Legend has it that the settlement appeared in the 13th century, when the Russian land was invaded by the Tartar-Mongol nomads. When they seized and devasted Vladimir and the nearby villages, people sought refuge deep inside the woods and on the swamps. They settled along the banks of the Klyazma River and its numerous tributaries - the Nerl, the Uvod, the Shizhigda, the Tesa and the Lukh, felling wood, rendering habitable those remote parts, ploughing land, breeding cattle, hunting and fishing. Mundane cares, far from abating the Orthodox spirit among the indigenes, on the contrary, enhanced it. That religious spirit has always been rather strong in Russia. The local people built churches, cast bells and painted icons. In toil and prayer our distant ancestors thus gradually developed those parts, which looked attractive at any time of the year.

The beautiful meandering Tesa River continues to enchant with its full water in the spring, leafy groves, pine-tree forests and water-meadows covered with flower carpets in the summer, the falling golden leaves in the autumn and snow-laden bound­less expanses in the winter. The special charm of those parts did not go unnoticed and became a source of inspiration for local craftsmen.

The earliest documented mention of Kholui dates back to the 16th century. According to an order sent by the Grand Prince Ivan Vasilievich of Moscow to the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, "On Exempting the Starodubsky Salt Mines from Taxes" (1546), Kholui belonged at that time to the monastery, to which Kholui's inhabitants supplied locally mined salt, a valuable product in those days.

In documents dated 1613 Kholui was already mentioned as an icon painters' settlement, granted to Prince Dmitry Pozharsky for helping to free Moscow from the Polish invaders. Art critics often cite Kholui icon painting, very much like that of Palekh and Mstyora, as old Russian painting. According to them, the first icon painters of Kholui were monks from the Trinity Monastery, a part of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, who taught local craftsmen the art of icon painting. The Monastery's archimandrate Afanasy was, for example, known to have given an order to choose in Kholui ten children from 12 to 15 "...keen both of mind and of icon painting prowess, literate, and, giving them abode, food and clothes at the monastery, have monk Pavel teach them painting." Disciples from Shuya and Mstyora were sent to Kholui to be trained in icon painting. Kholui thus emerged in the late 17th century as the centre of the icon painting tradition of the Trinity-Sergius Monastery. Icon painting developed fairly quickly in Kholui in the early 18th century: demand grew with every passing year. Kholui icons were highly appreciated in northern Russia, especially in the Vologda, Arkhangelsk and Olonets gubernias and St. Petersburg itself. Trainloads of icons were sent to Siberia. Kholui also received commissions for icons from Bulgaria, Macedonia and Serbia. Great demand naturally promoted the development of the craft.

Exceptional gift and profound knowledge of the possibilities and methods of tempera enabled artists to produce wonderful works of art. They also did fresco painting, decorating the walls and vaults of local churches and cathedrals. Icon painting workshops gradually became specialised: some produced miniatures, others big icons for cathedrals and still others frescoes. There appeared shrouds painted in oil on canvas rather than on board. Kholui emerged as a major trade and crafts centre, annually producing from 1.5 to 2 million icons. Its favourable geographical location at the cros-sing of many waterways and ground trade routes facilitated lively trade in icons, shrouds, gonfalons, embroideries and other locally-made handicrafts.

Fairs held regularly in Kholui-the Troitskaya in spring and the Tikhvinskaya in autumn-were well-known in Russia. By the mid-19th century, five fairs were annu­ally held there, attended mostly by tradesmen from cities and towns along the Volga. Up to 300 stalls and over a hundred booths were opened during the fairs. Goods galore were brought in-timber and icon boards from Makariev and Kostroma, grain from Saratov and fish from Astrakhan. Merchants from Persia and Turkey came to those fairs. Trade was extensive and lively, with turnover running into tens of thou­sands of silver rubles. For Kholui residents icon painting and trade were the only source of income, enabling them to build houses and churches.Thus, on the right bank of the Tesa in 1737 the Tikhvin Church was built. Some years later, in 1745-1753 on the left bank of the Tesa the Troitskaya (Trinity) summer and Vvedenskaya (Presentation) winter Churches appeared. A verst (3,500 English feet) outside Kholui, next to a pine-tree forest, an architectural ensemble of a men's monastery - the Borkovsko-Nikolayevskaya Pustyn - took shape with a summer cathedral, a church, monastic cells, a refectory and numerous outbuildings. They also built chapels, a pier, a tavern, shops, a school, a hospital, inns, brick houses for the wealthy and a lot of other facilities, including nine icon painting workshops.

