Fedoskino lacquer miniatures created by examples of the Moscow Handicraft Museum (1910s–1930s years)

Abstract

The article analyses the practice of scientific, artistic and ideological leadership of Moscow organizations in Russian folk art in the Soviet period using the example of the leadership of one of the centres for the production of Russian lacquer miniatures — the Fedoskino lacquer craft — from the side of the Moscow Handicraft Museum. The author of the article focuses on the policy of the Moscow Handicraft Museum, which was carried out during the first half ofthe 20th century, on introducing drawings created by city professional artists specifically for the Fedoskino master miniaturist into the lacquer miniature products of Fedoskino. The negative impact of such a policy on the development of the Fedoskino lacquer miniature, the reasons for the existence of such an external leadership, as well as the ways to overcome it along which the workers of the Fedoskino lacquer industry during the Soviet period, are revealed. The bibliography on this issue is examined in detail, various points of view and the argumentation of the relevant sides on such leadership in the lacquer industry are analysed. The purpose of the article is to show the process of gradual change — from the widespread at the beginning of the 20th century attitude to Fedoskino miniaturists as handicraftsmen-copyists, to their recognition as full-fledged creators, equal with urban professional artists, who prevailed in the mid-1950s. The author of the article concludes that the practice of imposing other people’s decisions and opinions on the side of the Fedoskino lacquer industry by external museum organizations, of course, to some extent enriched the experience of the miniature painter, ultimately only proved the validity of his own creative approach in the field of art creation.

Keywords:

Fedoskino, Russian lacquer miniature, the Handicraft Museum, art management, the Fedoskino labour artel