The utensils were painted "with silver
and gold" in two stages, First, the "golden"
ornament was painted through the birch-bark stencil similar
to the stencils used by icon painters, then the utensils were
varnished and heated in a furnace. Then the "silver"
ornaments were applied (brushed with the powdered tin), the
utensil was again varnished but no longer heated. In the second
half of the 19th century the craftsmen no longer employed such
a labor-consuming painting process. The dishes and cups for
everyday use were decorated with different but simple patterns
of stripes, squares, or diamonds stenciled around the external
surface. The cup edges were decorated with regular patterns
of pairs of stripes and identical figures painted with rolled
felt strips or dried puff-ball mushrooms or printed by hand
with a wooden stamp as it was done by local craftsmen manufacturing
printed fabrics. Rather austere but highly decorative ornaments
were produced in this simple manner.  In
addition to stencil painting, the Khokhloma artisans employed
another style rooted in the ancient painting traditions of
the Upper Volga region. Museum collections include large wooden
cups manufactured in late 18th — early 19th century and painted
in a free brushwork manner. A luxurious tulip-like flower
is executed with thick brush strokes of cinnabar on one of
them. Its crimson petals stand out against the black background
of the cup body as tongues of flame. In the twenties and thirties
of the nineteenth century cheaper faience and metal cups and
dishes became widely available to the customers and the Khokhloma
craftsmen made special efforts to enhance the decorative effects
of their articles to make them more competitive in the market.
They gilded the entire article, rather than some fragments
of it. The articles were painted over with rapid short brush
strokes in the so-called "grass-leaves" ornaments.
The loose black-and-red patterns resembling grass stalks or
feathery leaves covering the outer surface of the article
helped to conceal the artificial nature of the Khokhloma "gilding"
while emphasizing the graceful shape of the wooden body. Standard
patterns of "grass-leaves" ornaments had been developed
by mid-19th century. Fans of succulent grasses were painted
on the larger keg-shaped pots and on salt cellars, a slender
tree in bloom was depicted on cylindrical containers, the
elongated flour scoops were ornamented with an oval wreath
of intertwined grass stalks and modest flowers of five petals.
A "running" rosette was often painted at the cup
center on the bottom; its petals are "running" after
each other emphasizing the oval cup shape produced by turning.
The cup edges were often decorated with a branch depicted
as if curling in waves the supple shoots on which carry heavy
bunches of ripe berries.
The feeling of living nature characteristic
of the rural folk painters permeates the "grass-leaves"
Khokhloma painting style. Some motifs of the "grass-leaves"
style are also rooted in the folklore. The juicy grasses,
the vermilion flashes of cinnabar, and the graceful brush
strokes depicted the quest for beauty of the country painter,
his desire to show a humble grass stalk as a magic and fantastic
plant braided in exquisite curls. They remind one of the images
in the ancient wedding folk songs in which the "lusty
golden hops" are flourishing along the path leading the
bridegroom to his beloved where the "silken grasses"
are bowing to them and the flowers are instantly bursting
into bloom. The "grass-leaves" patterns have much
in common with the Russian folk songs in their rhythms and
poetical themes as the romantic feelings in them are expressed
in terms of the nature images:
What flowers are blooming, blooming azure
In a field wide open?
They are blooming at dawn, they fade in a day,
The silken grasses are entwining them.
What my beloved has done to me that
I cannot stop thinking of him neither
at night nor in the day
.
In the Khokhloma art, as in the folk poetry,
the plant images are endowed with a special meaning and the
blooming plants symbolized the intensely invigorating power
of the nature.
The Khokhloma art evolved in the mainstream
of the folk art of the Volga region and was influenced by
other folk arts and crafts. New ornamental styles emerged
in the Khokhloma painting in mid-19th century as the Khokhloma
craftsmen adopted and reworked the motifs they found in the
wood carving decorating houses, the gold embroideries, and
the peculiar style of painting on the wooden articles manufactured
near the town of Gorodets. The "background painting"
style and painting techniques originated in that period. While
the "grass-leaves" ornaments are painted as red
and black outlines with free brush strokes over the golden
field (known as the "upper" painting style), the
decorative effects of the "background painting"
style are achieved by the contrast between the elegant contours
of the golden ornaments and the background which is black,
red, or has some other deep color.
