Mezen wood painting

Almost all objects with Mezen painting were created in the late XIX and early XX centuries. The objects are densely mottled with a fractional pattern (stars, crosses, dashes), made in two colors: black - soot and red - "earth paint", ocher . The main motifs of the geometric ornament - discs, rhombuses, crosses - resemble similar elements of a triangular-notched carving.

Among the ornaments are friezes with stylized sketchy images of horses and deer, which begin and break off at the borders of the subject. Made of black and red colors, animal figures seem to arise from a geometric ornament. All images are very static and only thanks to repeated repetition does one get a sense of dynamics. As a rule, on the Mezen spinning wheels one row of deers is depicted and a row of horses below, but there are products with a large number of friezes and a more complex, condensed ornament. In the upper part of the spinning wheels are often placed sketchy images of birds applied with a single smear of red paint ^[1] .

Images on the back of the spinning wheel were less saturated with ornaments, more free in the plot. Here you can see childishly naively written genre scenes: hunting , a steamboat , the same horses, only frolicing in the wild. Signatures are often found next to the image with the name of the author, customer, date of manufacture or price of the spinning wheel.

The finished product was painted on a clean uncoated tree, first ocher using a wooden stick ( vise ) soaked on the end, then a black stroke was made with a capercaillie or black grouse pen and a brush made of a human hair was applied and a pattern was applied.

Mezen painting is one of the late peasant paintings. This painting is a purely ornamental decor.

The painted object was covered with drying oil , which protected the paint from being erased and imparted a golden color to the product.

At the end of the 19th century, Mezensky painting was concentrated in the village of Palashchelye, Mezen County , which was first mentioned as a center for painting on wood in 1906. Thanks to the signatures on the spinning wheels, families of butcher craftsmen can be distinguished, which is unique for, as a rule, anonymous peasant art: the Aksyonovs, Novikovs, Fedotovs, Kuzminykhs, Shishovs - those who worked back in the 1920s, during the fading period.

In the mid-1960s, the Mezensky painting was revived by the descendants of the old butcher-masters: F. M. Fedotov in the village of Palashchelye and S. F. and I. S. Fatyanovs in the village of Selishche . In Arkhangelsk, at the experimental enterprise Belomorskie Uzory , souvenir products with modern city paintings that imitate traditional peasant mezensky paintings are produced. In Severodvinsk, at the Decor North enterprise, many products are made of wood and high-quality plywood, such as boxes, chests, kitchen sets, cutting boards, salt shakers, etc., with modern Mezensky painting.

• Borets painting
• Kargopol toy
• Lower Tomsk painting
• Kholmogorsk carved bone

• N. Velichko. Mezen painting. - AST-Press, 2014 .-- ISBN 978-5-462-01518-2 .
• Northern spinning wheels: Exhibition catalog. - Vologda, 1969.
• Taranovskaya N.V., Maltsev N.V. Russian spinning wheels. - L. , 1970.
• Vasilenko V. M. Russian folk carving and wood painting // Folk Art. - M. , 1974.
• Milovsky A.S. Jump, good unicorn. - M. , 1983.
• Great illustrated encyclopedia. 17 volume, p. 170. AST Publishing House: Astrel, 2010 - Moscow.

•   Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mezen wood painting

• Mezen painting
• Mezen folk painting