Vera Mukhina

June 6 is the birthday  (1889) of sculptor Vera Mukhina, who is probably most famous for her 24-meter Worker and Kolkhoz Woman, created in 1937 for the World Exhibition in Paris.

After their tour of duty in Paris, the Worker and Kolkhoz Woman were transplanted to the VDNKh exhibition complex in Moscow, where they served as a symbol of Soviet largesse (and as the logo for Mosfilm).

By last year, the sixty-five-year-old statue was urgently in need of restoration (see Russian Life Jan/Feb 2004). It was quite a task to carefully dismantle the huge statue and not damage its thin, steel cover. Lines were drawn on a miniature plaster copy of the statue, dividing it into 17 parts. Then the arms, hands, heads and other parts of the giant figures were cut apart according to the model. The statue is expected to be back in its familiar location by the end of 2005.

Restoration of the statue began on October 5, 2003. Coincidentally,  that week was the birthday of a classic Mukhina design: the ubiquitous granyony stakan – the thick glass tumbler created for the working classes.

In the middle of the 1980s, half a billion tumblers were produced every year – several a year for each Soviet citizen. Used throughout the country, from stolovayas to kommunalkas to dachas and as the glass of choice for serious vodka consumption, the granyony stakan was one of the few Soviet goods that were never in short supply.

The thick glass tumbler is very simple in form, with 12 flat sides and about an inch of smooth edging at the top. Interestingly,  the tumblers have become rarer in Moscow of late. It turns out that they are now only produced at one glass factory, in the town of Gus-Khrustalny.

Mukhina designed her tumbler in 1943, during the Siege of Leningrad, when she was the head of the Art Glass Studio. During that period, Mukhina, the author of grand monuments and a participant in Soviet monumental propaganda, was exploring simpler forms. Mukhina’s great grandson, Aleksei Veselovsky, said he does not consider her design of the tumbler an important element of her artistic biography. He supposes she did it (along with other work, like labels for candies) as a way to supplement her income. Yet it is hard to deny that no other work of Mukhina’s is less recognized and more ubiquitous.

According to legend, a thick glass tumbler appeared long before Mukhina designed her version. The story goes that glass blowers from the town of Vladimir presented the first thick glass tumbler to Peter I, claiming that it was practically impossible to break. Predictably, Peter the Great immediately threw the glass to the floor, whence the “unbreakable” tumbler shattered. The boyars present comforted Peter by saying it was a sign of luck. The Russian tradition of breaking plates and dishes for luck is believed to stem from this episode.

The history of thick glass tumblers is full of interesting facts. For example, after WWII a special dishwasher was developed specially for this kind of tumbler.

In the 1980s, when the tumblers cost just seven kopeks and were to be found in nearly every house, glasses suddenly began to explode spontaneously. Some people said it was a secret, anti-alcohol program, but later it turned out that a number of tumblers were produced using improperly adjusted new foreign machines.

Today, the era of Mukhina’s tumbler has ended with a whimper: a new generation of plastic tumblers has arrived to replace them.