Kolyvan stone-cutting plant

In 1728, the Kolyvan-Voskresensky copper smelting plant was opened on the site of the future village of Kolyvan on the bank of the Belaya River by the entrepreneur Akinfiy Demidov .

In 1785, an official of the Cabinet of her imperial majesty, P. A. Soymonov, visited the Kolyvano-Voskresensky plants. On his orders, on the banks of mountain rivers, pebbles of multi-colored stones were selected. After the Altai stones were presented in St. Petersburg to Empress Catherine II , the highest decree followed about the organization of a grinding factory in Altai. In 1786, a grinding mill was opened at the Loktevsky plant, which was led by the master Peter Baklanov, who arrived from the Peterhof cutting factory . The son of an artisan who learned from him, Philip Stryzhkov, invented machines that made stone processing easier. ^[one]

In 1799, the Kolyvan copper smelter was closed. It was decided to use the dam remaining after it for a new grinding factory. Under the leadership of F. Strizhov, the construction of a new type of factory began, at which the processing of stones would be carried out by machines set in motion by the energy of water. In February 1802, the first machines began to work, and in August 1802, the factory started to work at full capacity. The head of the Altai plants V. Chulkov said:

... the aforementioned grinding mill in the last 1802 all its device is over and is now in its proper action. This mill is the master Stryzhkov, under his precise guidance and disposition, located and arranged very firmly ...

The use of machines accelerated stone processing several times in comparison with the Peterhof and Yekaterinburg factories and allowed Kolyvan masters to sculpt large things using monolithic semi-precious stones from nearby deposits. By 1810, Kolyvan had already sent stone hollow bowls of three-shaft diameters made of Revnev jasper to St. Petersburg, and in 1825 began the manufacture of the world's largest bowl, the Queen of VAZ , which had an oval shape and reached 7 arshin in large section. Mikhail Laulin , who replaced the deceased in 1811 by F. Strizhkov, began work on this bowl, but he did not live to finish processing, having died in 1835; only in 1843 the finished bowl was finally delivered to St. Petersburg.

In 1856, the Cabinet of the Imperial Court ordered the factory to make 18 columns of Revnevskaya jasper for the Cathedral of Christ the Savior being built in Moscow . The factory produced 2-3 columns per year; The last 12th column (the manufacture of the rest was abandoned) was shipped to Moscow in 1862.

The factory had four quarries - Revnevskaya (green-wavy jasper ), Beloretskaya ( quartzite ), Korgon ( porphyry , jasper) and Mountain Designed ( pink quartz ) ^[2] .

In 1917, the factory was nationalized . Having lost the customer in the face of the Cabinet of the Imperial Court, she ceased to produce highly artistic items. In 1945, on the occasion of the victory in the Great Patriotic War, the factory, designed by artist Alexei Ievlev, produced eleven vases, which were sent to Leningrad , but were never sold.

In 1949 the Kolyvan grinding factory was renamed the Kolyvan stone-cutting factory named after I. I. Polzunov .

In the 1970s, orders for vases began to arrive at the plant again - this time from the cities of Altai. Then the geography of customers of carved stone products began to expand: Novosibirsk , Ust-Kamenogorsk became interested in the factory’s products. In 1982-1985, a huge gemstone panel was made for the river station in Barnaul .

After the collapse of the USSR, the plant was subordinated to the Ministry of Public Utilities of Russia. In the difficult 1990s, the plant could not survive, and in 1998, by a strong-willed decision of the regional administration, it was bankrupt to write off its many debts. In March 1998, the plant was transferred to the jurisdiction of Altayavtodor. Altayavtodor acted as a direct customer for products made of granite, and Kolyvan received a large order for the manufacture of curb stone. As a result, the first stone-cutting center of Siberia continues to function to this day.

• Kolyvan Grinding Factory // Encyclopedic Dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron : 86 tons (82 tons and 4 extra). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
• Official site of Kolyvan stone-cutting plant
• The story about the Kolyvan grinding factory on the site of the administration of the Kurinsky district
• A. Rodionov “Kolyvan grinding plant. 200 years of stone-cutting fate "
• Grind history - Sib.