(C) Black Lacquers Co-operative, Russia, 1999

PALEKH.

Geographical Situation. Palekh is situated about three hundred eighty kilometers (250 miles) northeast of Moscow in Ivanovo region (about 70 kilometers from Ivanovo), amidst meadows and fir and birch woods, straddling the banks of the little Paleshka river. The former impenetrability of its forests and the poor state of its roads ensured that it was not on a main trade route, a fact that was to help preserve its integrity as an icon-producing center. Its present population is over 7,000, and nearly three hundred fifty artists work there.

Techniques and Style. The real Palekh box is instantly recognizable. There is no art form in the world like it and none that can transmit its peculiarly infectious "magic". Palekh boxes are simply exquisite, conjuring up worlds of fairy-tales and enchantment on the tiniest surfaces. This, of course, means that they tend to be more expensive than those from other villages are (but in fact Fedoskino works might be much more expensive).

True official Palekh art reflects the integrity the village had during the Nineteenth Century when it was an icon-painting center. Standards are stringent: an artist is schooled for four years, and what they produce after joining the collective is judged by a panel of seven experts who meet weekly. Recently, during the Soviet period, each composition must be original, and if it were thought that the artist has copied their idea, or had turned out a work in some way dishonest, it was rejected and they did not get paid. Compositions were graded from 1 (the lowest) to Unique, and the painter is paid accordingly. A "good" Palekh box is either a Quality grade 7 or Grade 7.5.

History. Palekh, along with the other tempera villages, was part of the old Vladimir-Suzdal principality, the very birthplace of Russian icon painting. The village itself seems to date back to the Fourteenth Century, when monks fleeing the Mongol invaders set up a community. It is known that the serfs of the Buturlin estate there took up icon painting in the Seventeenth Century, and in the middle of the same century a letter addressed to the Moscow artist Semion Ushakov mentions the villagers of Palekh, who bartered the icons they had painted for onions and eggs.

The Eighteenth Century saw the development of iconography as a cottage industry, with division of labour, and by the mid Nineteenth - when the artists still ran small peasant farms and grew rye - it was run on business lines by the Safonovs, who sent painters out to various parts of Russia on commission work.

After the decline of the industry, the period of international and civil war, followed by the discovery of the possibilities of painting on lacquered papier-mБchИ, the revival came first with the Museum of Handicrafts commissioning miniatures from I.Golikov, I.Vakurov, I.Bakanov, I.Markichev and A.Kotukhin.

Previous to this, in response to the Bolsheviks' encouragement for folk art producers to set up cooperative ventures, the village craftsmen had formed the Palekh Wood Painting Society in 1919, concentrating on the decoration of metal and wooden artifacts, as well as pottery. After Golikov's vision of a new life for icon art this was replaced by the Old Style Guild, with the above painters at the heart of it.

Other great Palekh pioneers have included Ivan Zubkov, Alexei Vatagin and Nikolai Zinoviev, while among the gifted pupils of veteran artists have been Tamara Zubkova, Anna Kotukhina, Grigory Bureyev, Grigory Melnikov, Pavel Chalunin and Nikolai Golikov, who have all produced outstanding works.

Many thanks to Maxim Lucy