Golden Opportunities

While much of Russian industry has been trying to turn “swords into ploughshares” for the past ten years, transforming military

production lines into civilian, one small workshop in the Urals has decided there is nothing wrong with swords ... ornamental ones, that is. Oksana Voronova investigates this interesting enterprise, charting its rise from scrapheap hunting to presenting gifts to world leaders. Photographs courtesy Svetlana Kulikovskaya.

We started not just from zero, but from minus,” said Alexander Lokhtachov. “We weren’t young any more and our pockets were empty. We made our first item – an engraved metal tray – from a bronze bowl bought for next to nothing in a hardware store. Then we started making ornamental bracelets from strips of brass used for holding down linoleum.”

Lokhtachov, along with his wife Nina and fellow craftsman Grigory Manush, started a small metal engraving workshop in 1990 in the remote Urals town of Zlatoust [meaning chrysostom, or “gold mouth”]. They now employ over a hundred people, have 5,000 square meters of foundry, galvanic and mechanical facilities for the manufacture of ormanental swords, and have opened tapestry and stone polishing workshops. They have participated in numerous international exhibitions, have had their work exhibited in major museums such as the Central Folk Art Museum and World War Two Memorial in Moscow, have won prizes at International Fairs and are now getting commissions from the Russian government and the Orthodox Church.

LIK (as their company is called – it is an abbreviation for Lokhtachov and Co. in Russian) began simply as a way to earn a living. But the Lokhtachovs are now hoping to develop the whole region and transform it into a center for crafts, culture and tourism.

When you look at a map of Russia, Zlatoust does not seem an obvious place for such ambitious plans. It has just over 200,000 inhabitants, not very many by Russian standards, and is situated in a remote corner of the southern Ural mountains. Lost among forests, lakes and numerous small rivers, it has beautiful surroundings but is hopelessly far away from traditional tourist routes. And it is not just a problem of distance – Russia’s infamously bad roads are a major deterrent to visitors in this area.

But what makes Zlatoust truly unique and provides hope for its future is that it is home to a very original craft – the same artistic engravings on metal.

Ask anyone about traditional Russian crafts and they will surely tell you about matryoshka dolls or Palekh lacquer boxes. The more knowledgeable might mention Khokhloma painted wooden boards, Gzhel porcelain, Rostov finift or Vologda lace. But Zlatoust metal engraving is less widely known, even in Russia. This is because the art is mainly associated with ornamental cold steel, which is used in ceremonies, or as prizes or gifts – typically given to senior military officers or kept in war museums. This, plus the fact that such works are quite expensive, tends to exclude them from everyday use. As a result, the craft has been in serious decline over the last few decades.

Unlike the craft centres of European Russia, Zlatoust cannot boast many centuries of history – it was founded in 1754 together with an iron foundry (the Urals are rich in ore). In 1815, a weapons factory was added by imperial decree. The factory was built to produce all types of cold steel: hussars’ sabers, cuirassiers’ broadswords, guardsmen’s cutlasses, hunting knives and ornamental daggers.

In the early 19th century, German specialists from Zollingen and Klingental – famous centers of weapon manufacture at the time – were invited in to develop production and teach the technology. The Germans brought the best traditions of workmanship, as well as their own high living standards. Zlatoust became an  enlightened town of craftsmen and engineers with neat houses, clean streets, several Lutheran churches and a German cemetery.

The factory’s fame spread quickly at a time when cold steel was still widely used, but not all because of the German influence.

In the 1830s, under the directorship of Pavel Anosov, an outstanding Russian metallurgist, a very strong alloy called bulat [damask steel] with previously unheard-of qualities was developed. Also at this time, Russian apprentices became craftsmen themselves and began developing their own techniques and designs characteristic of the region. A synthesis of European and Asian, this style could be described as typically Russian. And instead of just creating ornaments, they portrayed whole battle and mythological scenes in gold and silver.