The articles ornamented in the labor-consuming
and difficult "background painting" style were usually
commissioned by particular customers. The sides of the huge
"company" pots were decorated with large gilded
"curly" patterns. The ornaments of the intertwined
golden branches on the wooden shaft bows for horse-driven
carts look similar to the ornaments in the illuminated manuscripts
carefully preserved by the Old Believers. The custom-made
utensils often carried inscriptions and dedications. Here
are some examples. "This pot is for the team of barge
haulers. Let them have pleasant and healthy meals." "This
shaft bow belongs to the farmer Simeon Grishin, village of
Retkino 1853." The shaft bows manufactured for the wedding
carriage were ornamented with golden leaves and bunches of
grapes with guardian lion figures at the ends.
The proximity of navigable rivers and established trade routes
contributed to the growth of the Khokhloma trade. In the second
half of the 19th century the Khokhloma craft was practiced
as far as the Kostroma province and even the Vyatka province
but the Khokhloma ward of the Semenov district remained the
main center of the Khokhloma industry. 'The Nizhni Novgorod
Province Gazette reported in 1855, "The trade in the
Khokhloma ward is flourishing; workmen in some villages manufacture
wooden blocks, in other villages the blank cups are manufactured
by turning, while craftsmen in yet other villages decorate
the cups." In that period 536 turning workshops were
entered into the register of the Semenov district. The turning
workshops located along the forest streams operated like water
mills. The running stream water drove a water wheel which
rotated beams with the blanks fixed to them and two turners
were skillfully working on them with a variety of cutting
tools. Some lathes were driven by horses while the poorer
village craftsmen worked on hand-driven lathes.
 The
finished wooden blanks were brought to the Khokhloma village
where they were purchased by the residents of surrounding
villages who specialized in painting the articles. A wealthy
Khokhloma painter typically had a large workshop with two
huge ovens for drying the painted articles and spacious storage
rooms for storing finished articles and materials. Up to ten
people were employed in a workshop. Only men were painting
the articles while the women and children were allowed to
execute the auxiliary operations such as prime coating and
varnishing with linseed oil. Boys learned the paining skills
from the grown-ups in their families and by the age of fifteen
became accomplished craftsmen. Records show that in 1870 the
residents of ten villages of the Semenov district (villages
of Vikharevo, Koshelevo, Sivtsevo, Berezovka, and others)
painted 930 thousand wooden articles. Their competitors were
the artisans of the Skorobogatovskaya ward of the neighboring
Kostroma province where one village was even given the name
of Idlers because its residents ignored the traditional farming
occupations and earned their living by working in folk arts
and crafts.
The spoon makers who supplied spoons to all
Russian provinces were concentrated in several villages. In
1870 about twenty thousand artisans in the Semenov district
were recorded as spoon makers. On a fine summer day one can
see them sitting outside their houses busily working on wood
blocks with a hatchet, first cutting them to size, then shaping
the spoon bowl and the handle and decorating the handle by
carving. A contemporary observer was fascinated with the easy
skill of the spoon-makers who needed only fifteen minutes
to transform a roughly hewn block of birch wood into a tiny
spoon working with an ordinary hatchet. The observer was deeply
impressed with the industry of the spoon makers and wrote
in his diary, "The dawn was breaking. The shepherd was
blowing his horn calling cows to the pasture outside the village.
There was a tree stump placed in front of almost every house
and a spoon maker was sitting at it using it as a bench for
spoon carving. The fresh white wood shavings strewn around
evidenced that the work had started before sunrise."
Women and girls painted the spoons. The "yellowish"
and "spotted" ornaments were popular among Semenov
painters. The brushes rapidly moved in dexterous girls fingers
depicting images of flowers, birds, houses, or lady figures
in size colors or inks. Special "monastery" spoons
were ornamented with images of bell towers and church buildings.
