In May 2019, representatives of the Kizhi Museum approached us with a proposal for cooperation. The Kizhi Museum is one of the largest open-air museums in Russia. This is a unique historical, cultural and natural complex, which is a particularly valuable object of the cultural heritage of the peoples of Russia. The basis of the museum collection is the ensemble of the Kizhi Pogost, which is included in the UNESCO World Cultural and Natural Heritage List.
The secrets of the old masters were passed down from generation to generation and developed on an intuitive level. In this regard, one feels an impeccable knowledge of the material, its properties and technologies for working with it. The work process began with the harvesting of timber. Properly selected building material ensures the durability of the building. For houses and temples, wood was selected with great care. The main material for construction in the north of Russia was pine. Logs for construction were harvested in winter, when the movement of juice stops, and the wood becomes dense. The winter months - January and February - were considered the best for logging. This was explained not only by the schedule of field work and the best conditions for timber transportation, but also by the fact that the forest harvested in winter was less affected by wood-destroying fungi. They chose trees that grew on high sandy places. The age of the trees at the time of felling was 150-300 years. For log cabins, logs with an average diameter of 30 cm were used, and their average length was 5-8 m. Logs of great length were also used - up to 12 meters. Next came the felling of trees. She also required the necessary knowledge, because the felling of the forest was carried out with a heavy ax with a long handle. After felling the forest, tree trunks were cleared of branches and branches and cut into 4-5 logs at the felling sites. The felled trees were transported to the construction site by horses on specially equipped sledges. The bark from the trunks was already cleaned off directly at the construction site. Traditionally, logs were debarked with a scraper.
The topic is interesting and rich from the point of view of proto-design (the forerunner of design) and aroused special interest among us, as professionals. After visiting the island of Kizhi and getting acquainted with the exhibits of the museum, our desire to design increased, and the number of questions on the topic increased tenfold. New terms, combined with intricate methods of wooden architecture, required a separate understanding. Ploughshare, prichelina, stamiki, valances, streams, hen-kokora, ohlupeny-sheloma intertwined with no less exotic names “in the okryapka”, “fat tail”, “in the paw”, “in the okhlop”. Mikhail Terebov painstakingly explained what was what and why. Over time, the topic became more understandable and close.
We were faced with a difficult task - to place exterior examples of wooden architecture in the interior of the exhibition hall of the Kizhi Museum-Reserve. The limited space required a thoughtful design solution. Andrei Skritsiy has developed an exposition solution for the exhibition space, which reflects the idea of careful preservation of traditions and technologies, understanding of restoration processes, as well as scrupulous scientific research. Exhibition equipment associatively refers to the silhouette of construction and restoration scaffolding. The visitor gets into the backstage - a fabulous world of mysteries and nuances of carpentry, usually hidden at the time of restoration of objects.
For 5 days of installation, the exhibition space of the museum turned into a construction site. Scaffolding was erected according to drawings made virtually. The scale of the construction work impressed everyone present with its elaboration and accuracy. All the details matched perfectly and without adjustment. During the design process, Andrey built structures and worked out their connections in a 3-D environment, which made it possible to reduce the installation time at the facility and present the planned results of work without distortion.
It was interesting to watch how every day new bizarre constructions appeared, intertwining into a maze, as if in a computer game. Comparison of street and interior scale is a move that allows you to design an unusual environment. When we saturate it with exhibits of the 19th century, a new fairy-tale dimension is born together. Visitors to the exhibition can see a set of carpentry and joinery tools that did not change for several centuries until the 20th century, learn the secrets of longevity of masterpieces of wooden architecture, get acquainted with the work of lathes and grinders, with the structural features of the dome of the northern temple. You can also look into the workshop and master the techniques of some carpentry and joinery work, or simply touch the tactile wall, assembled from ancient aspen tiles - a plowshare that once adorned the cupolas of Kizhi churches.