Kholui became a volost centre of the Viazniki uyezd of the Vladimir gubernia and an original centre of traditional folk culture.

Expanding icon production to meet the demand constantly prompted the owners of icon painting workshops to employ more painters, as manual labour was not productive enough. They also introduced the division of labour. Icon painters who devoted much time and effort to every icon they painted from beginning to end, striving after expressive images, no longer satisfied entre­preneurs. There appeared hack icon painters called dolichniki (pre-face), who could deftly execute certain parts of icons, such as clothes, landscape and ornaments. More qualified painters called lichniki (face painters), as a rule, did the faces, the hands and the bodies. That type of specialisation boosted productivity, but art was gradually relegated to the background. Shrouds began to be made of print fabrics, and icons printed on paper or stamped on tin-plate appeared on sale. The process of "industrialising" the sacred art of icon painting and its negative consequences worried the clergy, the enlightened Russians and professional painters. In public opinion, the situation could only be remedied by founding icon painting schools. The first step towards local education was the opening in 1861 of a two-class vocational school, the first in the Vladimir gubernia, which gave classes in the Scrip-tures, the Russian language, national history, geography, arithmetics and psalms. In 1882, the Alexander Nevsky brotherhood founded in Vladimir opened, in Kholui, six-year drawing classes, which were later transformed into an icon painting school. Icon painting, drawing and painting within the framework of the Academy of Arts curriculum were taught there.

N. N. Kharlamov, a graduate of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts was sent in 1892 to Kholui to act as the school's headmaster and teacher. In addition, the Academy's Vice-President Count I. I. Tolstoy gave material support to the school by sending visual aids, plaster sculptures, samples of graphic works and paintings and syllabi. Subsequently the school was unofficially referred to as the Kharlamov school.

The school also offered classes in stamping, gilding, plastic anatomy and special subjects, such as composition and tempera techniques.

The activity of the icon painting and drawing school (1882-1920) was quite fruitful. Its first graduates formed an association and engaged in icon and wall painting under the supervision of their teacher, N. N. Kharlamov. They did the famous frescoes and iconstand for the Russian embassy church in Vienna, as well as for the Orthodox cathedrals of Cracow and Kishinev, and other churches in many Russian towns.

In 1902, another graduate of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, E. A. Zarin, came to head the school and to teach in it. The Academy exercised stronger influence on the activity of the Kholui icon painting and drawing school, which expanded its curriculum to give broader knowledge of world art and icon painting traditions and paid more attention to drawing as a basis of pictorial arts. About three years later the school was popularly called the Zarin school.

The Kholui icon painting and drawing school played an important role. Its most gifted graduated enrolled at the Academy of Arts or the Stroganov Art School in Moscow, did book design for Moscow publishing houses and worked as graphic artists and painters. Some abandoned Kholui and icon painting and gained prominence in other fields of Russian art. Most graduates, however, continued to work in Kholui, leaving an indisputable impact on the artistic level of icons and frescoes and fulfilling the most important commissions. Their knowledge and superb craftsmanship maintained and enhanced the prestige of Kholui icon painting. The school also laid the groundwork for the development of modern miniature painting in Kholui.

Religion was persecuted and desecrated after the October 1917 revolution and the Civil War in Russia. Together with churches and cathedrals—historical and cultural monuments of the Russian people, remarkable icons and frescoes were also lost.

Kholui's icon painting workshops were closed. Kholui painters had to look for jobs, painting houses, cars at railway stations, barges at piers, road milestones and swing-beam barriers. Excellent painters were for long unable to show their worth at that time of trouble and starvation and entertained bitter thoughts of art.

