A collection of objects of folk architectural woodcarving began to form in the Museum of Architecture at the turn of the 1930s – 1940s. In the 1960s, this collection was replenished: it included fragments of external decoration of civil and religious wooden architecture of the 18th – 19th centuries. All of them were brought from expeditions organized by the Museum to the regions of the Vladimir region, the Volga region and the Russian North.
Among the earliest in the time of creation of structural elements and decorative finishing of civil architecture are exhibits originating from residential peasant houses of the 18th century. By this time, stable types of wooden peasant huts, which had regional and property features, had already been developed in civil architecture.
Thus, the northern courtyards-houses were formed by four-walled, five-walled, six-walled huts placed on a high basement, which were supplemented by a passage and were united by a single roof with utility structures. Wooden log structures had a special nailless roof structure, which was called male. On the male logs, which rose in the form of "stepped pediments" of the end walls, horizontal slabs were laid, which served as the basis of the structure. Hook-shaped poles, called chickens, were placed transversely on the slab, the lower ends of which were processed in the form of animalistic figures.
The roof was usually covered with boards. On the bent ends of the chickens, streams rectangular in cross-section or gutter-like streams were laid horizontally, the ends of which were decorated with carvings. Roofing boards on the ridge of the roof were fixed with a powerful trough-shaped log called an ochlupen or a shell.
The front facade facing the street received rich carved decoration. The end of the oglupnya crowning the facade was decorated with carvings in the form of a simple geometric or zoomorphic figure. The ends of the bed, overlooking the facade, were covered with carved moorings, which emphasized the gable character of the roof. A carved towel descended under the decorative end of the hut, marking the central axis of the front facade of the hut. The upper part of the facade at the attic level was separated by a frontal board, which was also decorated with ornamental carvings, plant motifs or figurative images. Carving was used to decorate the boards covering the sections of the logs facing the facade, window frames of the residential floor, and attic windows.
One of the exhibits of the Museum of Architecture collection - a chicken of a residential building in the village of Purnema, Arkhangelsk Region - has the shape of a stylized bird, which is especially common for such architectural elements.
At the same time, samples of the roof of the curved surfaces of church domes and barrels (ploughshare, shingles) are dated. The outer end of the ploughshare was processed in the form of a point, a semicircle or stepped "towns", due to which the overall appearance of the roof acquired an original ornamental pattern. The collection of the Museum of Architecture presents all types of decorative processing of a ploughshare, the earliest of which are the plowshares of the heads of the Dmitrov Church in Veliky Ustyug and the Nikolsky Church in Purnema.
A number of museum samples of monumental and decorative carving of monuments of rural architecture of the Volga region give an idea of the main stages of the artistic and stylistic development of Russian wooden architecture during the 19th century. The carved design of the piers or fenders was especially elegant - the frontal roof boards, which protected the ends of the slopes (trays or drips) from decay - the horizontal structural elements of the roof frame in the form of poles. The junction of the piers at the end of the prince's (ridge) roof was masked with short boards (towels or anemone), which were also richly decorated with carved ornaments. In some rural houses, the external decoration of which reveals a stylistic attraction to the decoration of urban buildings, carved frieze boards (sometimes in combination with a carved cornice), visually separating the attic rooms of the hut from the rest of the house, are an additional decoration of the facade.
In the carved decoration of window openings, the most impressive decor was the mowing or red windows of the upper room - the living quarters of the second floor of the hut. In rich rural houses, there is also an expressive decorative solution for the window frames of the basement - the lower floor of the house, the premises of which were used for household needs [1].
Images of mermaids - sirens, pharaohs or bereginas - gained particular popularity in the decoration of the Volga folk dwelling of the mid-19th century. The name "pharaoh" was adopted according to popular belief, according to which the army of the Egyptian pharaoh, pursuing the Israelites during their passage through the Red Sea, drowned and turned into fantastic creatures with fish tails instead of legs. This motif is found in many variants in the decor of friezes and window frames [2].
The original stylistic feature of the Volga region carving of the mid-19th century was the combination of traditional decorative elements with characteristic ornamental and order motifs of the Russian Empire style. One of the most common elements in the decoration of wooden civil structures of this time was the rosette. In terms of size, shape and design, this decorative detail is distinguished by a special variety of varieties: these are square, round, oval, diamond-shaped, semi-oval rosettes. In some cases, this motive becomes dominant. The gate leaf from the museum collection is magnificent in its decorative merits and originality of design. The entire composition is centered by a large 16-petal rosette, the pattern of which is complicated by stems with leaves spreading over the entire surface of the valve - stylized acanthus shoots.
In the decorative design of the casing of the basement window of the Gusenkov (Guskov) house in the village of Vashkino, Chkalovsky district of the Nizhny Novgorod province, kept in the Museum's funds, two half-rosettes of a fan-shaped pattern are such a decorative dominant. One of them forms a semi-oval ledge under the window opening, the other is inscribed in a triangular pediment crowning the casing.
