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RUSSIAN ART AND ARCHITECTURE
THROUGH THE CENTURIES

 
 

Engraving

 
 

Another kind of art that won particular favor among the Russian nobility was engraving. Already at the end of the 16th century western engravings had appeared on the market in Moscow. They were called "Friaz amusing leaves" (sheets). By the middle of the 17th century the demand for them rapidly increased, and later they became a sort of collector's item. Thus some sources say that Patriarch Nikon had a collection of more than two hundred engravings which he kept under lock and key. Later, Tsar Aleksei's sons did not bother showing them to their visitors. Around this time the Russians learned from their foreign teachers to engrave on copper, and it was again in the Kremlin workshops that engraving thrived. A. Trukhmenskii and his pupils V. Andreyev and l. Bunin distinguished themselves illustrating several books. But first foreigners and then Russians started producing engraved icons, which showed Patriarch Ioakim, who succeeded Nikon as head of the Russian Church. Obviously, he feared another, cheap way to spread Latin influences in Russia, the saints being made the western way. He issued a proclamation to the people asking them "Not to print on paper the holy icons or buy those made by heretical Germans." Preoccupied with the schism and the struggle against the "Old-believers," the Church's protest against engravings fell on deaf ears. To the contrary, the popularity of engravings, not in icon form continued to grow, mainly in the form of cheap prints called "Lubok." All sorts of popular pictures and stories, usually with headlines and texts, were printed on these "Lubki," which became the only "Literature" that simple peasants could afford. With the help of "Lubki" thousands of peasants became literate, a side benefit to the enjoyment that these early forms of animated designs could offer to the people.
The printing of the first "Lubki" was done in a very primitive fashion using wooden boards. The engravers who performed the work were often simple peasants, but some of them were quite gifted, sometimes producing very colorful and interesting prints. The name "Lubok" came either from special baskets made of bast fibers - "Lubyanie korobki," in which peddlers carried the engravings; or from the lime tree boards, which in some provinces were called "Lub." Most probably the first "Lubki" were made in one of these provinces, the Vologda region.

 
 

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