The Khokhloma spoons were ornamented with "gold".
Tiny stars were stenciled on the spoons or more intricate
"leaf-like" and "curly-bough" ornaments
were painted. Sellers typically arranged such brighter spoons
over a box of more ordinary spoons in order to attract customers.
Craftsmen manufactured up to forty kinds of spoons differing
in shape, and painting style. They used the birch wood, the
maple wood, and even palm wood that was brought by the boats
traveling upstream the Volga from the Caspian Sea
In the second half of the 19th century the
Khokhloma articles ceased to be the "countryside luxury
items" as the town dwellers of all classes started purchasing
them. The growing sales were promoted by the following factors.
The educated elite of the Russian society developed a particular
interest in the national art traditions and in folk arts and
crafts, in particular. The merchants who grew rich with trading
in the Khokhloma wares moved to larger cities and expanded
their trading operations in Russia and exports to foreign
countries. While the craftsmen traditionally manu factured
primarily dishes, pots, and cups for their country side customers,
for the city dwellers they started maldnj sugar howls, flower
vases, jugs, flagons, and carafes shapes like similar glass
and porcelain vessels, cases for storin; chess pieces and
needlework tools, travel boxes and case: and varnished walking
sticks. Trays, plates, cups, spoon; and, for instance, five
types of dishes for serving differen kinds of caviar were
manufactured for taverns and inns.
The painting style reflected the desire to
cater to the tastes of new types of customers. The ornaments
imitating the printed head scarves and calico dress fabrics
were in particular demand. The bouquets of fantastic flowers
resembling roses and lilies were often painted on the cup
bottoms, the edges were decorated with wide ornamental trimming
or narrow Oriental-style patterns. The similarity of the Khokhloma
ornaments to the calico prints favored by peasants was made
particularly striking by the rich color scheme of the Khokhloma
designs in which the red, yellow, and green ornaments were
often painted against the black background. The new style
was especially marked in the articles specially manufactured
for displaying at large exhibitions which were organized under
the guidance of professional artists commissioned by the local
government. They suggested that the craftsmen use as models
for their ornaments motifs of the so-called "Russian
style" which imitated ornaments of the Byzantine and
ancient Russian manuscripts and was highly fashionable in
the decorative arts of that period. The Khokhloma craftsmen
referred to the complicated patterns of multi-colored stripes
and golden branches bound with loops or rings as the "Slavonic
ligature" or "bindings" and employed special
paper stencils for painting them.
In the seventies of the 19th century the Khokhloma
craftsmen began manufacturing various pieces of furniture
decorated with Russian style ornaments. The furniture pieces
were distinguished by peculiar shapes, for instance, tables
had thick curved legs, stools were shaped as barrels, cupboards
imitated an ancient tower, the sofas had carved horse heads
as headrests, while armchairs had a back shaped as a carriage
shaft bow. In addition to manufacturing individual furniture
pieces, the Khokhloma artisans were commissioned to make entire
furniture sets for various purposes. For instance, the Kostroma
province governor installed a custom-made Khokhloma drawing-room
furniture set in his town house. The report on the survey
of the Khokhloma trade commissioned by the local government
in 1883 included the following passage. "A fourteen-year-old
son in a farmer's family in the village Bezdeli decorates
furniture pieces. He is, perhaps, the best craftsmen in the
district. His father, Mikhail Krasil-nikov, received a gold
watch as an award from His Imperial Majesty for the fine articles
submitted to the Imperial court." In 1896 Mikhail Krasilnikov
and his sons Ivan and Vassily were invited to Nizhni Novgorod
to be presented to the Emperor Nicholas II who visited the
XVI Ail-Russian Arts and Crafts Exhibition held there. The
Khokhloma craftsmen presented to the Emperor dishes decorated
by them in the "Slavonic ligature" style. Another
member of the family, Fedor Krasilnikov, was awarded a gold
medal at the II All-Russian Handicrafts Exhibition held in
Saint-Petersburg in 1913.
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