Under the circumstances it was necessary to find a new media to carry on the icon painting tradition. An idea emerged in Palekh to form an association of icon painters, who would use something other than an icon board or canvas and paint secular scenes instead of the images of saints and scenes from their lives. Palekh painters chose papier-mache, which was also used by craftsmen in the well-known village of Fedoskino outside Moscow. They borrowed the Fedoskino methods of making papier-mache articles and lacquering their surfaces, but used the icon painting technique to decorate their products. Little by little progress was made. In December 1924 an Old Painting Artel was formed in Palekh.

Lacquer miniatures on papier-mache emerged as a new trend in Russian decorative and applied art, winning recognition throughout the world. Fedoskino, in which the craft has been developing for 200 years now, is the indisputable birthplace of Russian lacquers. Kholui started to evolve its own style much later, when some of its painters returned home after long and fruitless quests and wandering across Russia. Inspired by the accomplishments of Palekh and Mstyora craftsmen, Kholui painters Sergei Mokin, Konstantin Kosterin, Dmitri Dobrynin and Vassily Puzanov-Molev formed an association in 1934 to try their hand in the new media. Icon painting school graduates, they were all talented professionals with vast experience; Puzanov-Molev even held two diplomas: he graduated from Moscow's Stroganov Art School in 1912. It took Kholui painters a long time and a lot of efforts to develop their own style. It had to differ from that of Palekh and Mstyora, whose lacquers had already gained certain renown. The war which broke out in 1941, the temporary closure of the association and its art school, and the mobilisation to the front of gifted young artists capable of carrying on the cause of their predecessors largely delayed the development of Kholui lacquers.

On a government decision a vocational art school opened in Kholui in 1943. Artists serving at the front and in the rear were summoned to teach there, and appropriations were made to equip the classrooms, to buy fire-wood, teaching aids, clothes and footwear for future students. Another graduate of the Leningrad Academy of Arts, U. A. Kukuliev was sent to Kholui. He worked as the association's artistic director and taught drawing and painting at the art school. The four-year program focussed on miniature painting, which was taught by Sergei Mokin (until 1945), Konstantin Kosterin and Vassily Puzanov-Molev.

In January 1947, the first post-war graduates of the art school joined the associ­ation. They were fourteen and included Nikolai Baburin, Alexei Kosterin and Boris Tikhonravov. Vladimir Belov, Mokin's pupil, became their unofficial leader. He was five or so years older than the rest of them and was distinguished above all by his love for miniature, hard work, imaginative thinking (very much like his teacher) and awareness of the creative goals and obligations of his generation. Subsequently art school graduates constantly joined the association's young team of craftsmen, among them Nikolai Denisov, Boris Kiselev, Valentin Fomin and Nikolai Starikov. That was in fact the beginning of Kholui lacquers.

In 1952, the association stopped making copies of paintings, rugs and portraits and concentrated on miniatures. It gradually developed its own base to produce papier-mache and wares from it. At the first conference held in Kholui in 1959 on the occasion of the association's 25th anniversary scholars, art historians and critics, as well as leading painters from Palekh, Mstyora and Fedoskino, discussed a current display of over 200 exhibits and unanimously pointed to the accomplishments of Kholui craftsmen. The general opinion was that Kholui had developed its own artistic traditions and an inimitable image. Kholui lacquers came into their own. Ever since that time Kholui became known as a center of lacquer miniatures, and museums, galleries, Russian trading houses and foreign firms showed keen interest in the works of its craftsmen. Kholui lacquers gained recognition.

Its painters produced both unique works of art, which were bought by famous museums and displayed at exhibitions, and models used to make small batches for the market. Though less time-consuming in execution, the latter nevertheless had well-balanced compositions and expressive themes and images, were well-done, elegantly beautiful and, what was of no small importance, quite affordable. Sales revenues formed the association's economic base, making it possible to finance creative activity and thus promoting the development of Kholui lacquers.

That fruitful period saw the appearance of classical examples of Kholui wares, including the nine-sided casket Russian Warriors, the five-sided casket The Tale of a Dead Tsarevna and the boxes Stone Flower and May Night by Belov. In collaboration with Fomin, he produced another excellent piece of Kholui miniature painting — the casket Urals Tales based on Pavel Bazhov's writings.

