the same way as the Etruscan grave and Egyptian pyramid robbers of yore moved the relics of classical antiquity to Western Europe and America. [Actually, the rulers of the USSR had done their share of pilferage too, selling the treasures of the Tzars to the West before WWII, through Armand Hammer, subsequently the Tzar of Occidental Oil.] An icon, bought in Lithuania, where it was brought in from Russia through Belorussia, will carry legitimate export documentation from the Baltics - the Lithuanians don’t care, it is not their national treasure.
Icons rich in art are costly. A 19th Century household icon seen recently, priced at $1,900 had five Metropolitans in the center frame, surrounded by eight little pictures illustrating events in saints’ lives, the detail drawn with with a thin squirrel-hair brush, much of it in gold paint, covered with many layers of lacquer. The four villages produced good art - Fedoshino artists painted in oil, while egg tempera was predominant in Palekh, Khouli and Mstera - and they still do. You see, under the repressive USSR regime the village artisans switched their main effort from icons to manufacturing miniature lacquered boxes, also a Russian tradition of several centuries.
The boxes are of paper-mache, layers of paper and glue, sandpapered, painted black on the outside and red inside, receive 20 layers of lacquer before they are turned over to the painters, who decorate them with miniature paintings, mostly scenes of Russian mythology and village life. The artists work under large magnifying glasses with small brushes, some of them holding only one or two squirrel hairs. The artists (there are around 200 of them in the "factories") must have college degrees and 10 years of apprenticeship The boxes, which cost upwards of $300, are signed in bottom right, in tiny Cyrillic script, with the town identified on the left and the scene in the middle. "Street boxes," made of wood and painted by lesser artists, known as "the school of..." type, sell for $30-50 in the streets of Moscow.
The boxes were popularized in the US starting 1966, when Lucy Maxym, an entrepreneur and writer, discovered them, then began importing and selling them. Besides her "History and Art of the Icon" (1986), the two volumes of "Russian Lacquer; Legends and Fairy Tales" (1986, 1989) are the standard works on the topic. Her collection of over 100 boxes resides in the Toy and Miniature Museum in Kansas City, MO.
The Matryushka nesting dolls, a Russian tradition since the mid-1700s, have become popular in the US.. As many as 30 hollow wooden dolls, like eggs cut in half at the waist, are placed inside each other. They too come from the Golden Circle, originating in the prestigious art center within the Sergei-Posan monastery in Zagorsk. Nowadays the shells are machine-lathed and the joining edges that twist into each other are reinforced by heat before they are turned over to artists. Traditional scenes are either painted or burned with a glowing burin into the polished surfaces. The hand-painted subjects are the real objects of art: faces, figures, architectural scenes. Since America became aware of Matryushka dolls, U.S. presidents, members of the Chicago Bulls and other sports figures have become popular, until the NBA got on the opportunistic smalltime manufacturers, accusing them of infringement of property rights. Weret the faces of Michael Jordan, Scotty Pippen and Denis Rodman at stake? No, it was the NBA uniforms and insignia. The enterprising Russians desisted, but not entirely. Some 4,000 different varieties of nesting dolls are said to be available in the U.S.
Another form of Russian lacquer, small candy bowls with red and black intricate patterns, are good holiday presents to give. We discovered them in Alaska, where many Russian art shops lure the tourists. Beautiful and a good art value, all of these varieties of artistic handwork creations will stand up for a long time (you should not untwist and rejoin the Matryoshkas too frequently, and don’t try to force them in humid weather, put them in the freezer for a spell), the dolls, boxes and bowls are true collectibles, with value easily discernible by the artistry and care of execution of the paintings..But the values of works of art as collectibles depend on popular taste, ruled by name recognition, potential of appreciation in value and liquidity Today’s baseball cards, printed paper tickets manufactured in the millions, are the perfect collectibles. Beauty cannot compete with such popularity and appreciation potential..
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 5:48 AM 
