Month: February 2014

Kovrov, Vladimir Oblast, is one of the places with many wooden houses that have survived up to now. For me, it was an eternity ago – back in 2008 – yet my memories are still extremely warm. I presumed that Vladimir Oblast should have many well-kept, large and brightly painted window frames. Yet I was wrong.

The owner of this house in Engels, Saratov Oblast, found the most unusual way for marking the coming of the year 1997. It presents the Bull (symbol of 1997) driving away the Mouse (1996).

Why  the top of window frames decorated with mouse and fish, a we’ve already discussed, and we had no idea :)

The plate offers no answer to this clue: it just informs a WWII veteran lives here.

It is just by miracle that this wooden house managed to survive among the high-rise buildings of Novosibirsk! They surround it from three sides, and a very busy street forms the fourth one. Yes, the house is not a perfect beauty, and its yard is less than small, but its tidiness proves life goes on there!

This is the window frame I has ran across in Suzdal!

It gives a clear answer why Suzdal is every one’s favorite. It is a pure epitome of Russian soul – skill and a bit of boast in one! Hymn to wooden lace! Just a pure beauty!!!!

It was more than once when I mentioned that the window frames of Irkutsk are the biggest in size, yet every time it slipped my memory, that it was not the only place where these giantscan be found!

I cannot recall exact dimensions and have to rely on my memory. That was why when I had found this photo I was pretty sure it was taken in Irkutsk. But no, it is from Chita!

Window frames over there are as huge as they are in Irkutsk! Window are about two meters, and window frames about one meter more.

These days I wasin correspondence with a wood carver and was surprised with his awareness that window frames as well as house carving general originated directly from the ship carving.

In brief, this version says the wood carvers who had decorated wooded ships switched to house carving when metal ships appeared. This is a proved historical fact, but not the whole truth.

Just remember that at the same time there worked carvers who made church items like iconostases! It is hard to believe that their works did not affect the history of the wood carving.

This perfect photo borrowed from the «Russian Folk Wood Carving» shows decoration of the Holy Doors in achurch of Suzdal, Vladimir Oblast, made in the 1st half of the XVII century (just imagine – circa 1620!). The accompanying chapter explains that this type of carving laid down the basics of the wood carving style followed in the Volga Region.

So far, I do not have many photos from Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. Only in the couple of places I photographed the whole houses. Yet the town of Pavlovo is worthy of ten other ones! Just look at this house, which I believe costs a hundred of more simple ones!

Many of wooden houses that survived since the century before last are still rather appropriate for living. Yet is understandable why their window frames were tall and narrow – this was the only way to keep heat inside. In late one hundred and seventy-two hundred years, the height of the frame has remained the same, but their width changed a lot.  Those who own these houses today try to make the windows wider by installing two (instead of three) and three (instead of four-five) windows in a row. Ofcourse, their window frames are just disposed.

Yet in some houses, like this one from Ivanovo the owners used a unique structure of three window frames connected by one top and one plank under the windows and thus saved the window frames.

This window frame from Ural town of Alapayevsk presents a rather rare type of window frames. Most of those surviving to our days were made in saw-through technique, when the pattern is formed by the curls of the wood, which you can see at many other photos.

Here, on the contrary, these are cuts which make the pattern and the wood forms a background.

Back in 2007, I happened to be in Yaroslavl Oblast, somewhere between Borisoglebsk and Myshkin (or, perhaps, it was Uglich) and photographed this striking house with columns.

My eye had caught not only columns, but shutters so unusual for those places. Yet I don’t know  what  kind of house is it. And it is rather high, I should say (the photo does not show its solid basement)