Author: ivan_hafizov

It may look quirky, but wooden window frames at brick walls is a rather common trick in some towns of Ryazan Oblast! To me, they look like one more effort to follow traditions. This blue frame I shoot in the town of Sasovo.

Long, long time ago, a chairman of the Zemstvo (elective district council in pre-revolutionary Russia) Council in the town of Gorokhovets, Vladimir Region, built this wooden palace. Since then, it has been known as «The Prishletsov’s House» after the name of its first owner. Built in 1915, it is a bit under 100, yet I failed to find any information on its architect. Somebody local, I suspect.

Art nouveau style has a distinctive feature: one can never say a house is overloaded with details! Just look at this one from the town of Kimry: there is measure in everything and very delicate feeling of proportions.

Yesterday I took from printing office long-awaited calendar for 2014 year, I’ll take a photo with it and tell about creation today or tommorow!
But now I want to introduce you these charming nalichniki from Yuriev-Polski. This windows seem to be an ordinary but for some reason I want to stare at such a captivate wooden carving.

This is what I have discovered in a dictionary of Russian dialects: many parts of the wooden house façade bear names of… human face parts.

E.g.,

In Karelia, «face» means simply «facade»;

«forehead»  stands for «fronton» in Novgorod, Kostroma and Tver Oblasts;

In the town of Bezhetzk, they use «earrings» to denote carved boards drooping from the side of the roof at the facade;

In Arkhangelsk and Murmansk Oblasts, «eyes» was in wide use instead of «windows»;

In Vologda Oblast, «blinker» was a name for a window glass;

«Brow» was an upper bar of the window in Murmank Oblast and carved decorations of the façade in Karelia.

Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera…

100 -120 years back, all the facilities owned by the Railway Ministry were built under the same standard projects. And still they looked rather attractive, as the best architects of the period worked on their projects. I wish modern standard structures could catch someone’s eye after one hundred years!

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…When you photograph window frames throughout the country, you just cannot miss a very delicate feel of color at some of them.  This is a window from the town of Engels, Saratov Oblast. White at the blue flowerpot is twice as many as yellow, in the very same proportion with the color balance of the window frame. Is it just a coincidence? I don’t think so

Just recently I had a trip to the town of Udomlya in the North of the Tver Oblast in a hope to take photos of window frames I expected to fund there. Yet my hope was vain: 360 km to destination, two hours of work – as the days are short now – and the road back. May be the only luck I had there was this art nouveau house of the early XX century, now a headquarters of the local Department of Culture. How many of houses like this one are there in Russia?

When it comes to wooden architecture, window frames are the certainly the very first thing to remember. Doors usually are not even mentioned, though some of them are real masterpieces. In the town of Borisoglebks, Voronezh Oblast, the houses facades look straight at the street and not at the porch. And this wooden beauty is here for everyone to admire

Wooden houses turned black with time are rather rare to see. Most of extremely black ones are kept in museums. Yet there is no rule without exception.

These rather somber window frames were noticed at a habitable house in the town of Gus Khrustalny (Vladimir Oblast). From the outside their shutters  are almost black, whereas from inside they saved natural wooden color.

What is more, this type of shutters seems rather unique, as they cover only lower part of the window. Which may mean they protect from hooligans but not from sunshine or cold