Bone carving - art, styles and their features, the choice of material for work by novice craftsmen. Artistic bone carving What is bone carving

Hello dear.
We continue our series with you about Russian folk crafts. Well, since we recalled the Tobolsk carved bone last time with you: today we must talk at least a little about another bone carving center - Kholmogory.

The first written mention of the Kholmogory carvers dates back to the 17th century, when the local “combed master” Evdokim Sheshenin and his brother Semyon were summoned to Moscow to work in the Armory. Although in fairness, it should be noted that the craftsmen have been working in this region since ancient times. But the Sheshenin brothers are real "stars". In general, they became the best bone cutters of the Armory of that time. 18th century - the heyday of the Kholmogory fishery. Already by the beginning of the XVIII century. Kholmogory craftsmen knew no equals. Skillfully made items from walrus, ivory and mammoth ivory - bracelets, decorative cups, caskets, snuff boxes and boxes, combs, miniature secretaries, plates with portraits were in great demand, were widely distributed throughout the North and further - throughout Russia.

Russian tsars revered this ancient art. According to the protocols of the Supreme Privy Council, Empress Catherine I kept her personal belongings in two Kholmogory caskets. It is reliably known that chess was repeatedly bought from the Kholmogory carver Osip Dudin for the heir to the royal throne, Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich. In 1798, the reigning couple Paul I and Maria Feodorovna received from the carver N.S. Vereshchagin, who lived for a long time both in Arkhangelsk and St. Petersburg, paired cone-shaped vases, stored today in the State Hermitage Museum.

Lush brilliance, as one of the features of the design of carved bone of the 18th century, is gradually replaced by the cold and austere beauty of the art of the next century. Shell curls, typical of the rococo style, give way to a strict pattern, and the complex forms of the products of the Kholmogory carvers of the last century are replaced by simpler ones. A certain pattern pattern is formed, characteristic of the northern carved bone of the first half of XIX in. Flower garlands are placed on a fine diamond-shaped grid.

If in the bone carving art of the 1820s. clearly visible exquisite craftsmanship and logical harmony of the picture, which are combined with a simple constructive form of the object, then in the 1830s. there is an interest in elegant carvings, sometimes devoid of practical meaning. These are miniature pieces of furniture, sewing boxes, in the form of a locomotive with wheels, plaquettes, boxes, etc., decorated with a flat cut of a thin branched plant pattern such as seaweed or grass.

From the second half of the XIX century. there is a sharp decline in the bone carving business, which could not compete with the rapidly growing factory production, which threw onto the market a lot of beautiful and much cheaper than bone products. Trying to revive the dying craft, in 1885 the local authorities opened a bone carving class at the Lomonosov rural school. This class lasted 15 years with no significant results, and was closed in 1900 due to lack of students.

By the beginning of the XX century. the art of bone carving practically ceases to exist, only a few masters continue to be engaged in creativity: the families of the Ugolnikovs, Kalashnikovs, and Shubins.
The new impetus was already given by the Soviet government.

In the 1920s, a whole galaxy of interesting masters appeared. Suffice it to recall such names as A.E. Shtang, P.P. Chernikovich, N.D. Butorin, M.D. Rakov, S.P. Evangulov, V.P. and A.S. Guriev. Since 1929 there has been a bone carving school in Kholmogory.
In 1932, the Kholmogory bone carving artel named after M.V. Lomonosov. The skills of openwork and relief carving were revived (boxes, knives, powder boxes, pendants made of mammoth tusks, sperm whale teeth, walrus tusks and ordinary bone).
On October 1, 1934, the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted a special resolution on the measures and ways of developing the Kholmogory carving. A whole range of measures made it possible to restore the former glory of this art.


The "Gold Medal Diploma" of the World Exhibition in Paris in 1937 attracted additional attention to the Kholmogory craft, and a permanent state order made Kholmogory carving one of business cards Soviet Russia.
As for the stylistic development, the period from the 1930s to the early 1950s. passed under the banner of pomposity of the Stalinist Empire style, based on the classics of the turn of the 18th - 19th centuries.
Art reaches its true flowering in the beginning. 1960s, when the younger generation of carving masters joins the art. The conquest of this time can be considered a natural beginning in creativity, when less technically complex, but much more expressive motifs of Kholmogory carving began to be used.

The seventies became the time of a new appeal to the historical heritage, when they again returned to the use of many traditional techniques and elements as applied to modern Soviet themes and style.
characteristic feature of the 1990s. is the growth of the individual principle in the work of masters. Despite economic difficulties, there are favorable conditions for the development of creative thought and individuality of master artists while maintaining the spirit and image of traditional Kholmogory bone carving. Fortunately, art has not been forgotten even now, although this is an extremely difficult skill.

