Chukchi carved bone

Ancient Ages

Bone carving in Chukotka has a long history. Ancient Bering Sea culture is characterized by animalistic sculpture and household objects made of bone and decorated with relief carvings and curved ornaments. In the next Punuk period, which lasted until about the beginning of the second millennium, the sculpture acquires a geometrical character, a curved ornament is replaced by a strict straightforward.

XIX century

In the 19th century, plot engraving on bones appears, taking its roots in Pegtymelsky petroglyphs and ritual drawings on a tree.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as a result of the development of trade with American and European merchants and whalers, souvenir items decorated with carvings appeared for sale.

XX century

The beginning of the 20th century was characterized by the appearance of walrus tusks with images engraved on them.

In the 1930s, fishing was gradually concentrated in Uelen , Naukan, and Dezhnev . In 1931, a stationary bone-carving workshop was created in Uelen. Its first leader was Vukvutagin (1898-1968), one of the leading craftsmen. In 1932, the Chukotka Integral Union created five bone-carving artels in the villages of Chaplino , Sireniki , Naukan, Dezhnev and Uelen.

The figures of walruses, seals, polar bears created in 1920-1930 are static in shape, but expressive. But already in the 1930s, sculptures appeared in which carvers seek to convey characteristic poses, departing from a symbolic, static image. This trend is expanding in subsequent years. In the 1960-1980s, sculptural groups dominated the Chukchi carving.

Many artists who came to the Magadan Region and got acquainted with the local art tradition used the characteristic features of the Chukchi and Eskimo national bone carvings in their works in decorative and applied art: A. V. Vashkovets ^[1] , Yu. I. Gusev ^[2] , A. S. Dikarev ^[3] , Yu. P. Isaev ^[4] , E. P. Kramarenko ^[5] , A. I. Makarov ^[6] .

In visual art, characteristic techniques: building from separate fragments of a common narrative composition, perspective on the principle of “what's next, higher”, circular composition, slow, but internally tense rhythm of the drawing, was one of the first to be applied by Dmitry Bryukhanov in the genre of book illustration and easel engraving. For the first time, the artist used the motives of Chukchi national art in the second version of the illustrations for the autobiographical novel by Yuri Rytkheu “The Time of Snow Melting” (1960) ^[7] . Also, constructing the composition on the model of images cut on walrus tusks was used by Viktor Koshelev in the series of etchings “Sports Games of Chukotka”, “White Day in Uelen”, “Land and Sea”, “Bilibino”, “Uelen Games” ^[8] . Vladimir Istomin applied certain elements of Chukchi national art in the cycles of autolithographs "Chukchi and Eskimo national holidays", "Feast of the Whale" and in the triptych of etchings "Northern Poem" ^[9] . In silk-screen printing and painting on canvas, made in an abstract style, Konstantin Kuzminykh used the ornamentation of the traditional art of the peoples of Chukotka ^[10] .

• Chukchi and Eskimo art from the collection of the Zagorsk State Historical and Art Museum-Reserve, L .: "Artist of the RSFSR", 1981
• The unique beauty of Chukotka. Chukchi-Eskimo carved bone from the collection of V. A. Tishkov, M .: State Museum of the East .
• "The mysterious world of ancient graffiti." Margarita Kiryak (Dikova). Anadyr, 2013 (The Chukchi finished: 80 graffiti filed in a separate case )
• Vasilevsky, B. When the cucumber smells of smelt // World of the North: a magazine. - 2010. - No. 1 . - S. 23-29 . (About the well-known Chukchi bone carvers and their works.)
• Vasilevsky, B. Smile of the Northern God // Around the World: Journal. - 1971. - No. 6 . - S. 54-57 .