Workshops here are almost at every yard, and on the streets there are rarely found an idle person. Just monotone booming is hearing over the village: like the giant bees swarm is up in the clouds.
This polhov maidan carpentry workshops birth to a myriad of matryoshkas, and together with them - eggs, mushrooms, salt-cellars, money boxes, and other wonders of lime.
If there are the guys on the streets, they are passionate about the only one open to foreign eyes business - strip lime logs of the bark. Lime for Polhov-Maidan inhabitants- tree of destiny. It is everywhere. It is in stripped and "dressed" form along the streets, it is as anti-aircraft batteries in yards. Just once a week, on Tuesdays, streets alive: maidantsy pack trunks, load them into buses and sent to market.
It is about 700 yards in the village, and only old and single women have not carpentry workshops. But those without husbands, buy blank babooshka nesting dolls from acquaintances, paint them and also bring to Moscow to sell. And where it all began?
Once (this was after the war in 1812) local farmer Nikita Avdyukov brought in Polhovsky Maidan lathe. It was a rare thing but also noble. The lathe had been droved in the motion with the help of a huge wheel, which had to continually rotate mate. It was fresh recollections that Emperor Peter the Great himself skillfully turned many things.
Very soon lathes and workshops proliferated among entire
Polhovsky Maidan. Local craftsmen made of linden all possible dishware - from salt to dishes. With the beginning and forever this business shaped as a "full cycle Family production". The members of a family together gathered wood, turned dishes and drove them to sell around the world. Even when working with torch, and were taking the goods in telega and sledge they have sold the goods worldwide.
Ivan Grachev, polhovsky master, remember past times. No, he is not an old man. The fact is that electricity is conducted only at the beginning 60-ies of the last century, the asphalt came to the village ten years ago.
A street Polch-Maidan still represents a solid mound of sand and clay. This is reflection of war, which many successive years authorities struggle with inhabitants. Ivan himself had to work at the machine, which invented as early as Leonardo da Vinci. He and his wife Tatiana know very well all "flavors" of merchant life. With pleasure Ivan tells about Tatiana’s great-grandfather:
- His name was Fedor. It happened to travel in Turkey and in Germany, and in Sweden, with his wife even twice visited the Holy Land. But he was a simple guy! And so almost all of our maidantsy: to Norway, Spain, even to America. Matryoshka nesting dolls came in Polch-Maidan at the beginning of the last century. Masters went on to world and watched as in the town of Sergiev Posad craftsmen made nesting dolls like Buddhist Darumu dolls brought from Japan and depicting the great preacher Bodhidharmu with many faces. When "Russian Darumu" called "matryoshka" are unlikely to have thought that the name is linked to the Hindu mother-goddess Matri. Nesting "ladies" got accustomed to this scarce land and over time became the main product exported from the village.
Men in Polch Maidan turn on lathe, women paint. Tatiana Gracheva never in life was not working officially, although painted nesting dolls since ten years old. After the arrival of capitalism she registered as private enterprise. Actually, Polh Maydan of all Russian villages stands out. All are working here legally, paying taxes even under Soviet authority. But then, in order to obtain permission to work, it was necessary to work out workday units in the collective farm. Even in relatively recent times they not produced from the Polhov Maidan inhabitants with goods - arranged ambush (I am not kidding!). Craftsmen find out: with their huge baskets, filled by toys, have gone from the village at night.
- These baskets killed one of my grandfathers, - tells Ivan.- The weight of one is 100-120 kilograms, and usually they carried up to ten baskets. He overstrained himself near the Moscow when he lifted up the basket and died. And another of my grandfather before the war has been put into prison on a decade for speculation (and indeed for the fact that he made toys). He did not return from there… And how much we experienced with my wife Tanya… They called us spongers and speculators, and threatened to take into court. We have visited so many cities with baskets, and the Ukraine, and the Kuban, went even when Tanya was pregnant!
Now there is not linden tree in the district, maidantsy buy it in Mordovia. Machines, the glory of the Lord, are electric, manual do not need to rotate them, but in fact, the technology does not change two centuries. Babushka nesting dolls in such huge quantities have been start to turn fifteen years ago, when Russian fashion came to the world, and a freedom occured in the country. Gorbachev's times - a "golden age" of Polhovsky Maidan: in the two years here have constructed many stone houses (on the "matryoshkas dolls"), but it quickly ended. Now a master at best can buy cheap car.
Nevertheless, I can say maidantsy able to fit to the market, so it was not difficult: the freedom and entrepreneurship in their blood. We have a long-time of market economy - Grachev said.
- Maidantsy are real diplomats, it had to meet with different people: and hooligans, and the drunken, and bandits…
Masters can turn even blindly - so accustomed to feel the material and tools. This work is not an easy one. From dust, lacquer vapors and standing on their feet the masters get some illnesses, the most often of which - thrombosis and cardiovascular disease. Here seldom master reach old age.
Now in Polhovsky Maidan turn and paint 5 pieces babooshka nesting dolls, 7, 10 or 15 pieces , twenty pieces matryoshkas dolls and 50 pieces dolls. Two masters turn even 75 pieces babushka nesting dolls! There are also Easter eggs, salt-cellars, different turned animals, balusters. But the total of all this far below babushka nesting dolls. The latest hot trends, which is not bad in the market - wooden chandeliers.
With regard to the prices of goods, they - a terrible secret. No master is recognized to even a close relative the price he sold his good.
- Every time we fit under the market, under what he asked - says Ivan Grachev.- and competition in the recently developed. There is a village Varnaevo, they now also do matrioshka nesting dolls. Even in one village in Mordovia they do babooshka nesting dolls too. And what is even to deal if agriculture has dawn, the plant in the district center doesn't work? They wanted to establish a factory of polhovsky maidan paintings, built it in district center.
Now at the factory is no painting anymore, only a power-saw bench works. They shout: "That is all, ornamental painting doesn't exist anymore!" A painting is not lost. It has even enriched. Babushka nesting dolls now as a first lady to equip. We travel to Moscow to sell our goods. Everyone is responsible for his master work of art.
Gennady Mikheyev, Nizhny Novgorod region
http://www.selnov.ru/arhiv/snfour_stat/2005/12/28/matreshki
Souvenirs From Russia
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