Mysterious Folk Art

Among the folk art treasures at St. Petersburg’s Russian Museum, a collection of pryalki catches the eye. Carved from oak, fir, birch, linden or other available wood, each of the thirty-plus artifacts on display has an oar-shaped base (dontse) and an upright “blade” (lopaska). Some are incised with intricate designs, others brightly painted with floral, bird, or tree motifs and geometric patterns. Ornate, ridged “combs” at either end of their rectangular blades bring to mind the turrets of a castle or kremlin.

To the museum visitor familiar with “typical” Russian objects like lacquer boxes, matryoshka dolls and Fabergé eggs, the pryalki provoke curiosity. They could be unstrung musical instruments, or pieces of exotic furniture, but neither seems quite right. It turns out, not only foreigners find this folk art strange. Show them to a young Russian of the smartphone generation and ask, “Что это?” and he will likely say, “I have no idea.”

In fact, pryalki are distaffs, portable spinning tools designed to hold un-spun flax or wool. Dating from the late eighteenth to early twentieth centuries, they hearken back to a simpler time, when people consumed what they made and marriage was the defining moment in a woman’s life. Until the machine age, domestic tasks like spinning, weaving, sewing and cooking dominated a peasant woman’s daily existence. The role linking women and skills like spinning and weaving crossed cultures. In English, “distaff” means spindle, but also refers to a woman or to the female side of a family.

Mythology and religion reflect the importance of household labor to traditional Russian village life: Mokosh, the sole major pre-Christian goddess in the Slavic pantheon, protected the feminine sphere of domestic work, particularly spinning. The Christian holy martyr St. Paraskeva, protector of women, was also closely associated with spinners and weavers. Even icons like The Annunciation depict the mother of Christ (Theotokos) holding a spindle and yarn.

In order to produce the expected 35 pounds of yarn per season, a Russian girl or woman had to spin for 955 hours, according to art historian Kristen Harkness. The villager had no choice but to complete this tedious work; her family depended on her for clothing and other textiles. Experts agree that women treasured the high quality wooden tools they used day in and out, especially their distaffs, which were used as ritual gifts on special occasions. Picture a young groom felling a tree, carving a special pryalka for his betrothed, custom painting it in the village style, but according to his bride’s tastes — surviving examples are highly individualized while adhering to a regional style — and presenting her with the most elegant tool he could craft. A valuable wedding present, a distaff provided social evidence of the groom’s woodworking skills and drew comments and praise from those who saw it.

Russian village women preferred pryalki to spinning wheels because of the distaffs’ portability and aesthetic appeal. Instead of spinning alone, women joined together at posidelki, (literally “sit alongs”) festive gatherings held in the evenings where they would sing and tell fortunes while spinning to meet their quotas. To use the distaff, a woman would sit on the base, which rested on a chair or bench, and spin wool around the comb. The most beautiful designs on the pryalki would face out, away from the spinner, to be admired by the other women. Later in the evening, young men would arrive at the izba, and someone, most likely an older chaperon, would selectively usher the men in for music, dancing and flirting. Some of the distaffs self-referentially depict these posidelki gatherings. Lubki, popular woodcuts and engravings from the time period, also offer glimpses of posidelki, while other lubki depict maiden spinners, welcoming or spurning the advances of an eager suitor.

Experts have identified scores of regional variations of pryalki, but the most studied examples come from villages along the Northern Dvina River, such as Toyma, Borok, Permogore and Mezen in Arkhangelsk Oblast, and from Volga River towns near Gorodets, Nizhny Novgorod, and Yaroslavl. Although peasants designed and used the distaffs, there is nothing “rustic” about the finer examples, at least not rustic in the sense of inelegant or simple. Painted pryalki from Toyma and Borok feature a man driving a horse-drawn sleigh, or other idyllic scenes from local life articulated in delicate black outline amidst patterns of red, green, yellow and blue. Perhaps the sleigh-driver rides to the izba to propose marriage to a young woman he courted at a posidelki. Some of the distaffs tell stories through connected scenes painted on both sides of the blade.

Distaffs from nearby Mezen boast fewer colors, predominately red or reddish-brown motifs accented by the calligraphic use of black ash ink, a sense of motion compensating for relative dearth of color. Alison Hilton, Professor of Art History at Georgetown University, in her book Russian Folk Art, describes the Mezen pryalki as having “parallel friezes of running horses or deer, painted schematically, with long galloping legs and flowing manes or branching antlers...” The animal symbols on the distaffs stretch back to an ancient mythological world: the horses recall bogatyr knights riding to victory; Sirin,* another popular distaff motif, herald radiant beauty.

Villagers made and used pryalki in many of the same towns where icon writing flourished, and folk artists adapted some of the materials and techniques used in icon writing to construct and decorate distaffs. Commonalities between icons and pryalki include portability, their presentation on wood, the preparation of the ground (a base layer between the wood and paint), and the use of egg tempera paint and gold leaf. The owners of both icons and pryalki used them daily and gave each places of ritual importance inside their homes. And while icons are said to provide Orthodox Christians with a window to God and his divine realm, distaff artists use the same word – “windows” – to describe how they divide the blade into painted sections. Each window provided glimpses, not of God, but into an embellished, fairy-tale version of village life. Meanwhile, the motifs reminded villagers of a pre-pagan world controlled by natural forces. Pryalki kept alive distant mythical references inherited and adapted from ancient Kievan Rus.