Most often, rosettes are introduced as one of the finishing components for window frames, friezes and piers. From a peculiar combination in the ornamental drawing of such compositions of rosettes, acanthus and other motifs of Empire floral decor, details of classical orders with figured elements of folk carving, as the exhibits of the museum collection show, original artistic images are often born. The most indicative in this respect is the decoration of the friezes and the upper part of the window frames. The originality of these compositions is largely based on the decorative understanding of the order details - triglyphs, ionics, himation, denticles, modulons. In the free creative treatment of carvers, such motifs acquire the form of purely ornamental elements, in the stylized forms of which the original order source is only remotely guessed.
In the 1870s - 1880s, a gradual change in the style of architectural carved decor took place. The plasticity of ornamental motifs gives way to their flat-graphic design. Compositions lose their monumental clarity of construction, become fractional, saturated with small details. Elements of figured carving, among which the motifs of the Sirin bird and stylized lions are especially common, acquire a complication of outlines, as if dissolving into ornamental "lace". The "carpet" effect is created due to the flattened, rectangular relief of the carved decor, the pattern of which forms sharp light and shadow contrasts.
These features are clearly demonstrated by two remarkable window frames from the first half of the 1880s from the collection of the Museum of Architecture. Such windows were called "fire windows" or "attic rumors" and were used to illuminate attics or work rooms arranged under the roof of some houses. Due to a significant inflow of light through large windows, which were sometimes located not in one, but in several walls of the room, such premises were called "light beams". In the Volga region and some other regions, a certain type of "light" casing with characteristic features of construction and decorative finishing has developed. Such platbands, as a rule, had a three-part shape, in which the middle span stood out twice as wide. The design of the casing included twisted columns separating the window spans, bearing the upper completion in the form of a frieze topped with a pediment. The number of columns could vary from four to eight. A decorative recess was made in the center of the pediment, the general outline of which resembled a kokoshnik in shape. The basement part of the platband, on which the columns rest, usually looked like a three-part shelf, in the middle of which the date of the house construction or the owner's initials were carved. The design was subject to a certain proportional order. So, for example, the height of the column capital was most often one sixth or one seventh of the total length of the column, and the height of the pediment was equal to one third of its width [3].
A similar decorative design of attic windows was common during this period in the decoration of peasant residential houses in certain regions of the Vladimir province, as well as in the southeastern counties of the Nizhny Novgorod province, in particular Lyskovsky and Kstovsky. The stylistics of these works, to which the objects from the Museum's collection belong, reveals a gravitation towards the artistic system of the popular at that time "Russian style", which varied the motives of ancient Russian ornamental and architectural forms. This stylistic affinity is most noticeable in the varied drawing of twisted columns and keeled niches, turned into barrel-shaped kokoshniks, in asymmetry and in the "carpet" ligature of carved ornament. The figured elements of the carving are closely related to the motives of the white-stone carved decor of the Vladimir-Suzdal architectural monuments of the 12th century. [4]
The museum has an interesting example of a late version of the carved decoration of a residential building dating back to the turn of the 20th century. In the carved composition of the crowning part of the window casing in the form of a pediment resting on brackets, new technical methods of wood processing can be traced. In addition to the blind thread details typical of earlier times, the cutter uses mechanically cut attachments here. The mechanistic nature of the execution inevitably leaves an imprint on the stylistics of ornamental motifs, which are losing the unique variety of drawing and the warmth of "hand-made".
In conclusion, I would like to note that the samples at the disposal of the museum collection demonstrate a number of interesting connections and mutual influences of wood carving and stone decor. The originality of the understanding of the role of order elements as components of the decorative system of facades was expressed in the organic inclusion of classicistic motifs in the existing architectonics of rural architecture and its decorative furnishings. The picturesqueness and juicy plasticity of the “ship's carving”, exquisite graphics and inexhaustible variety of ornamentation of Russian folk carving are given new life in the author's projects of architects of the period of Historicism and Art Nouveau. [1] Detailed analysis of the typology and design of a peasant house in connection with the external carved decor: Krasovsky M. V. Wooden architecture. SPb., 2005. S. 25–47.
[2] For the origin of the “pharaohs” motif and its artistic interpretation in Russian carved decor of the 19th century, see, in particular: I. M. Bibikova. Monumental and decorative woodcarving // Russian decorative art. T. 3. XIX - early XX century. M., 1965. S. 196; Pharaohs // Mythological Dictionary. Ch. ed. EAT. Meletinsky. M., 1990. Belova O. V. Pharaohs // Slavic mythology. Encyclopedic Dictionary. M, 2002.
[3] Analysis of the proportional order characteristic of light-beamed platbands: Sobolev NN Russian folk woodcarving. M., 2000. S. 110.
[4] Researchers note the close interconnection of such popular motifs of carved decor in Russian wooden architecture of the 19th century as images of lions with flourishing tails and Sirin birds with the iconography of white stone reliefs of the Dmitrievsky Cathedral in Vladimir, as well as St. George's Cathedral in Yuryev-Polsky: Sobolev N. N. Russian folk woodcarving. M., 2000. S. 111; Bibikova I. M. Monumental and decorative woodcarving // Russian decorative art. T. 3. M., 1965. S. 187.