Enriching lacquer miniatures with icon painting traditions, Nikolai Baburin, who comes from a family of well-known Kholui icon painters, was quite a success in evolving an original style of his own. His casket Snow Storm and boxes Golden Cockerel, Hay-making, The Lay of the Host of Igor and Harvest Festival attract by an inimitable poetic vision of life and local nature. In 1970, together with a group of miniature painters from Palekh, Mstyora and Fedoskino, Baburin was awarded the Repin State Prize of Russia.

Boris Kiselev, another holder of the same prize, is also quite prolific. His works The Kulikovo Battlefield, The Song of Oleg's Prophesy, Don Quixote, Ruslan and Ludmilla, The Tale of a Fisherman and a Fish and Tsarevich Ivan and White Polyanin graphically illustrate the painter's affinity to the spirit of old Russian painting and profound knowledge of its sources interpreted by the talented master in an original way.

Nikolai Denisov, who also comes from an old family of Kholui icon painters, produced at that time several memorable pieces, including caskets Sadko, Captain's Daughter, The Song of Merchant Kalashnikov and The Tale of a Priest and His Servant Balda. They eloquently demonstrate his creative potential in carrying on the cause of the founders of Kholui lacquers, on the one hand, andin producing innovative works of art, on the other. Valentin Fomin, a 1950 graduate of the local art school, was another leading master of that period to show interest in national history. He scrupulously studied historical details, using literary and ethnographic sources, before starting work on his miniatures. He was also fond of genre and fairy-tale motifs, as demonstrated by his Fair or Snow-White. He depicted Afanasi Nikitin in India and Tsar Peter the Great in Holland Building Ships in his casket Russian People Across the Sea, elaborating the idea of Russia getting to know the world and borrowing foreign experience for the good of the Homeland. That, too, was an innovation of sorts, giving birth to a new artistic tradition.

The virtuoso craftsman Boris Tikhonravov cuts a lyrical figure among the Kholui craftsmen. Together with Baburin, he was one of the most gifted graduates of the local art school. His early works, such as Dubrovsky and Prince Igor's Campaign demonstrated his extraordinary craftsmanship especially in landscape painting, which he employed to convey the feelings and emotions of his characters. His musical nature sought an outlet in painting, and he seemed to be "singing" popular songs, such as A Urals Rowan Tree, The Bells Are Ringing, Ask Me For a Date, Katyusha, Oh, Ye Rye and Flax in Bloom in his miniatures. Tikhonravov, who died early but managed to leave behind wonderful works of art, devoted one of his last works to Sergei Yesenin, a true Russian poet with whom the artist shared a common world outlook, a similar temperament and a lyrical gift.

Nikolai Starikov, whose life and work was also, regrettably, cut short very early, immortalised himself in his caskets, such as A Stone Cutter, Chestnut-Grey and At the Will of the Pike, which are decorated with images of rare beauty.

Pavel Ivakiri, who never had any professional training but mastered the secrets of lacquer miniature by looking at what his colleagues did, occupied a special place among the Kholui craftsmen. He lived a short life, dying at 53, and went down into the history of the craft as a naive artist with his own vision of folklore motifs. Superb craftsmanship and extraordinary, expressive images set his works apart, such as Sadko, Chestnut-Grey, The Flying Ship, Yevseika's Adventure, Dancing and The Golden Gate.

Alexei Kosterin also produced some original and noteworthy works. He had a highly individual style, taking great pains and much time to create inimitable pieces. His themes varied from dynamic battle scenes in his Red Horsemen, On the Attack and A Troika to peaceful Ilya of Murom, The Monster and The Fire Bird. His master- piece, The Legend of Borka, shows a public prayer by the Nizhny Novgorod troops led by Prince Dmitry Pozharsky in a pine-tree forest a verst outside Kholui before their march onto Moscow. It was there that the monastery, the Borkovsko-Nikolay-evskaya Pustyn, was founded on the Prince's behest in the 17th century.

