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The Russian Love Affair With Glass
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13626 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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8 / 1988 |
2,095 Words |
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Louise Sheldon
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Afanciful play of light, color, and shape in glass objects has always tantalized the Russian craftsman. Glass, as an art form, thrives in the Soviet Union today, where artists are rewarded with state honors and medals for their blown, cut, and engraved artifacts. This fascination with glass has a long history. The Russian imperial court always favored a certain baroque opulence in interior décor. Skilled craftsmen from abroad were imported to teach Russian artisans how to create Venetian glass. But even the czars did not realize that the tradition of Russian glassmaking went back many hundreds of years.
Only at the end of the last century, when excavations in the Kiev region uncovered quantities of cloisonné enamels from the eleventh and twelfth centuries, did people discover the true tradition of Russian glassmaking. In 1907, proof of early manufacture of glass in Russia came to light when an enamel- and glass-making workshop, equipped with furnaces, crucibles, and molds, was uncovered near Kiev's Desiatina Church. Later excavations unearthed handblown, round windowpanes, thinwalled goblets, and wineglasses with glass threading. Colored, double-layered glass artifacts, painted with gold and enamel, from Novogrudok, indicate the advanced state of the art eight hundred years ago. A painted dove set among tiny fir trees found on fragments of gilded violet glass also revealed the existence of a non-Byzantine-influenced native folk art.
Introduction of Christianity
It is now recognized that medieval Kiev was second only to Byzantium among European glass centers; Kiev's cultural advancement was linked to the introduction of Christianity in the tenth century. The simple early furnaces produced not only tableware but also great quantities of colored, opaque glass known as "smalto," used for mosaics and jewelry. Mosaics composed of tiny pieces of colored glass covered floors and walls of Russian cathedrals. These richly colored mosaics served to tell stories from the Bible to an unlettered people.
The Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century disrupted Russian life and culture for two hundred years. Whole populations fled from cities and monasteries into the wilderness. Kiev was destroyed, and craftsmen were taken captive and carried off. The production of glass was not resumed to any appreciable degree until the seventeenth century.
Foreign Imports
It was only natural that the increasing demands of the imperial court for glasswork were first met by foreign imports. A Swedish powder expert in Moscow created the first glass factory in Russia in 1630 for the production of simple glassware. When a second, state-owned factory was established in Izmail in 1669, European craftsmen (known as "Venetians," no matter what their nationality) were hired to teach their finest skills. After Peter the Great moved the entire Russian court to St. Petersburg, these factories were forced to close. But as the demand for glass continued to grow, factories sprung up in the new capital and in Moscow.
It is unfortunate that so few pieces survive of the fine blown and molded glass produced for the nobility during the first quarter of the eighteenth century. A rare bell, dated 1723 and signed by the local bell ringer and by a
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