Their Lives for Their Art

Just 20 kilometers outside hectic Moscow sits the tiny village of Zhostovo, unfazed by its proximity to the busy capital. Houses that line the main street have picture-perfect wooden lattices, carefully tended gardens, 

and it is clear that most who live here are not victims of the daily commute to the megapolis. In fact, even on a weekday one hears saws ringing in garages and can watch wood carvings taking shape in front yards. 

The saws and sculptures hint at the magic at work in this rural oasis: most of Zhostovo’s residents are artists and craftspeople, connected to the nearly two centuries of folk craft tradition that goes into the making of Zhostovo metal trays. 

In 1825, two serfs bought their freedom and organized a tray painting business. The Vishnyakov brothers had an entrepreneurial streak: they rapidly expanded, opening workshops in nearby villages, and selling their products as far afield as Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod. Special orders were even rushed to Saint Petersburg.

Zhostovo is just one of hundreds of Russian towns that specialize in a specific folk or artisan craft. Fedoskino lacquered miniatures, Gzhel blue-white pottery, Vologda lace and Rostov enamelware – every region has some specialty; every natural resource has some niche. In most instances, the crafts were developed by peasants and were highly practical items like children’s toys, spinning wheels, and kitchenware. Their enchanting and unpretentious designs were often inspired by folk tales, Orthodox religion, nature, and daily life, and the skill at making them was handed down from generation to generation, traditions and canons well-preserved by the insular artisan communities. 

Walk a little further down the main road in Zhostovo and a dusty, gray, three-story building rises before you like a spaceship inserted among the small houses. This is the Zhostovo factory, village eyesore and source of the famous trays. During the peak of their popularity in the 1980s, many traditional folk crafts were produced in factory conditions – in bare rooms and tiled corridors with fluorescent lights, all but severing their traditional roots. Today, many of the factories stand empty or half-idle, while a quiet renaissance of small-scale producers tries to take hold outside their walls.

located at the other end of the Moscow region from Zhostovo is the town of Gzhel. The word “gzhel” comes from “glinu zhech” or “firing clay.” The cluster of villages here is home to a distinctive blue-white patterned pottery, a popular Russian souvenir, a poor cousin of Dutch Delft or British Wedgwood, and a maverick of sorts in the world of traditional Russian crafts.

Prior to the 1917 revolution, Gzhel was popularly known as “the Russian Staffordshire,” referring to Britain’s famous porcelain center. Gzhel produced massive amounts of porcelain, yet no decorative style dominated. The best individual craftsmen were instead known for their majolica pottery decorated with colorful scenes from daily village life. After the revolution, Lenin’s New Economic Policy allowed both state and private workshops to trade in folk crafts, and a cooperative workshop with the optimistic name, “Forward, Ceramics!” briskly sold little figurines made of red clay, as well as other small items of little artistic value.

The blue-white style was not introduced until after World War II, when, due to post-war scarcities, the only color glaze to be had was cobalt. Yet it became the cornerstone of Gzhel crafts as they exist to this day. While postwar training programs and upscaling of production and employment gave Gzhel new life, it would not be quite correct to call Gzhel porcelain “traditional.” 

In its golden years in the 1970s and 1980s, the United Gzhel factory employed some 2,300 people and was the poster child for successful Soviet artisan producers. Children in local schools began painting blue birds and flowers as early as kindergarten, finishing their education in the nearby ceramics institute. Most aspects of life for area residents revolved around the craft in one way or another, and the style gained popularity and artistic acceptance. 

So successful was the town that plans were put forward to create a National Folk Craft Center: a theme park with cultural centers, hotels, restaurants, and artist boarding schools. Those ambitions never got beyond the blueprint stage. 

Meanwhile, the factory is little changed since its heyday. There are the “Wall of Fame” photos, a bust of Lenin, and echoing, stark hallways. Yet there is one important difference: today there are only about 200 employees left at United Gzhel. Salaries are low and late, and bankruptcy proceedings have been thrice started and stopped. Women in the painting room sigh as they look through old Gzhel catalogs and photo albums. Director Vladimir Loginov spends a good deal of his time and energy filing lawsuits against local government representatives, who he says are illegally selling off the factory’s clay-rich land, in the process ravaging local culture.

