Eternal Birch Bark

While many of Russia’s traditional crafts seem secreted in remote areas of the country, one at least is alive and well in Moscow. Alexandra Strelnikova shares the unique tradition of the Belov family.

Photos by Vladimir Popov.

Yuri Belov has the keen eye of an artist and the strong hands of a craftsman. However, in the case of his hands, the material they are used to touching is for the most part soft and pliant — he is a master of the art of beresta (birch bark) weaving.

But why does Belov, whose origins are in Ryazan Region, not widely known for its production of beresta, work with birch bark? “Most probably because it is an everlasting material, a miracle, a gift of nature,” he said, “whether we are talking about the manuscripts of old Novgorod or handicrafts inherited from our ancestors.”

The manuscripts Belov refers to were an early form of letter in Russia’s foremost medieval city state. Ordinary people in the city scratched messages to each other on bark stripped from their ubiquitous birch trees. Many of these messages have survived, giving archaeologists and historians an invaluable insight into the everyday lives of Novgorodians.

The craft of beresta weaving, meanwhile, appeared much later, at the end of the 18th century, in the northern Russian regions of Arkhangelsk and Vologda. Local peasants began weaving strips of bark to make boxes, baskets and that best known of Russian peasant footwear, bast shoes. Many of these items were then hand carved with patterns borrowed from crafts like bone-carving, niello and even lace weaving.

Nowadays, even in traditional centers of these crafts, like the cities of Vologda and Veliky Ustyug, and the Kemerovo Region of Siberia, birch bark craftsmen are hard to find. So, for many visitors to the birch bark exhibition in Moscow’s Central House of Journalists, it was a real surprise and revelation to see works presented not just by Yuri, but by a whole dynasty of Belovs.

Yuri began as a master of gymnastics and later dedicated 48 years of his life to teaching physical education. His elder son Maxim is a bank employee and his younger son Michael studies robotics at Moscow’s Bauman University. All, however, devote their spare time to beresta weaving.

Even now, Yuri often recalls the time when his sons, like other boys at their young age, played with toy cars and tanks, and had no interest in their father’s activities. Friends inadvertently asked Belov whether he was going to teach them his craft. The father shrugged, though he was certainly worried —what if his devotion to beresta really did mean nothing to them? Nevertheless, the craftsman secretly hoped that the time would come and his boys would ask his permission to try themselves. Time proved him right.

“...You know, it was my grandfather who at one time passed his skills and devotion to birch bark on to me,” said Belov. “I recall how in his expert hands the birch bark came alive and even breathed.”

Mikhail, the master’s grandfather, has a special place in the Belov dynasty. He was born in the remote village of Rudakovo, Ryazan Province, and lived to the age of 98. On the eve of World War I, Mikhail and other villagers made bast shoes as a special order for the Army.

Thereafter, Mikhail’s life took a very different direction, which is a story in itself. He soon moved to Moscow and worked as a dishwasher in the popular Yar restaurant, famous for its Gypsy music and dancing. He then became major-domo with the rich aristocrat Prince Yusupov, who gave him 3,000 golden rubles to study, with which this Ryazan peasant went off to learn the etiquette and national cuisines of France, Germany and England.

This knowledge proved immensely useful to Mikhail Belov. On the strength of it, after the revolution he opened the National and Metropol restaurants in Moscow, and the Angleterre restaurant in Saint-Petersburg. In 1945, he was assigned a very important mission, as catering manager at the Yalta conference, scene of the historic meeting of allied leaders Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt.

After World War Two, Belov worked on the switchboard at the US embassy, where he befriended Ambassador Harriman, who found him an interesting and unusual companion. But his friendliness inevitably had negative consequences — he was twice arrested under the notorious Article 58 as an ‘enemy of the people’ and spent the years 1948-53 in jail.

Prison did not provide opportunities for making bast shoes, but perhaps this was where he began the contemplation which brought him back to his beloved craft. Returning to his Moscow flat, he resumed a steady production of bast shoes. And after almost a century in the world, he came to the conclusion that, though life was a vanity of vanities, birch bark would live for ever. That was, in a way, his testament.

“Imagine now,” continued Yuri, “that when I visit my grandfather’s home village of Rudakovo [where nearly half the local inhabitants bear the name of Belov], local people ask me, a Muscovite, to make bast shoes.”

Even in the modern age, then, beresta ware, whether as kitchenware or shoes, or simply for decoration, remains in demand. And not just among remote and primitive peasant communities either, but in cities as well, where some people still see its advantages over mass-produced plastic or metal equivalents. Moreover, birch bark products are extremely environmentally friendly. You can use them to store grain, sour cream, bread and butter. In fact, you can even boil water in them, the Belovs claim. In baskets of birch bark, milk and bread will stay fresh quite a long time.

Yuri Belov’s works are not merely decorative hand-made articles — each is a masterpiece in its own right and impossible to reproduce.

Sometime it happens that work started by the elder Belov is  finished by his sons. Each of them makes a unique contribution — Maxim’s wife has also become involved in the work — and the end result is what could be described as the ‘Belov style.’ As for the methods used by the family, these remain a closely guarded secret. All we know is that they get their wood from a timber company in the forest-rich Republic of Karelia.

Perhaps the Belovs’ secrets are indeed better left undisturbed. In that way, less talented artists will have less chance to turn beresta weaving into a cheap souvenir industry, as they have with matryoshka dolls or lacquer boxes. And with families like the Belovs to pass down the craft from generation to generation, even in trying times like these beresta weaving promises to be as eternal as the birch tree and bark themselves.

Some items made by the Belov family are on display in the Moscow art salon Skazki Starovo Arbata (Tales of Old Arbat), Stary Arbat 29, phone (095) 241-6135.

Alexandra Strelnikova is a reporter for the newspaper Kommerchesky Vestnik.