Keepers of Beauty [antikvár]

FOREWORDAs the Soviet Union is inhabited by so many different nations and nationalities, no wonder the decorative folk arts comprise a highly diversified mosaic. Among the best known are the lacquered miniatures of Palekh, the hand-painted Matrioshka dolls of Polkhov Maidan, the carved wooden toys of Bogorodsk, the ivories of Chukotka and Kholmogory, the porcelain of Gzhel, the jewelry, carpets and rugs of Central Asia, the chased silverware of Kubachi in Daghestan, and the hand-painted trays of Zhostovo.However, there is far more than that to the wealth of the Soviet Union's folk arts and handicrafts. Still very much alive in many places are centuries-old traditional crafts whose secrets and tech-niques have been handed down from generation to generation. Reproduced in sundry articles of stone, wood, clay, and cloth is the imagery of pagan beliefs and myths, and the themes of narrative poetry and folk- and fairytale.In the remote, and not so very remote, past, the folk arts and handicrafts presented in this book were rather common. Later, they were superseded in the life of town and country by the mass-produced factory item, as a result of which what existed today is more of an ethnographical rarity than anything else.A revived interest in the folk arts and handicrafts is well illustrated by the special edicts which the Soviet government issued several years ago, and which are concerned with the status and right of folk craftsmen. Everywhere they unité into associations and consolidate their ranks. This book is about dedicated craftsmen whose handiwork the author has endeavoured to view through their own eyes and to teli you about in their own words. It is not a treatise or mono-graph, but rather what the author would call a Red Book of today's rarities in the folk arts and crafts of this country.