Engraving on wood

Love to engraving on wood was typical to the Russian people since the pagan times. Orthodoxy as it is known forbade sculpture supposing it to be a symbol of paganism and idolatry. But love for plastic art and engraving on wood didn’t disappear. Home engraving was very popular when a decorative talent of a carpenter and engraver revealed in traditional interior of the northern Russian log house. All the objects surrounding a peasant in the past were made of wood and it’s difficult to name an object (let it be wooden tableware, spinning wheels, furniture, sledges, a cart or a shaft bow) that wasn’t be decorated with engraving. During the ages of history real masterpieces of artistic synthesis were created when a functional, constructive and artistic sides of the objects received a harmonic realization.

Church iconostasis with refined compositions done in the form of wooden gilded engraving and engraved images of the saints are masterpieces of the art of the northern engravers who worked with wood and skilled painters. The monuments of wooden architecture survived in the severe northern climate need a special care. In the surroundings of Vologda (Semyenkovo village) was founded a museum of architecture and ethnography of Vologda Oblast. In the museum exposition the historical ways of development of Vologda wooden architecture and its regional peculiarities are reflected.

Original art of engraving on wood spread in everyday life is of special interest.

In Vologda area there were a lot of centers producing wooden tableware and each of them had its own versions of the objects’ forms and their favourite ways of decoration.