The Kholmogory carved bone is an openwork ornate carving, floral ornaments, curls resembling frosty patterns on the windows. The influence of Moscow and St. Petersburg affected the development of the style of Kholmogory carving in the 17th - 19th centuries. Then the Kholmogory carvers worked in the Armory and carried out the most complex orders. At the end of the XVII - beginning. 18th century on the products of bone carvers we see a “grass” ornament: a lush, large-scale pattern consisting of images of birds, herbs, flowers, architectural motifs, and fantastic animals. This type of decor is typical for all Russian art. Bone plates were decorated with engraved, so-called eye ornament, common among the peoples of the north since ancient times. The ornament consisted of a circle with a dot in the center. In the products of the XVIII century. there are also asymmetric compositions, pretentiousness, characteristic of the Baroque, and pastoral scenes, rocaille ornaments (rococo influence).


Another characteristic technique of the Kholmogory people is continuous openwork carving, in which the craft becomes similar to thread lace, and it itself is given the shape of a boot, shoes, a heart, a turnip. Moreover, the technique sometimes reaches such virtuosity that the subject even loses its weight.
The whole system of methods and techniques, which we call Kholmogory carving, finally takes shape by the 18th century.
Since then, only the improvement of art and craftsmanship has been going on.
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folk riddle

The origin of the craft

Archaeological finds make it possible to assert that a person began to process and use the bones of animals for household and then for decorative purposes, even in ancient times.

Some finds in the area modern Russia, date back to the 6th century BC. Of course, the technologies were not yet developed at that time and the products are far from the finest lace carving that delights us so much now.

In those ancient times, the bone largely replaced the lack of iron for people, many tools were made from it, such as needles and awls.

Gradually, iron firmly came into use, but this did not replace, but rather even strengthened and diversified the bone-carving craft. With the advent of metal tools, there were more opportunities to process bone, products became more diverse.

Products

Artistically processed bone is used as a decorative finish, and whole objects are made from it. The art of bone carving is equated to jewelry.

• caskets
• Jewelry
• decorative ornaments
• constituent elements of household items

and much more.

Carved bone has a lot of advantages. It is strong, durable, impact resistant environment. One of the most important advantages is that the processed bone is very beautiful.

A pleasant beige shade always looks elegant and light. Products glow from the inside, this is especially evident in openwork carved products.

Tableware, caskets, knife handles, decor on weapons - bone is a favorite material when it comes to expensive highly artistic products.

About material

"Carved bone" is a general concept. In fact, masters use in their work different types bones, including horns, as well as tusks of an elephant, mammoth, walrus fangs. The bones of cattle are also used - tarsals.

Bones differ in color shades, gloss, texture. Mammoth ivory has a warm yellowish tone and a micro-mesh texture. Walrus ivory is lighter and colder in color, unlike mammoth tusk, it has a cellular interior, which somewhat narrows the possibility of creating art products.

Before carving, the bone is subjected to degreasing, and then, using incisors, various products are cut out. Horns do not need to be degreased.

Bone carving in our time

The carving industry continues to develop. This is due to the unquenchable demand for such products. Carved bone is very beautiful and decorative, but rather expensive.

Enterprises continue to operate in the Russian North and in the Nizhny Novgorod region. Not so long ago, fishing was restored in Khotkovo.

The products of past and modern bone carvers are kept in large museums of our country and are known abroad.

Photo gallery

In these places, they have learned to use the bones of local animals or use imported raw materials.

Kholmogory bone carving is the oldest. The rest arose already in Soviet times.

Varieties of bone carving

There are a lot of carving techniques:

• sculptural
• typesetting
• openwork carving
• turning
• inlay
• burning out

All this is done manually with the help of special tools that have undergone quite strong evolutionary changes. For example, a drill with various convenient nozzles is now widely used, while a century and a half ago such automation was not even thought of.

Tusks of a mammoth, an elephant, a walrus bone and a sperm whale tooth, called a noble bone, have been used by craftsmen for carvings since ancient times. Noble bone is beautiful, strong, easy to cut and perfectly polished. Due to the layered structure of the bone, a light texture pattern appears on its surface, resembling wavy patterns. A beautiful white color with yellowish-yellow, bluish and greenish hues gives the bone an unusual warmth and decorative effect. Fossil mammoth bone was mined in the northern regions of our country, while ivory was exported from abroad, walruses and sperm whales were also hunted. It is no wonder that craftsmen have always experienced difficulties with materials, so there was a constant search for cheaper and more affordable bone. This material turned out to be the so-called tarsus - the tubular bone of cattle. Using the natural cylindrical shape of the bobbin, the bone carvers skillfully inscribed figures of various animals into it, and sometimes entire scenes based on Russian motifs. folk tales and fables.