When, in 1824, Emperor Alexander I visited the factory, he was presented with an entire arsenal in what became traditional Zlatoust style – including epees, each of which depicted individual episodes from the War of 1812, along the entire length of its blade, and a saber showing Napoleon’s flight from Moscow.

And so it went on – in the second half of the 19th century, work from Zlatoust was exhibited in London, Paris, Vienna, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Philadelphia and Chicago. Zlatoust engraved metal works received numerous gold, silver and bronze medals for quality and design.

After the Revolution, the factory continued to produce ornamental swords for officers in the Civil War and World War II, and later for the leaders of socialist countries in peacetime.

But soon swords ceased to be the main priority. By 1970, metal engraving was only done in one of the factory shops. The craft became less focused on traditional weapons, which were once its essence, and concentrated on souvenir panneaux with Ural landscapes and hunting scenes. The spirit of the craft was lost.

“In 1990, I left the factory after 16 years of work because I was tired of how badly it was all organized,” said Nina Lokhtachova, now head artist of LIK. “We didn’t have artistic freedom and expression, and, as I wasn’t a Party member, I couldn’t take part in exhibitions. Also I suffered discrimination as a woman.”

At the same time, her husband stopped getting orders for work. Alexander, a graphic designer by profession, worked in the theater as a decorator and also taught in school. From 1978 onwards, he worked at the Khudozhestvenny Fond [artists’ fund] – a relatively free-spirited organization where work was done on commission and therefore required a greater degree of individual initiative.

Perestroika has become something of a dirty word now in Russia, but, in the late 1980s  and early 1990s, genuinely revolutionary things started to happen. Private enterprise became legal and everything changed quite quickly. But, at that time, it was still not very clear in what direction change was going. Nonetheless, LIK’s founders said they simply had no choice but to start their own business – and metal engraving was the most obvious thing for them to do.

They borrowed money from friends, found their first pieces of raw material on rubbish dumps and experimented with production, as they did not have any technical facilities. It was all straight out of a “How to” book for budding millionaires starting from nothing. If you could be strong enough and pushy enough and make the right choices, you might just pull it off.

Two years after they had started, LIK had its first exhibition in the Russian Folk Art museum in Moscow. It was a huge success and got lots of attention. Invitations followed to exhibits in America (Atlanta 1993) and Australia (Expo 1993 in Adelaide), and the first major commissions started coming in.

On the 50th anniversary of VE Day, the leaders of the four countries of the anti-Hitler coalition – the US, UK, France and Russia – were each presented with knights’ swords made in Zlatoust, by LIK. Lokhtachev said he believes that these swords should remind people of the military alliance and brotherhood-in-arms of the victor countries that saved mankind from the fascist plague.

Nina Lokhtachev was the artist responsible for the swords’ design – which is significant because never before had women worked on ceremonial swords. “Technically,” she said, “there is no difference between weapons and engraved trays. But, as an artist, I felt very responsible, since they were meant for such high-level guests. “

All the swords are the same shape and differ only in the symbols for each country emblazoned on them. All carry the image of the Soviet Order of Victory, awarded in 1945 to all commanders-in-chief of the allied forces. The medal is supposed to remind the bearer that the main contribution to victory in WWII was made by Russia. The inscription on the blade is extremely laconic – “To the people of America (France, Great Britain) – Russia is grateful.”

The swords demonstrate the fact that the best examples of ornamental weaponry were made in the tradition of immortalizing the exploits of Russia in battle.

Even more impressive than the knights’ swords are the Sword and Shield of Victory. This work reflects the symbolism of war and victory captured in engravings of three different sculpted monuments. One is in Berlin, where a Red Army soldier holds his sword lowered after cutting up the swastika. The second is the famous Motherland statue in Volgograd, holding aloft a sword over Mamayev Kurgan, the site of the decisive part of the Stalingrad battle. The third, less well known, is in Magnitogorsk, where the weapons of victory were produced. Here a craftsman holds out the Sword of War to the soldier.

“But if the swords in the monuments could be considered threatening,” explained Lokhtachov, “our Sword of Victory is simply a memento.”

