The chest craft of the village of Byngi (Middle Urals, 18th – 1st half of the 20th century): materials for the history

Abstract

This paper is an outline of the history of the chest industry, which existed in the 18th - the first half of the 20th century in the village of Byngovsky plant, located in the Middle Urals. Despite of the popularity of local chests and caskets in Russia, the literature on the history of the craft is extremely poor. The purpose of the article is a general description of the local chest production. The main tasks are a generalization of information about the handicraft industry that is currently available, as well as an artistic analysis of certain types of chests. The names of Byngi masters, information about their workshops and participation in exhibitions of various levels are given. Specific types of chests are analyzed: materials and techniques for their manufacture, basic artistic solutions. Features of the existence of the chest craft in the post-revolutionary period are determined, when artels were organized on the basis of private workshops, later transformed into a furniture factory. The author ascertains the decline in the quality of chests from Byngi of this period. Among the main reasons are the acceleration and mechanization of production. The article uses not only numerous statistical and zemstvo editions of the 19th – early 20th centuries, but also information from the Russian State Historical Archive (St. Petersburg). As a result of the study, it was concluded that Byngi represented a significant center of the local chest production and its evolution corresponded to the main trends in the development of the handicraft industry of the Middle Urals.