For those who want to try their hand at bone carving, we recommend the bobbin as a well-workable and quite affordable material.

Before proceeding with the mechanical processing of the bone, it must be degreased and bleached. Gives good results simplest way: cut the bones, remove the marrow, then boil for several hours, adding a little to the water baking soda. You need to bleach the bone in a solution of hydrogen peroxide (hydroperite). Usually on 200 g two or three tablets of hydroperite are enough for hot water. After lying down for about a day in such a solution, the bone acquires a pure white color.

From the bleached bone, depending on the intended product, blanks are made. You can cut the bone with a carpentry bow saw, a hacksaw with teeth medium size, medical files. Clamp the bone in a vise, after placing wooden spacers. Moisten the saw periodically with soapy water or machine oil while sawing. If you need to prepare thin plates for openwork or relief carving, saw the bone along the layers. The plates, sawn across the layers, eventually become covered with a network of cracks and spoil the work. For three-dimensional sculpture, blanks are processed with a mower - a large heavy knife. They make chips parallel to the layers or at a slight angle to them. For products based on bodies of revolution, workpieces are machined on a lathe.

Good, convenient tools largely determine success, so first of all you need to purchase or make the necessary tools yourself: for rough processing - a mower, sets of chisels and rasps; to perform openwork - a jigsaw, needle files, drills, wipers, rivets. You can make a wiper from a steel knitting needle. Anneal it, then cut large and sharp notches with a needle file and harden it again. Put the finished wipes on wooden handles. Make rivets also from a steel knitting needle, flattening it at the end and giving different shape. The rivets are sharpened so that the working parts have sharp chamfers.

The carving is done with the help of cutters. Stichel for metal engraving can also be successfully used for pins, the hardness of which is relatively low. Stiheli - for starters, at least three main types - you can make yourself guided by the drawings that we present here. Grabstichel - a cutter with a cross section of a triangle, rectangle or rhombus, used for engraving thin lines. Boltstichel - a cutter with a cross section of a circle, oval, semicircle or semi-oval. Flachstichel has rectangles and trapezoids in cross section. Boltstichel and flakhstichel are used for processing flat and curved surfaces of various configurations.

For cutters, carbon steel U-6, U-7 or U-10 is suitable. Heat the turned workpiece of the cutter red-hot (up to about 800 ° C), then dip it in machine oil or water. The hardened engraver becomes too brittle, so it should be released. Place the engraver over low heat, carefully observing the tarnish colors. After bringing the metal to a straw color, cool it in water. In the absence of carbon steel, good cutters can be made from needle files of various sections. Sharpen the cutting part of the engraver at an angle of 45-30°. Sharpening of all incisors and editing them during carving should be performed only from the side of the end. Carve handles from birch or beech wood. Stuff a metal ring onto the handle. To make it convenient to hold the engraver, chop off the handle from the side, as shown in the figure. Insert the cutter so that the chip is at the bottom. A claw is used for engraving on the bone (its shape is shown in the figure).

In bone carving workshops, along with hand tools drill is widely used. The simplest drill shown in the figure can be assembled from a commercially available electric motor for a sewing machine MSH-2 with a power of 40 watts for mains voltage 220 w and sleeves with a tip from a medical drill. You can use other electric motors of lower power with a speed of about 15 thousand revolutions per minute. The advantage of the motor from the sewing machine is that, with the help of a foot pedal, the cutter can optionally change the speed of rotation of the motor shaft, and therefore the bur inserted into the tip. To do this, it is enough to increase the pressing force on the start button of the foot pedal. Milling cutters or burs, perks, disk holders and mandrels with sandpaper are inserted into the tip of the drill, which has a collet clamp. Thanks to the flexible shaft, the tip can move freely in various directions and be located at any angle to the surface of the workpiece.

Bone processing includes various carving techniques: openwork (on the opening), relief, three-dimensional and engraving. The product can be made either by one of the techniques or by a combination, for example, of volumetric carving with engraving, openwork carving with relief, etc.