The sword is two meters long, the shield 80 cm in diameter. The scabbard and handle of the sword are studded with 100 semi-precious Ural stones, the shield with 101. They are engraved with a poem by Konstantin Skvortsov:

Russians! Let us not squander our honor but close ranks and go forth shoulder to shoulder.

Only together can we stand up to the foe, apart we can only die.

The Sword and Shield of Victory are exhibited in the World War II Museum on Poklonnaya Gora in Moscow and are among its most impressive exhibits.

But LIK does not only produce military artifacts. They also create highly elaborate and exquisite church ornaments. The most impressive of these is a tabernacle of Moscow’s Church of Christ the Savior – a miniature church about five feet high containing relics and kept in the newly built cathedral. At its presentation to the Church, Patriarch Alexy II praised the craftsmen for “giving people harmony, beauty and comfort through their art.”

For clients who cannot afford to pay for their services, LIK commonly offers sponsorship. In 1995, they made dazzling trophies for the International Festival of National Theaters in Moscow. Participants from Belarus, Greece, the Czech Republic and Great Britain were greatly impressed by the unique gifts.

All LIK’s achievements look even more impressive in comparison with the complete stagnation at the nearby factory’s ornamental engraving production line, where workers have not seen any salaries for nearly two years and there are no orders because the factory managers sit and wait passively for commissions to come of their own accord.

There were a series of protest meetings and strikes in the spring  of 1997. At one such meeting Tamara Zhelyabova, an engraving artist from the factory, expressed the bitterness felt by many.

“In the past, the good name of Zlatoust engraving came exclusively from the factory, but nowadays a private firm, LIK, is stealing the limelight,” she complained. “Why should a private firm flourish while the factory is in deepest crisis?”

This is a painfully difficult problem. The factory’s main products were real armaments, and only a tiny percentage were ornamental. With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Goszakaz [state orders], most production ceased and this Soviet-era dinosaur has yet to find new ways of dealing with the situation.

The obvious solution would be to increase production of ornamental weapons, which are in demand, as LIK has proven, and for which the factory has both production facilities, talented artists and all the glorious traditions of the past. This would then help gradually to bale out all the other areas of production. But nothing has been done. In Soviet fashion, the factory still awaits the Goszakaz, while LIK frenetically seeks orders and gets them – from the central government, from the newly powerful church and from prosperous banks.

And LIK has an eye to the future as well. The Committee of Folk Crafts under the Zlatoust Town Administration was founded and sponsored by LIK. It aims to support, promote and market the craft, and organize exhibitions – not only of LIK’s work, but of that of all the enterprises doing metal engraving. The ambition is to make it as recognizable and famous as other traditional popular crafts.

“We want to turn Zlatoust into a town of craftsmen, to create a preserve to save an art that is unique in the world,” said Svetlana Kulikovskikh, a member of the Committee. “But not just in the sense of turning it into a museum, but also to make it work for the whole town and bring in money.”

The committee’s first major success was the inclusion of Zlatoust in the UNESCO Folk Arts Programme list of Craft Centres. Therefore, its significance in the history of world folk arts has been recognized internationally.

LIK has also sponsored and initiated the launching of a new major, arts and crafts, in the Zlatoust branch of the nearby Chelybinsk Technical University. Fifteen students are already studying there in their second year.

“The new course is extremely important,” believes Lokhtachov, “because, when you consider the wealth of natural resources in the Urals region and the uniqueness of its crafts, the development of traditional skills is the most promising for the development of the local economy.”

Why is LIK going to such lengths? “The workshop has proven to be very profitable and we could live very well on it,” explained Lokhtachov. “But in twenty years’ time, this profit could turn into a loss if we don’t think about tomorrow. We have to think about the future. Every generation lives first and foremost for its children, for continuing the human race. People in Russia have to procreate, so we need kindergartens, good schools and working places for young people, because every young person with a good job will support his/her parents when they get old and this is how the country survives. And this is how Russia will rise again.”  RL