Lacquer miniatures are distinguished in multifarious Russian decorative, applied and folk art by their uniqueness and beauty, and the gift and craftsmanship of their creators. Handmade, labour-consuming and intricate, lacquer miniatures have much in common with easel painting. Nevertheless, these are pieces of applied art because painting here is utilitarian and inseparable with the object.

A lacquer miniature is an intimate type of art, the minute details of which may be missed in exhibition halls. Miniatures can only be understood and duly appreciated after scrutiny at close quarters. Kholui miniatures are easily understood because they are realistic, decorative and focus on the portrayal of the personality. The character may be monumental and stern as in O/eg's Prophesy, or gracious as in Snow Maiden, recklessly mutinous as in Stepan Razin or formidable as in Svyatogor the Warrior.

Gold is used only when justified, for example, to paint gold cupolas of churches and cathedrals, helmets, shirts of chain mail, brocade vestments, the sun, the moon and the stars in the night sky. This is another feature distinguishing Kholui from other centres of lacquer miniatures. The Kholui style continues to evolve today through the painters' relentless creative endeavours.

Kholui miniatures developed fairly intensively in the 1970s and the 1980s. New works were made, replenishing the reserves of the local museum, the Ivanovo and Pless art museums, the Moscow Museum of Decorative and Applied Arts, the Folk Art Museum with its largest collection of Kholui lacquers and the department of the Kulikovo Field Historical Museum.

More works were made for the market, and the number of painters also grew. Every year graduates of the local art school joined the team, worked side by side with experienced masters, improved their professional skills and gained experience. The range of local products expanded: there were already over 700 models, of which painters produced small series of copies for the market. Objects of new shapes and purposes appeared, and red, green and cherry-coloured pieces were added to the traditional black ones. Kholui lacquers made it to the international market in 1961. The first commission came from Great Britain to be followed by those from the US, Germany, France, Belgium and Italy. That fact and subsequent thirty-year-long exports promoted the development of the craft, strengthening the economy and raising the international prestige of Russian lacquers, including those of Kholui.

During those years painters began to make decorative lacquer panels. They were far larger than miniatures painted on caskets and other objects and ranged in size from 50cm to 350cm. Vladimir Belov was one of the first to paint big panels. His Fire-Bird, Troika, Oleg's Prophesy and Tsareuna the Frog looked fresh, fascinating and attrac­tive. Painters of an older generation, such as Baburin, Denisov, Kiselev and Fomin, took up the trend and, proceeding from the traditions of temple murals of the Kharlamov and Zarin schools, produced inspired works. They found it gratifying to work on panels, which offered vast opportunities to convey ideas. Younger painters, who represented the generation of Kholui masters of the 1960s through the 1970s, also did big panels, including The Tale of Tsar Saltan and Sadko by Alexander Morozov, The Little Shepherd and Snow Maiden and Mizghir by Pyotr Mityashin, Vassily Buslayev by Victor Yolkin, The Tale of a Sleeping Tsareuna and Snow Maiden by Sergei Dmitriev, Winter Troikas by Sergei Devyatkin and Sadko by Vladimir Sedov. These talented, hard-working and persevering painters are well-known by their works displayed at art shows and museum exhibitions.

Miniaturists are often called "fairy-tale" painters due to their devotion to Russian folklore themes. Indeed, tales, epic poems and legends are closer than any other genre to the imagery and pictorial potentialities of miniature painting. Kholui painters show special fondness towards Pushkin's tales, Yershov's Little Hunchbacked Horse, Bazhov's Urals Tales, Afanasiev's tales and other folk tales. Pieces with Russian folklore themes enchant by their genuine sincerity and purity, extol beauty and evoke the sublime in deeds and aspirations. Free from perfidy, evil, violence and grief, they give a graphic portrayal of folk wisdom, triumphant justice and truth. Kholui miniatures are imbued with optimism, which makes them especially popular, and are designed to give joy and to please. Their execution is, however, a complicated, intense and time-consuming process, justifiably referred to by painters as the "pangs of creation." In 1984, Kholui craftsmen's association marked its 50th birth anniversary with a retrospective show at the local museum. The over 500 best miniature pieces produced over half a century were put on display and impressed everyone, professional painters included. Among the exhibits were works by dozens of painters, starting with the founders of the craft and ending with commencing painters who brought their first works to public view. Some pieces dated to the 1930s and the 1940s, others were brand new. The exhibition awoke tremendous interest, ran throughout August and was then displayed at Moscow's Museum of Decorative, Applied and Folk Arts in October.