“They are knowingly destroying our heritage and restraining the production of the factory. For example, we recently had to close down our factory shop in Moscow,” Loginov said, unable to pinpoint whether the cause of his struggles was the authorities or the imitation Gzhel producers.

Loginov and his factory are an example of how a successful Soviet enterprise can dysfunction in today’s market environment. In the Soviet era, artists never had to worry about sales or marketing. They had just one customer, the State, and no competitors in their field. But today the market is awash in cheap counterfeits and the former state enterprise needs subsidies just to limp along. As for the artists, many have changed careers, while others have learned new crafts that can be done at home. 

Loginov is quick to criticize those who left the factory to open their own Gzhel manufacturing operations: they are traitors interested only in self-enrichment; they are diluting traditional Gzhel canons with their irresponsible designs, and they can often sell more cheaply because of their tax avoidance. Critics, meanwhile, say that Loginov, who has been in charge of the factory for 30 years, is incapable of adapting, that he seeks to fix new problems with tired old tools like reintroduction of state subsidies and monopolies.

One of the “traitors” from United Gzhel is Valentin Rozanov, head artist at the nearby Gzhel Porcelain factory. A recognized master, Rozanov started his career at United Gzhel and rose to become head artist there, but eventually left in the turbulent 1990s, due to perennially late salary payments. Under his leadership, Gzhel Porcelain is doing quite well (its output even winning praise from art experts), despite the onslaught of cheap counterfeits and high taxes that plague all craft producers. 

zhostovo factory went through many of the same problems as United Gzhel, struggling to make electricity and land tax payments on its inefficient Soviet-sized factory, constantly running behind on artists’ salaries. After stumbling through the 1990s, the state-run enterprise went bankrupt. Artists moved their painting operations to their homes but struggled for lack of a distribution model or adequate equipment. 

Three years ago, an investor bought the Zhostovo factory and sent in Natalia Logvinova to be its director. She reports that orders are now plentiful and salaries are paid on time. The only thing lacking, she said, is new artists. “I think there was a lost generation during the transition period of the 1990s, when folk crafts weren’t prestigious,” Logvinova said. “But children who are very young today are likely to take on the old traditions.” 

The village is the perfect environment for that – every family in Zhostovo seems to have something to do with the craft. Even everyday signs like “Beware of Dog” or house numbers are painted on trays. And the artists in the main studio of the factory are mostly local women. “My mother was also a painter, and my grandfather worked at the factory as a driver,” said Natalia, one of the women, as she etched a precise golden border on a round tray.

Although there are also individual artists in Zhostovo that work outside the factory, Logvinova said the company does not consider them a threat to the craft. “The interesting thing about traditional folk crafts is that they have to be done in a group,” she said. “People that splinter off keep working for a while, using their skill, but they stop developing as artists.” And while individuals may veer right and left from the canons of the Zhostovo bouquet, she said, the group at the factory holds the center. Yet the outlines of that center can be a bit fuzzy. While factory artists specialize in trays, they also take special orders to decorate mobile phones, drum sets and even cars. Clearly there are compromises to be made when running a traditional folk craft business in the modern world.

Indeed, there is a perennial conflict between art and the business of art. What is good for the tradition? What is good for the artist? What is good for the enterprise? Did the struggling factories provide the best atmosphere for artisans in the late Soviet era, keeping traditions alive? Or did mass production stunt artistic growth?

The decision to put artists in factory conditions was actually criticized by art historians at the time, even in the circumscribed atmosphere of Soviet discourse. Today, while old-timers like Loginov advocate the factories’ protection, the buildings seem atavistic. “Factories today are not necessary, they are unprofitable and meaningless,” said art historian Natalia Gayevskaya of the Russian Museum of Decorative and Folk Art. “For crafts like Gzhel, there are some benefits in industrializing the process, since it requires very high temperatures. But most other crafts were traditionally done at home, where artisans wove or carved and took care of their household at the same time, selling craft items to wandering merchants.”