A characteristic feature of openwork carving is a through background, which makes the carving look like the finest lace. Align the plate prepared for openwork carving with a file and clean it with fine sandpaper, achieving a smooth surface. Transfer the drawing from the sketch developed in advance to the plate with gunpowder. It is done like this. Pierce all lines of the sketch with an awl, the distance between the punctures 1-2 mm. Make a swab out of a double layer of gauze, fill it with dark dry paint. Put the sketch on the plate and apply paint on it with light strokes of the swab. Penetrating through the holes, the paint forms a dotted pattern on the bone, which can be traced with a pencil for clarity. To prevent the pencil drawing from being erased during work, fix it with a quick-drying varnish. In areas that are intended for sawing, drill holes for a jigsaw file. Having completely cut out all sections of the through background, work them with needle files and wipes. With chisels and chisels, give the openwork plate the desired relief. Make fine final modeling of details with rivets.

Under the finished openwork carving, colored foil, paper or fabric is sometimes placed. The openwork bone looks very nice on the background of wood. You can glue the bone to the base with BF-2 glue.

In three-dimensional carving, the design largely depends on the natural shape of the lantern. Its walls are relatively thin and do not make it possible to make the figurines sufficiently voluminous; therefore, sculptural miniatures made of tarsal are most often high relief with a through background, made on a cylindrical surface.

Types of ornaments used in openwork carving." 1 - geometric, 2 - floral, 3 - rocaille

Transfer the main contour from the sketch to the side surface of the cylinder. With a chisel, perform rough processing, then work out the details with files and gravers, achieving plastic expressiveness. Remember that volumetric carving is the most complex, it requires certain skills that are acquired as a result of painstaking work. Before proceeding with the volumetric carving, it is useful to look for a final solution by making sketches from white plasticine.

The technique of processing relief carving has much in common with openwork. Transfer the drawing to the bone plate with gunpowder and fix it with varnish. Select the background to the desired depth with chisels and engravers. Give the protruding parts of the relief rounded shapes. Finally, work out the small details.

If desired finished work can be dyed. The most common dye is strong tea, which gives the bones a golden hue. The bone becomes straw-yellow in saffron infusion, red-brown - in a decoction of sorrel leaves.

You can try other vegetable dyes, the decoctions of which give the following colors: black elderberry bark - olive green, St. John's wort flowers - red, nettle leaves - green, buckthorn bark - yellow-green, oak bark - brown, onion peel - golden yellow.

Engraving gives a peculiar decorative effect to the bone. Scratch the surface according to the pattern with a claw or engraving needle. You can also engrave with a graver, giving a thin line. Then rub the engraving with colored pencil.

Instead of pencils, you can use oil paints. Wipe the paint away from the smooth surface so that it remains only in the scratched indentations, clearly bringing out the pattern. Most often, red, brown and black paints are used to highlight the engraving.

The surface of the bone to be engraved must be perfectly polished. Any small, barely noticeable scratches when rubbed with dyes will immediately appear and ruin the engraving. Therefore, carefully clean the plate with sandpaper, then polish it with finely ground pumice or tooth powder.

Carved bone is often used as a decorative overlay for items made of other materials. Carved openwork bone in combination with precious woods acquires an unusual sonority.

In the article brought to your attention, you will get acquainted with the basic information about the types of bones, with overview world artistic bone carving, its traditions and themes, and a series of photographs illustrating the text. The main part of the review is based on materials from the Metropolitan Museum, the British Museum, and, to a lesser extent, other foreign sites; the materials of the authors were also used.

For carving in the broadest sense of the word, it can be used practically any bone. Here are its main types.

1. Horn of ungulates (deer, elk, cow, deer, etc.)
2. Tubular tibia of large ungulates - tarsus (camel, cow, horse)
3. Tusk (mammoth or elephant)
4. Tooth of a sperm whale
5. Tusk of a walrus.
6. Rhino Horn
7. Narwhal horn

The extraction and sale of certain types of bone is limited or prohibited, for example, the horns of narwhal, rhinoceros, sperm whale tooth. In 2002, the UN introduced a partial ban on the trade in ivory. Thus, only mammoth tusk, hoofed horns and tarsus remain absolutely legal for sale. Since mammoths became extinct more than 10,000 years ago, their tusks are not banned from use and export (although they still require special permission to extract and export them), unlike elephant tusk and walrus tusk, the use of which damages nature by encouraging poaching!

