The Rossi Wing

Folk Toys and Embroidery of the 20th Century

Room XII shows folk toys and embroidery from the twentieth century. The art of making wooden and clay toys, which is still developing in various regions of Russia, is presented in this room. Each regional centre has its own peculiarities of plastics and decor and unique local traditions.

In Kaluga, Ryazan, Oryol, Tambov and Kursk Provinces, the archaic type of clay toys echoing ancient agrarian cults is still popular.

The toys of master Druzhinin from the village of Grinevo in the Kargopole district of Arkhangelsk Region are painted in gentle tones on a white background. The pattern of female skirts repeats orange circles, ovals, crosses and rays. The branches of plants and trees are memories of the Russian peasant’s special link to the soil and his dependence on the sun and the gifts of nature.

In the twentieth century, the masters of Dymkovo toys enlarged the circle of themes and subjects, enriching it with new genre compositions and literary and fairytale characters. The paintwork has become brighter and more festive ever since aniline dyes gave way to modern synthetic tempera in the 1960s.

All the Filimonovo toys are whistles. Transverse stripes in bright combinations of green, yellow, crimson-red and violet-blue are applied directly onto the pink-yellow clay following baking. The traditional images of ladies, riders, animals and birds are supplemented by such unique local characters as milkmaids, couples on couches,

The Nizhny Novgorod area is also rich in wooden toys. Here we encounter the Gorodets horses harnessed in pairs and troikas, bright and merry “tararushka” rattle boxes, mushroom piggy-banks, bird whistles, nestling dolls (matryoshkas) and whipping tops from the village of Polkhovsky Maidan in Voznesensk region. Pieces of toy furniture are hewn and knocked together from several boards with the design in curling flourishes of the pencil. The local name for these volute-like chains is velurki. There are also musical carousels, mills, sailing ships and steam engines from the village of Fedoseyevo in the Semenov district of Nizhny Novgorod Province.

The Marvellous Fish-Whale by A. D. Zinin (1901–?) is a unique work interpreting the main points of Pyotr Yershov’s fairytale The Little Humpbacked Horse in a most original way.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the main hero of the Bogorodskoe masters was the bear. Like human beings, the bear engaged in a whole host of different activities, ranging from planting apple trees to space travel. The local masters employ various subtle devices like traditional suspenders, strings, planks and rods to set the toys in action.

Hand embroidery is represented by the works of masters from Ryazan and the village of Mstiora in Vladimir region. The embroideresses from Mstiora developed two varieties of needlework – intricately fine white satin-stitch and bright and bold Vladimir coloured satin-stitch.

Nowadays the most popular almost everywhere the art of patchwork in folk art was known as early as the nineteenth century. This particular type of needlework develops in many rural regions of Russia.