The works on display astounded by the diversity of their themes, which included fairy tale, historical, battle and even satirical scenes, as well as portraits, still lifes, ornaments and landscapes. The viewers' attention was invariably attracted by Victor Yolkin's Metro and Fireman, Alexander Smirnov's Bath House and Savage Landlord, Kosterin's Legend of Borka and Baburin's Old Kholui Fair, Snow Maiden, Pechenegs Besieging a Russian Town and The Tale of Tsar Berendei. Special mention should be made of Kiselev's "micro-miniature" caskets, Belov's nine-sided casket Russian Warriors and panels Stepan Razin and Boyan, as well as Fomin's caskets Decembrists, Dawn over Russia and Who Is Well Off in Russia.

Another notable theme was the architectural landscapes of old Russian cities and invaluable historical and cultural monuments, including Novgorod, Outside Novgorod, Pskov-Krom, several versions of Uglich, Old Yaroslavl, In Yaroslavl, Rostov the Great, several versions of Suzdal, Old Suzdal, Kideksha, The Church of the Intercession on the Nerl, Golden Gate, The Vladimir-Suzdal Museum Preserve, The Kremlin. St. Basil's, The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, Optina Pustyn, Alexan-drovskaya Sloboda, The Trinity-Sergius Monastery, several versions of Kholui, Kizhi and The Nikola-Shatromsky Monastery.

The exhibition graphically illustrated the different stages of the development of Kholui lacquers and the potentialities of local painters and confirmed the craft's well-earned prestige in modern Russian culture.

In its fifties, the Kholui craft is going through difficult times due to the general situation in Russia. The major contradiction between art and production, which has long caused differences among painters, was settled when a group of painters formed an independent Artists' Union and craft workshops under it in Kholui. The old work-shops went public and reorganized into a joint-stock company. Two distinct workshops are currently operational in Kholui, developing the art of miniature painting along the lines of a single artistic idea. New works are being produced, using traditional themes and images; icon painting is being revived, albeit timidly so far due to the loss of tradition. That tradition is being studied anew and reinterpreted by contemporary painters. New times dictate new approaches to icon painting, nourished by a great love for Russia's past and present, indepth knowledge of the sources, the inspiration and talent of those who have undertaken the arduous and noble job of reviving the traditions of old Russian painting. Kholui craftsmen are once again going through a period of dissatisfaction with their present accomplishments. Their creative quests aim to breathe life into icon painting and to produce miniatures on biblical and Gospel themes. These eternal themes of world art, which have for many years been banished from Russian lacquers, are being given a new lease on life at a confluence of past traditions and novel aspirations of local craftsmen.



The Kholui Town, the winter of 2003
























The proud town of Kholui, the town's welcome sign





























The making begins by tigthly rolling paper in thick layers, it takes up to four weeks from the start until the lacquer box is ready 



















The paper boxes are shaped 


























Paint made by special carbon-ash mixtured is put on the boxes 


























The inside is painted red with a organic color made from vegetables






















All the colors used for painting are organic and come from nature, no chemicals are used, all made by hand
























The golden color which are used, to decorate the edges for example, include REAL gold
























The very detailed painting starts by the artist, the artist is educated at special Kholui schools (a 5-year education)
























After the color has dried, seven layers of lacquer are added






















The box is then carefully polished




























The detailed golden painted decorations are smothened out by a wolf's tooth



























The Kholui artists have received many distinctions throughout history (here one from Lenin)

















Here one from the "International Pushkin Society", New York, USA



















 

When ordering a Kholui item, a certificate always follow


























To buy Kholui lacquer boxes click here