Photo of a distaff, courtesy Alison Hilton and Sergiev Posad Historical Museum

With the end of feudalism and the arrival of industrialization, society transformed. Manufactured clothing became widely available. By the late 1800s, pryalki had fallen out of use. Public and private folk art revivals, fueled by political interests that evolved over time, achieved varying degrees of success in keeping the older craft traditions alive. Soviet propaganda adapted folk art motifs to further its own agenda. In addition, prominent twentieth century artists such as Vasily Kandinsky, Natalia Goncharova and Kazimir Malevich drew on peasant folk art for inspiration, although, as Hilton notes, “the period was one of extreme contrasts and surprising compromises; some of the very artists who urged the rejection of outworn traditions and their replacement with a wholly new visual and physical culture actually worked in formal ‘languages’ that combined folk or popular idioms with modern function.” During the Soviet period, officials held conferences with the goal of preserving folk art, but these did not always succeed. More fruitful were traditional craft workshops established during the same period; some, like the Bogorodskoye traditional wooden toy workshop in Khabarovsk, still exist (see Russian Life, January 1996).

For the most part, pryalki were forgotten. Like buggy whips, they were no longer necessary and societal forces had focused elsewhere. So why do most people associate matryoshka dolls (a craft imported from Japan) with Russia, while few are familiar with the graceful motifs decorating pryalki? Hilton blames the rapid expansion of tourism, which “increased the demand for souvenirs and bolstered production” of kitschy merchandise like matryoshki. She suggests visitors looking for higher quality work seek out specialty shops in Moscow’s Old Arbat, or at small open-air markets in villages and towns along the Volga and Svir rivers. At Izmaylovo Market, too, careful searching through vendor stalls can still yield crafters selling modern items like breadboards painted with traditional pryalki designs (photo, left).

The internet has brought new opportunities for the preservation and continuation of traditional folk arts. While the average visitor to the Russian Museum will be unfamiliar with pryalki and the associated regional painting styles, a growing niche of Russians, Russian ex-patriots and foreigners are learning and practicing traditional village crafts. Videos available on YouTube and through Russian television archives offer craft history and technique lessons to anyone with an internet connection. Virtual craft schools and blog groups allow students to apprentice from a distance with master artists.

But is it still folk art if it is distilled across time and space? That depends. Folk art, like language and music, has always adapted and evolved. The fact that objects like distaffs, once central to village life, are no longer used means, according to Hilton, “that the integrity of form and function once considered essential to folk art can no longer be the standard for authenticity.” Instead, we must look not just to remote villages and museums to find quality folk art, but to those everywhere who, longing for connection to history and the “stuff” that surrounds them, dedicate time and patience to master a skill that reminds the rest of us who we once were. RL

* Mythological bird of paradise depicted with the face and chest of a woman

Natalia Majors paints birdhouses, jewelry boxes, and other household objects using traditional pryalki designs. She is of Russian-Belarussian heritage and grew up in a Soviet military family, spending her childhood in Moldova. Today she is a professional quilter and lives in Colorado. While she has never visited the remote Russian North, she says that, even as a child, she was intuitively drawn to the region’s folk art, an interest she shares with her mother, a watercolorist who paints Northern Russian churches and landscapes. Only as an adult did Majors discover an ancestral connection: her great-great-great-grandfather was from Arkhangelsk.

Natalia Majors

Longing for a bit of Russian culture after she immigrated to the United States, Majors hunted in bookstores and online for instructions for making rushnik – traditional embroidered wedding towels, as gifts for her children. That search led her to an online folk art school based in Arkhangelsk and she took a class in traditional doll-making. She also joined Проект Северные росписи (severros.blogspot.ru), the “ Northern Painting Project” blog organized by artist Elena Romanova, who lives in Arkhangelsk. The blog’s members are located all across Russia and the former Soviet Republics, and include Russian expats like Majors living further afield.

Romanova, considered a master artist, sends detailed instructions for recreating each regional style of folk painting to Northern Painting Project group members. Since pryalki are often the best-preserved examples of an historic painting style, they make ideal source materials for contemporary artists studying folk design. The 20 or so most active members, all women, take turns posting step-by-step photos and project explanations on the blog.

Majors sees a big interest in reviving traditional folk arts among the people she meets online. Learning the traditional crafts and painting the same motifs that graced distaffs two centuries ago makes her feel connected to her roots and to the past. “Knowing who you are, your heritage, helps us all understand ourselves,” she says. “Knowing history and culture is very important. Not in the mean way, not nationalistic, but to really know who you are! Every nation has its characteristics, temper and life style. Old traditions sit in our hearts and we don’t realize it.”