At the construction site, the logs were stacked, and in the spring the bark was removed from them. Peasant customers have always helped carpenters to round logs. At first, the logs were rebuked with an ax, removing the upper part of the bark. For finishing, after an ax, debarking logs and removing sapwood, a plow or scraper was used (from the word “scrape”). This tool is a staple with a straight or arcuate blade and two wooden handles. With a scraper, the bark on the border of the bast was removed from the logs without damaging the wood, and at the same time the surface of the log was leveled, cutting off irregularities and small knots. When debarking a log with an ax, chips and notches inevitably appeared, which increased the likelihood of bioinjuries, and when processed with a scraper, the surface of the log turned out to be smooth. Logs with an intact, dense and smooth surface remain in the building for an unusually long time.
Until the middle of the 19th century, village carpenters did not use a saw, and boards for floors and ceilings of churches and houses were not sawn from logs, but pricked. Corner connections of buildings are impressive in their diversity, this is due to the purpose of the building. At the exhibition, the visitor can lift the log and get acquainted with the arrangement of the node in detail. For sheds and the simplest buildings, a "boar" connection was used. This cutting method is technically simple, but it has a significant disadvantage - the logs are not tightly connected to each other. The "into the hood" connection is used when cutting houses, barns and baths.
The “paw” method was used in the construction of porches near houses and churches, as well as polygonal log cabins, such as octagonal belfries or altar parts of temples.
The corner connection of logs "Kurdyuk" is structurally much more complicated in comparison with traditional bowls. However, it is characterized by higher reliability, besides, it provides additional sealing of the corners, since the wind cannot penetrate between the logs during direct blowing. Most often it was used in the construction of the walls of the house.
Of particular interest was the decor of the houses. Here, as in design, the function goes inextricably with the appearance of the product. The decorative decoration of peasant houses and outbuildings is one of the most striking manifestations of the artistic thinking of our ancestors. Carved chapels, towels, platbands gave the house an elegant, friendly look. However, the decorative details also carried a functional load - they protected the structure from adverse environmental factors, and the structural elements of the house (such as the ridge, stalks, streams, etc.), in turn, were given a decorative form. Such a close unity of the two principles - functional and artistic - has become one of the most important qualities of folk wooden architecture. The degree of decoration of the hut with carvings depended on the material capabilities of the owner. If the customer was not constrained in expenses, then a wide scope for creativity was opened up for master carvers, and they created masterpieces of carved art, showing a sense of proportion and artistic tact, ingeniously using the texture of wood. For example, prichelina is formed from the word "brow", that is, a face. A prichelina in Russian wooden architecture is a board on the facade of a hut that protects the ends of the logs of the plank roof from moisture. They were covered with carvings and paintings. The carving was done with various tools. Carved signs on the details of the decor of peasant houses, denoting the sun, birds and horses - carriers of the sun, earth, the world tree, heavenly reserves of moisture and fertility, were supposed to protect the house and its inhabitants from evil and danger. With the spread of Christianity in Rus', new symbols appeared in the decoration of houses, for example, the cross. Quite often, pagan and Christian signs bizarrely coexisted on the same carved board. Towel - a short carved board covering the junction of the berths. It hung vertically, covered with openwork carvings. Its end was almost always adorned with a symbolic image of the sun.
Visitors can try to mow a wall and trim a log. Mshenie is one of the methods of caulking, that is, sealing the seams formed when joining structural elements. Caulking with moss between the logs of the log house allows you to get rid of drafts in the room, and also protects from excessive dampness where mold or fungus can appear. For moss, moss is used, which grows in the forest on stones, in dry places. It is called "borovoy" and is distinguished by durability, resistance to temperature extremes, environmental friendliness, antimicrobial properties that prevent decay. The moss was laid on the surface across the log, and the hanging parts of the moss were pushed into the cracks after the log was assembled. Caulking was carried out with a special tool - a caulk. In the 21st century, when many of the wooden temples and houses have already disappeared, and the rest require the close attention of restorers, knowledge about all the features of carpentry is invaluable for preserving this brightest cultural tradition of the Russian people. We hope that our project has helped to reveal the secrets of the old carpenters and, perhaps, some visitors will be able to put their knowledge into practice in our time.
Photos: Igor Georgievsky, funds of the Kizhi Museum
