Tiny Soviet Boxes Fetch Big Money in Capitalist World
The most idyllic place in this village of 5,000 is the artistic shop of the Artists’ Union of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic, better known to its inhabitants as “the shop.” It is here, in an unassuming brick building, that about 250 artists and craftsmen proudly turn out the exquisitely painted black lacquer boxes that are sold for equally exquisite prices in the capitalist world.
It is a post-revolutionary enterprise, founded eight years after the 1917 revolution, one that maintains a genuinely Old World attention to craftsmanship and standards of excellence, inherited from the icon painters of czarist Russia. It is a place where the painters still use brushes they fashion from the hair of squirrels’ tails and favor the fang of a dog--better yet, a wolf--to burnish the fine gold paint in a newly finished picture.
Palekh is one of four towns within about a 50-mile circle that produce lacquer boxes. The others, Mstera, Kholui and Fedoskino, all produce boxes in their own ethereal styles, immediately distinctive to connoisseurs and collectors.
Fedoskino boxes often feature landscapes painted in a soft, autumnal light. Mstera boxes commonly show village scenes or arrangements of flowers or berries. Kholui boxes, like those of Palekh, are usually illustrations of fairy tales. There are, however, no hard and fast rules, and artists from each of the villages let their imaginations vary widely beyond these generalizations.
It is the finely detailed boxes of Palekh that are most prized by collectors and that fetch the grandest prices, despite their often-miniature size. A Palekh box of surpassing quality, though measuring only 2x3 inches, can sell for $4,000 in the United States, to which 20% of the Palekh boxes are exported. (Locally they can be purchased at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art shop.) Most of the rest of the output goes to Western Europe, with only 7% remaining in the Soviet Union.
The box that goes for $4,000 in some trendy shop on Madison Avenue or Ghirardelli Square is most likely sold by the Palekh works, wholesale, for no more than $500. The wholesale price, set by a committee of Palekh artists, is arrived at on the basis of quality, a judgment that is both expert and yet subjective. The committee also uses fairly broad categories in its pricing decisions, so that, for example, 40 of its boxes, identically priced for the wholesale market at 82 rubles ($138), might well sell for 40 different prices in the United States, based on the retailer’s much more exacting eye for profit. The only certainty is that the price will be anywhere from three to seven times higher when it is sold in the United States.
“We have no control over the prices once they leave here,” said Lyubov K. Melnikova, head of the Palekh artists’ union. “The sellers can charge whatever they want.”
Most of Palekh artists receive a base pay of about 200 rubles a month (about $340), although some of the most accomplished painters earn more than twice as much, receiving special pay for works that are judged to be of exceptional merit.
Although some work out of their homes, most choose to work at the shop on tables equipped with swivel lamps and large magnifying glasses. The workshops are organized in teams, where young artists newly arrived from the Palekh school, which graduates about 20 artists a year, may receive the counsel of more experienced painters. The rooms seem to have a warm, collegial atmosphere, with music softly playing on radios and a low murmur of talk among the painters.
Gennady Kochetov, 46, a team leader who has been at the shop since 1965, is regarded as one of its finest painters. Thirteen of his boxes are on display at the Palekh museum, where the artists’ committee sends boxes it regards as too exceptional to be sold. To Kochetov, the secret of the Palekh art is the shop’s atmosphere of give and take among the artists, even though each box, from start to finish, is the creation of an individual painter.
Trade Secrets
“Our young people come here and we immediately open our trade secrets to them,” he said. “We don’t have any competition here that prevents cooperation.
“I have seen it happen that if a painter graduates from our school but does not stay with us, his work deteriorates. Those of us here, we draw our strength from this common soil. It corrects our mistakes, keeps us to the track, and that’s how we survive.”
The “common soil” does not prevent individual styles or favorite themes from developing. Kochetov, for example, finds that he does his best work in miniature--boxes no bigger than 2 1/2 inches square. His favorite subjects, he said, are illustrations of folk songs.
Nor does the close atmosphere seem to prevent the emergence of truly superior work among its leading artists. Asked who they believe are the current working masters, they recite the same names--Khodov, Yermolayev, Livonova, Golikov--painters whose tiny signatures virtually guarantee a large price, and even a larger one to collectors in the future.
“The best artists,” Kochetov said, “are those that have blazed a trail, done something that others then follow. They exert an influence. It’s like music. Some painters are technically perfect, but another imparts a feeling to the picture, something that comes more fluently. It is hard to define, but when you see the work of a master, you know it. You know it is something special.”
The boxes themselves are fashioned from layers of pine-pulp cardboard, glued, tightly wound around wooden forms and set in a mechanical press. Then they are dipped three times in hot linseed oil, leaving them virtually invulnerable to changes in temperature and atmosphere.
After being hand-sanded and glued, a team of women painters applies a primer coat, followed by two coats of lacquer, black on the outside and red on the inside, and a coat of varnish. The painting process requires a month.
Then the boxes, in plain black, go to the artists where a sketch of the conceived painting is etched into the varnish with a steel pen. The painting, in tempera applied with an emulsion of egg yolk and water, can take anywhere from days to weeks, depending on the artist and the size and detail of the work.
The final picture, highlighted in gold, has a flat, dull appearance until the application of the wolf’s or dog’s tooth, which, when rubbed gently on the surface, causes the colors to virtually leap from the box.
Tooth of a Canine
“It has to be the tooth of a canine,” Kochetov said. “We’ve tried other things, but nothing else works as well. A wolf’s tooth is better just because it is bigger and easier to handle.”
The boxes are given a final coat of clear lacquer. Workers shave off imperfections with bits of broken window glass and then they are buffed first on wet velvet, then on wool, then on felt. Next they are polished by women who employ a mud of greenish chromium oxide--and their bare hands. Finally, the boxes are valued, numbered, registered in a logbook, and packaged for shipment.
Themes of Russian fairy tales, the frog and the prince, the snow queen, Pushkin’s poetry, the czar’s golden cockerel, have remained the favored subjects, although some artists have ventured into political and patriotic themes.
But Palekh’s artists learned a long time ago that evocations of life on collective farms offer scant attraction to foreign buyers. The fairy tales and folk stories, shining and timeless, remain favorites everywhere, perhaps here most of all.
Meanwhile, the fame of the Russian lacquer boxes spreads to an ever-widening circle of admirers and collectors. Palekh alone produced nearly 10,000 boxes last year.
Now the Palekh shop is stirred with news of an important commission from the Soviet government. It is a very hush-hush project, mentioned to a visitor only by an accident of pride, and then followed by pleas for secrecy. Suffice it to say that sometimes special Palekh commissions are presented to very important foreign visitors to the Soviet Union. Indira Gandhi got one. So did Charles de Gaulle. Another very important visitor is expected here at the end of May.
In any case, two teams of Palekh masters are working on the commission, in a kind of unspoken competition. They are considered to be the very best artists of Palekh. But, it is hastily pointed out, something could go wrong. Perhaps the finished work might not be good enough, perhaps someone could change his mind. Anything could happen. So please don’t say a word. A promise is a promise.
