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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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