Author: ivan_hafizov

It was long time ago since the last time I’ve published photo of modern window frames
I’d try to reform this situation!
This is photo from Rostov Veliky
With this city in Russian language we have some features like:
We call this city ” Rostov Veliky” (“Velikiy”means the Great) but if you look at Russian maps the name of the city is just Rostov…
Foreigners for some reason call this city as Rostov Veliky and as Rostov the Great, but as I said the meaning of this two words is the same…
And in web I find a lot of records about the Rostov’s Kremlin, but every teacher of History can tell you that Rostov has never had such building ;)

Most of the houses owned by two families provide an inexhaustible source of inspiration. Some of them have been rebuilt  some have window frames painted in different colors.
This one, from Vyksa, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast,is lucky with its owners: frames at both parts are painted white, very typical local color, and in addition, the right one is decorated with potted flowers :)

A red-topped blue fence and yellow window frames against green walls. Is there anything else one may need for high spirits? Yes, there is – to me, it is a vent. T-shaped window sash is a rare thing nowadays, though it is a usual technique for any framed window. Yet, the vents are missed here. May be I am an incurable idealist yet I have a clear memory one can sleep with a vent open even in a bitter frost, but not with an open window (even a little). I thought they might just do not them any more, but Internet search had proved I was wrong. Which means it is just a matter of owners’ taste (and, perhaps, money) PS This wonderful mixture of colors is discovered in the Spas-Klepiki, Ryazan Oblast

Historically, I take frontal pictures of window frames, though they impress most when photographed at an angle. It is almost hundred times that I have swallowed this bait: when you see a window frame compressed by a perspective you expect some incredible decoration! Yet, when you come closer, you find that yes, they are rather pretty but a far cry from what you thought then to be…

This is the case with this nice house from Sudogda, Vladimir Oblast.

One may think it is to be very cute. No, it is rather ordinary, whereas the ones of its kind are shabbier.

Window frames of Kostroma as well as those from Ivanovo are rather bright against the façade. But then, it is understandable: in the XIXth century, the place had been a fast-developing merchant centre and each owner tried to show its house off. And the owners of this house not only follow this trend in the XXI century, but used the most acid yellow ever existing!

An incised carving is much older than a saw-through carving. In olden times, this technique, or, rather, this particular style –geometric – frequently decorated spinning wheels, cradles, spoons and other pieces of household. There are few surviving window frames decorated in this technique. A funny thing happened to me in Alapayevsk, where I had taken the photo.

The place has very nice Cathedral Square with magnificent churches: after all, Alapayevsk is a gate to Siberia.

Local museum is also there. I enter and walk through its exposition. An aged woman, a museum custodian, first throws some curious looks to me, and after a while dares to address.

– You are not local, aren’t you? – begins she.

-Yes, I am.

– From Yekaterinburg?

-No, somewhat farther: from Moscow.

-Oh, that far!  – she exclaims and throws her hands up. –  Since 1984, no one has come here from Moscow!!!

Once upon a time Red Riding Hood went through the forest towards grandmother’s house and came to…. Gavrilov pasad!

What is especially pleasant about window frames from Rostov in particular and Yaroslavl Oblast in general is a unique sense of harmony in the persons who had carved them. Here, the task was hardly realizable: to surround a window with a carved frame four times greater in size.

And the result?!

Plain, laconic and almost stately!

And now excessiveness at all

It is a sad thing to say, but both these photos show the same site – a mansion of the Merchant Sorokin.

Its history is quite curious: back in 1868, the house was a pavilion at a Nizhny Novgorod exhibition. Sorokin purchased it, then brought to Tutayev (Romanov-Borisoglebsk in those days) and put it there, straight at the bank of the Volga River.

For approximately fifty years, the place was its owner’s country house. After the October,1917, it was turned into the summer camp for the children of the militiamen of the Yaroslavl Oblast. The result is that by early 1990s, the house had got rather dilapidated.

I just came back from the frost, and that pushed me to find a photo of snow-covered frames. This is the one – from Alapayevsk, Sverdlovsk Oblast.  I called them frozen crabs from Alapayevsk!

It came to my mind they had been brought from the south and, at first, they were below the windows, not above them.

But then their legs got cold, and they had to crawl at the top:)))