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Bogorodskoye Toys

 

History

In the late 16^th century, the Sergiev Trinity monastery in Russia’s Vladimir Province began encouraging toy carving among local craftsmen.  For centuries, their products were sold to religious pilgrims at the monastery or kept for personal use.  In the early 1800s, craftsmen from nearby Bogorodskoye started creating undecorated carved miniatures to be painted or sold ‘as is’ in Sergiev Posad itself. By the 1850s, Bogordodskoye toys had famously become known for humorously reflecting peasant life. Their popularity became widespread, allowing several to also become modeling prototypes for china miniatures.

 

By the late 19th century however, Bogorodskoye carvers began to be exploited by profit-squeezing jobbers. These middlemen were vital to the isolated carver, providing the necessary supplies and retail markets to sustain a livelihood. Unfortunately, competitive pricing among jobbers gradually moved them to reduce their recompense. Eventually, carvers began working upwards of 15 hours a day to earn a living wage.  Pressures to produce led carvers to neglect quality craftsmanship, further exacerbating an industry decline. Working with their families, many failed to compete against newly imported factory-made toys.  These brightly painted, inexpensive toys from Germany were perceived as highly refined compared to native Bogorodskoye toys.

 

By the early 20^th century, the Bogorodskoye carver’s prospects had begun to rise again.  For the first time, Bogorodskoye craftsmen had formed a cooperative to improve pay and working conditions. Reflecting this renewed status, the local government opened a handicraft museum to provide artisans with toy samples. Likewise, a Bogorodskoye zemstvo (self-governing) art school was opened for vocational training.  As the industry gradually revived, Bogorodskoye craftsmen greatly expanded their output (producing 150 different toys before World War I). 

 

In the 1920s, Soviet authorities encouraged Bogododskoye craftsmen to join an industry-wide artel. Like many handicraft workers, the move would prove highly beneficial.  To further fortify the industry, the Soviets instituted a toy museum and training workshop in Moscow.  By the early ‘30s, Soviet authorities had also created a toy research institute and reorganized the artel as a large toy factory. Both were meant to ensure Sergiev Posad (then Zagorsk) would remain Russia’s premier toy manufacturing center.

 

However, the Zagorsk Toy Factory No. 1 (as it was named) began to have an injurious effect upon the craft during the post-war years. The factory system, geared toward production rather than artistic originality, seemed to stunt creativity.  Rather than explore new opportunities, management simply directed carvers to recycle well-known characters and ideas.  As their status declined, carvers struggled against factory standardization, worker displacement, and official neglect. By the 1970s, the Bogorodskoye toy trade was failing to attract future craftsmen, having long past dissipated as a hereditary trade. In the ‘80s, perestroika helped bring about changes that would gradually revive Bogorodskoye toy making.  Today, the town boasts over 100 toy carvers working to revive the craft. 

 

 

Design Overview

Bogorodskoye toys are deceptively simple in appearance, requiring skill, imagination, and forethought to produce. Before being carved, Bogorodskoye craftsmen must allow linden wood to dry for at least two years (as they do with nesting dolls). Failing to do so can leave a finished product warped or cracked.  Each piece is then carved with an axe, knife or chisel from a single piece of linden wood. No moldings or sketches are used.

 

From a distance, Bogorodskoye toys can be recognized by their unpainted surface and sharp angles. Because most figurines compel viewers to strain for details, Bogorodskoye craftsmen create their characters in clear-cut silhouettes. Their sharp angles fortify a distorted perspective, earning them the moniker “peasant’s cubism”. This technique, called slash carving, advertises the toy’s handcrafting by omitting minor details.  Nevertheless, some Bogorodskoye toys are still smoothed, painted and lacquered. (Newer toys may even display fretwork).

 

The most popular toys are those that can be animated with moveable parts. Several such toys use a push-pull device employing springs, a pedestal, or thread.  Another moveable-type toy, the “razvod”, stands on scissor-like trellises that move figures back and forth when clasped (such as a woodpecker or horse-drawn carriage). Jointed arms and legs are held together with elastic bands to provide versatile movement.

 

Bogorodskoye carvers traditionally depict scenes from Russian village life, most always incorporating their figures in a group activity. Well-known sets are entitled “Village Assembly”, “Blacksmiths”, and “Lumberjacks”. Several are based on lubok prints depicting city peddlers or fashionable ladies. All display a sense of irony or humor, frequently hidden until closer inspection (the sleepy worker trying to stay awake). Early Bogorodskoye toys are notorious for their satire: pregnant nuns, snobbish officers, greedy merchants, and the titled rich. During the early Soviet era, many pieces were based on socialist realism and patriotism.  Today, novelty items depicting contemporary gadgets have become popular.

 

At the turn of the 20^th century, Nicholai Bartram, an artist heavily involved in developing Bogorodskoye’s toy industry, sought to trace the toy’s stylistic characteristics to Russia’s past.  He concluded that popular prints (lubki) and icons had influenced Bogorodskoye carvers to promote similar rigid lines, sharp angles, and contours in their work. To prove his theory, Bartram assembled Bogorodskoye carvers to create toys based on old lubki. Not surprisingly, he felt vindicated by the results.

 

On a practical level, Bogorodskoye toys give the casual viewer some insight into 19^th & 20^th century village life. Similarly, Bogorodskoye toys clearly exemplify art’s utility in peasant life, as an ingenious way to socialize children in village customs and traditions. And even today, Bogorodskoye toys are used to help convey to Russian children their heritage.

 

Bogorodskoye Artists (past and present)

Barinov, Mikhail

The Bartrams

Chushkin, Andrei
Goloushev, Sergei

Konenkov, Sergei

Oveshkov, I.I.

Polinov, V.

Shishkin, G.

Vargonov, Alexander

Vatagin, V.A.

Volchkov, I.

Yeroshkin, Filipp
Yeroshkin, N.

Zinin, Leonty

Bibliography
Hilton, Alison. Russian  Folk Art . Indiana University Press. 1996.
Ovsyannikov, Y. Russian Folk Arts and Crafts. Progress Publishers. 1968.

Pronin, Alexander. Russian Folk Arts. Barnes. 1975.

Salmond, Wendy and Richard Etlin. Arts and Crafts in Late Imperial Russia. Cambridge University Press. 1996