“Kargopol toy” exhibition

On August,5 at 6 pm in the Elabuga state museum preserve gallery the ceremonial opening of “Kargopol toy” exhibition from Kargopol historic-architectural and art museum fund collection will take place.

Exposition will introduce with carefully preserved ancient craft in the Arkhangelsk Region - making of clay toy, traditional for this north region. The visitors will learn about history of craft appearance, its revival in the late nineteen-thirties and popularization in our days.

Kargopol toy specific nature is in its native connection with ancient traditions, plasticity and painterliness, usage of archaic symbols in ornament. This craft celebrateslandlords’ everyday life and holidays: men and women plough land, make bast shoes, do the domesticities, elegant ladies and gentlemen dance cotillion, young married women in head-bands treat everyone with pies, troika races jauntily. Pets and wild animals get a prominent place in the toy thematic. Sometimes, they dressed in farm clothes appear in human shape: play the harmonica, dance, go by sledge.

Female character of Bereginya is connected with ancient views – the patroness of nature and the protectress of family. She is depicted with hands upraised to heaven, holding birds. There are different clay tin whistles: ducks, Sirin birds, oxes or old men with ox body. All these things make Kargopol toys kin with fairy, epic and songlike folklore. In the middle of last century smoothly appeared one more character Polkan – demihuman-demihorse.