Old Believer churchyard description and photos - Russia - Karelia: Belomorskiy district (Topic)

Old Believer churchyard description and photos - Russia - Karelia: Belomorsky district. Detailed information about the attraction. Description, photos and a map showing the nearest significant objects.

Photo and description

On the coast of the White Sea you can see a lot of monuments of folk art, but a special place is reserved for the tombstones-chapels, which are called "cabbage rolls" in the north. These unusual works of folk art were widespread until the end of the 19th century in the northern graveyards. Today, to see such a chapel is a rarity - they have practically disappeared, individual chapels found by researchers did not give a complete picture of the artistic features of these small structures. Scientists are studying with particular interest the Old Believers' graveyard found near the village of Shuertskoye, the uniqueness lies in the preserved rare works of folk art of woodcarving and woodwork.

In the Novgorod chronicles of the 15-16th centuries there are records of a large number of chapel crosses which stood on the streets, bridges and squares of Veliky Novgorod. Examples of the art of artistic woodcarving were the "Wonderful Cross" (16th century) at the Volkhov Bridge and the "Poklonny Cross" (14th century) on the Sofia side. A. Morozov - a researcher of the Northern Territory reports that `` In 1594 the Dutch noted that they saw 'many crosses' at the Medynsky turn of the Mezen polar coast, one of which was decorated with amazing art with Russian letters. ''

In the second half of the 19th century. the famous historian of Russian architecture V.I.Dal became interested when he saw a chiseled column-chapel. In 1875, he published a drawing of a carved column found in the Vetluzhsky district of the Kostroma province in the Zodchiy magazine. IN AND. Dahl believed that such columns should be attributed to the most ancient period in the history of our culture. N.N.N.Sobolev also gives several options for similar columns, he noted their important role in the development of Russian folk woodcarving. However, these researchers had little material to fully study all the richness of ornamental decorations and architectural forms in these works of folk art.

Among the chapel columns, it is extremely rare to see the same ones, they surprise with a variety of architectural forms and ornamental carvings ... The most common ornaments on posts are beads, strings, towns, grooves, mushroom shapes and other motifs. Carved columns of cabbage rolls are of two types: flat, with a carved outline, and round, processed on four sides. Round columns appeared before flat ones, they were placed on churchyards until the middle of the 19th century.

Also, round columns, together with tetrahedral ones, are the most artistic. Usually these posts consist of three parts: base, trunk and icon case. The base of the post was buried in the ground, the trunk was under the special attention of the carpenter and carver, the upper part of the post - the icon case was in the form of a closed gable roof with a figured ridge.

The flat posts were subjected to a slightly different artistic treatment of wood. They had an ornament only on the front side, the composition itself also consisted of a base, a trunk and an icon case. But all these elements have been significantly changed due to processing and decorative techniques. The base protruded more strongly and was decorated with a number of vertical grooves; some artists added painting to them, compositionally repeating the outlines of the column. The central part had an oval shape elongated upward, completed under the icon case with two curls. The decoration of the icon case consisted of carved letters - the name, surname, patronymic and date of death of the person who was buried under the pillar.

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Topic: Old Believer churchyard description and photos - Russia - Karelia: Belomorskiy district.