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Just recently, I met a female friend –  we have not seen each other for about five years. We got into a talk, and she told me she had ordered frames for six windows of her cottage, 80 roubles per a linear meter! I was curious to learn what kind of frames are these, measured in linear meters. She explained they are made of carved boards, and five meters are more than enough for one window.

At first, this utilitarian approach took me aback. Yet I had made a search in my collection and found a photo of “linear meter” frames took in Kalyazin, Tver Oblast. Rather good-looking, I would say.

 

I always attempt to find out those features which may indicate, even approximately, the period when window frames were made.  Of course, they will be different for different regions.

This one, from Vladimir, is rather young, dated back to 1980s. As many of its mates of the period, it is visibly flat, just about 2 cm of thickness (two thin boards).

Window frames made in 1990s are usually DIY and very plain, and those made in the beginning of this century are, as a rule, varnished (to reveal the structure of the wood) and not painted.

To go back into history, most of art nouveau window frames belong to the first half of the XX century, and almost for sure to its pre-1917 period (as later events moved any thoughts of style apart, as I understand).

One more criterion I had noticed is connected to the structure of the window: when it has five glasses (smaller ones in its bottom row), and, especially, when the glass is colored – most probably, they can be dated back to the second half of the XIX century, and are found in not so rich houses whose owners tried to be thrifty and opted for smaller glasses and not for larger ones.

Enjoy this couple from the town of Kulebaki!

I wouldn’t say they look ordinary there, but quite common – yes, that’s correct

People making wooden houses in Gavrilov Posad, Ivanovo Oblast, has developed two most unusual habits. The first: as distinctive from neighboring towns and regions, small windows at the attic are decorated as lavishly as house windows. The second: it is only here that roof slopes have these lace-carved friezes.

This magnificent piece, a part of my collection of window frames on the state service, decorates the building housing a town court of Pavlovo.

At first, I had strong doubts whether I could be allowed to take its photo: a police car was parked nearby, and policemen sometimes just prohibit without giving any rational reasons, but those local ones had noticed me but did not mind, perhaps getting accustomed to enthusiastic looks the house attracts.

I’ve never seen so beautiful nalichniki decorated with plants like in Kostromaи!

A museum of town life in Ugligh, Yaroslavl Oblast, occupies a wonderful wooden house. Yet I could not find it there. I have no idea of its location, though, when we were there, we had travelled the length and the breadth of the place.

But then, the town is full of the most intricate window frames which can make other places green with jealousy!

All the window frames throughout Russia have one thing in common, irrespective to the year or the century they had been made. Even the place and the region are of no importance, be it Khabarovsk or Petrozavodsk.

This thing is that window frames of the same windows must follow some uniform pattern. Which means, if the windows of the house are all similar, their window frames will be similar, too. Yet if one of them is different, (i.e. at the verandah), its window frame may be absolutely different, too.

Of course, there are no rules without exception: say, in Omsk, where windows at the ground and the first floor are the same, the first ones may have shutters, while the second ones usually do not.

But three similar windows with three different frames? It breaks all the rules !!!

But then, what else can we expect of the art nouveau…

The photo is from Vyazniki, Vladimir Oblast

This unpainted window frame is mostly unusual for Omsk – most of them have two -color painting there.

A local who had been passing by and saw me taking its photo flung that the window frame was certainly not bad, but it would be good for it to be painted; otherwise the house had desolated looks.

It should be mentioned that I had come from Tomsk, where people almost never paint their window frames, and that was why I saw painting as something vulgar, a kind of an unavoidable evil, though Tomsk had proved that was not the common rule.

Since then, I have travelled to almost seventy places. Yet it still puzzles me why they do not paint their houses and window frames in Tomsk, whereas everything in painted in neighbouring Omsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk and Kemerovo…

I planned to post this photo when the heat would come back, but the summer is almost over, no heat seems to be on the horizon, and very nice windows with shutters and icicles are going to disappear in vain! They could have waited for the next summer to come, but I fell ill with high temperature so now I cannot dreaming of anything else but to cool down :) Don’t you even think of falling ill, my friends!

By the way, I found this window in Tyumen. Please believe me – cold was really bitter there!