A perfect example of such home-spun craft is the Bogorodskoye carved toy. This tradition began in 15th century Sergiyev Posad, a town just north of Moscow that is home to the famous monastery founded by Sergiy of Radonezh. Legend has it that Sergiy made wooden spoons and toys and gave them away to children who visited the monastery. Bogorodskoye, which is 22 kilometers north of Sergiyev Posad, eventually developed its own carving tradition: toys often feature a peasant muzhik or a bear, and sometimes the two of them together. Bogorodskoye toys are never painted and have strings and levers to make the characters come alive, chopping wood or drinking tea. Masterfully carved and humorous, they embody traditions of Russian village life.

Bogorodskoye village carvers united into a cooperative in 1913. In 1960, the factory building was constructed to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the craft. Yet, since carving work is done exclusively by hand, the benefits of a factory are not immediately clear. Today, the building is almost totally deserted and acts mostly as the middle-man between carvers and potential clients, with a small museum and shop on the first floor. Where once 300 employees worked here, today only a handful still sit at the factory benches, and most rooms are let out to firms that have nothing to do with carving. Salaries range from 1,500 to 2,500 rubles a month, and, though many employees still bring their work to the factory, it is no secret that they earn most of the money through other contracts.

Mikhail, the only person carving in the second-floor workshop of the main building on a Friday afternoon, said he holds down another job and comes only for a few hours a week. Sergei, a carver at the factory’s nearby artists’ workshop, was working on an individual project – a sculpture of an angel for his apartment. “After we finish remodeling, I will have a workplace on the balcony at home. Until then, I come here,” he said, adding that most carvers would prefer to work in rural studios, rather than apartments or the factory. After all, the best artisans of Bogorodskoye were inspired by the views from their village homes, looking out onto the forest and meadows.

In the 1970s, Bogorodskoye’s quaint village life and traditions were inundated when GAES, the country’s largest hydropower station, was sited right next door. Thousands of workers poured in from all over the USSR. A new town was built, and many of the rural houses were destroyed to make room for cookie-cutter, five-story concrete apartment buildings. The artists took this in stride, carving statues and carousels for playgrounds and hoping that the children using them would some day help to carry on the local craft. 

at the time, the corralling of Russian folk crafts into factories was presented as natural and necessary. Artists could concentrate on their work in a single, designated place, receive critical reviews from their peers, educate younger employees, and at the same time produce items on a mass scale, while popularizing a Russian national tradition. Although there were definite benefits in this arrangement, it obviously restricted artists’ freedom and creativity. Factory-ization made them employees, subject to the deadlines and productivity demands of the irrational five year plans. Moreover, in the departmental tossup of the Soviet bureaucracy, factories were slotted into illogical governmental hierarchies. For example, silver jewelry artisans in Tver region were subordinated to the Ministry of Instrument Making, home to bureaucrats with no artistic training. 

Today’s challenges are different: skilled labor is expensive, which drives up prices on authentic artisan items. Intellectual property laws are loosely applied, so consumers look to inexpensive, counterfeit souvenirs as an alternative (artists complain that everything at Moscow’s popular Izmailovo market is counterfeit, for example). As well, artists searching for financial well-being are tempted to compromise the integrity of traditions and canons. Is it okay to decorate mobile phones with traditional Zhostovo designs? How about making Bogorodskoye Santa Clauses instead of bears? How far can artists wander into innovation without losing touch with a centuries-old craft? 

Natalia Gayevskaya recognizes that some form of outside support is needed for authentic crafts, whether from the government or from foundations. Artists, she said, need a chance to breathe and to create without constant financial pressure. She is less worried about watering down traditions: “The more artists work in a certain type of craft, the better for the craft, even if they don’t all strictly follow the canons,” she said. One can not be too protective of a certain style, she said, since a craft lives on only as long as it springs from the artist’s heart, not from a textbook.

At the Bogorodskoye factory, children on a school fieldtrip gather around Mikhail, who is demonstrating the use of a special carving knife. Carving instruments are very personal, and have to be sharpened by the artist himself. The room fills with wows and ahhs as kids watch a chunk of linden wood slowly turn into a bear. When the guide asks who wants to grow up to be a carver, all of the hands shoot up.  RL