The most plastic and beautiful of these materials, but also the most expensive, of course, mammoth tusk. The tubular structure of the lantern severely limits its use for sculptural carving. However, due to its cheapness, it is now widely used by many carvers. In Russia, cow tarsus is predominantly used, in Asian countries - camel tarsus.
Often the tarsus is used to imitate or fake a mammoth tusk. However, the tusk is very easy to distinguish. Usually it is yellowish or brownish, heterogeneous in color with annual rings, as on a saw cut of a tree trunk. Cracks in such a bone - common occurrence and are not a significant defect, because the tusk easily absorbs moisture from the air. In addition, on items made from mammoth tusk, traces of the outer layer of the tusk, the so-called “crust”, similar to tree bark, often remain. The tarsus is always of a uniform bright white color, it has no veins, it is easy to distinguish it by its characteristic cylindrical hollow shape, or the product is prefabricated and glued from plates. The main difference is the “mesh” on the cross section. It is formed by a network of thin channels with nerve fibers. On the tusk of an elephant, you can also see such a grid, but it looks different - the lines intersect at a more obtuse angle.

Mammoth tusk is a beautiful and plastic material, one of the oldest used by man. Its solid, almost without voids, homogeneous mass, large size allow you to make any sculptural form from it. This material is easily processed with a cutter and has a beautiful mesh pattern. It retains an effective appearance at the most different ways processing - painting, polishing, engraving. By hardness, it is close to natural stones such as amber, pearls, coral. As a rule, mammoth tusk is mined in permafrost areas at the bottom of rivers, in swamps, and tundra. In Russia, these are the northern regions of Siberia, Yakutia.

Story
The largest known mammoth tusks reached a length of 400-450 cm, a diameter of 18-19 cm, and a weight of 100-110 kg (the tusks of an African elephant weigh about 95 kg). Ancient people used tusks as fuel, made arrowheads, jewelry, and ritual objects. Over time, bone carving emerged as an independent art form. It was widespread in the arts and crafts of the East, Greece, Rome, Byzantium. There is evidence that the ancient Greeks made colossal statues of ivory; the remains of these works have not survived to this day, perhaps the sculptures were made of wood and only covered with bone plates.

Since Europe did not have any significant own deposits of mammoth tusk, elephants did not live there either, the development of bone carving art depended entirely on the influx of foreign materials. 95% of all bone imported into Europe was African ivory, 5% was fossil mammoth tusk imported from Russia. Bone carving in Europe has experienced several declines and revivals associated with the cessation and resumption of the supply of ivory from African continent.
Initially, European carvers borrowed the style of carving from imported African bone products. Gradually, the forms of European carving became more complicated, and, although in Europe there were no specialized bone carving guilds, and artists could use various materials for sculptures, small ivory plastic is often more expressive and expressive than monumental sculptures. This is due to the fact that such works were mainly intended for secular collectors, which contributed to the freedom of choice of topics and subjects.

Hello friends! Do you love unique and exquisite things, do you miss the sight of stamped products without a soul? Then you will definitely be interested in learning more about what bone carving is, how it is carried out, and what attracts attention to finished products.

Bone carving is a kind of art, as a result of which products appear fascinating with ornaments and unusual strokes. The creators are talented, spiritually developed craftsmen who are able to breathe life into unsightly, unremarkable, albeit expensive material. Under the author's tools, an unattractive-looking bone is transformed into drawings, figures, openwork lace with interconnected, complementary elements, which eventually form a conceptual completeness.

The emotional component of ivory products can be easily explained by the ancient roots of the art of carving. Her journey is millennia long. It all started with primitive household items and decorations, gradually they improved so much that they took the place of the legendary handicrafts that are exhibited on international exhibitions, with trepidation are saved in private collections. The techniques for processing the bone do not change from the beginning of the first carving.

Varieties and differences

There are 3 types of bone carving:

• smooth;
• through;
• relief.

The simplest in execution is smooth. It is used to make laconic forms of amulets, figurines of animals, birds and people. The principle is as follows: according to the sketch, depressions are formed on the bone, which are then highlighted with paint for expressiveness. Relief carving involves the manufacture of complex sculptural, often three-dimensional groups. Through technique allows you to create exquisite openwork figures. Most often, this technique is used for the manufacture of caskets and author's caskets with a "lace" coating.

What should be the bone

Appearance and uniqueness finished products- the result of the skill of the author, the chosen technique and type of material. Before use, the bones must be processed: the surface is degreased and bleached, divided into elements convenient for work. The better the master is familiar with the structure of the bones, the better he will be able to use their advantages in his work.

The bones of a wide variety of animals are suitable for carving. Very expensive and exclusive gizmos are obtained from mammoth bones. In structure, it is much softer and more supple than walrus. It is easy and pleasant to work with it, regardless of the choice of technique, including complex work with through threads. One mammoth tusk will be enough to get a sculpture of impressive dimensions. It is also interesting that, due to the special preservation at low temperatures, mammoth bones can have an unusual color from light to dark, which also plays into the hands of creative masters with a developed imagination.

Ivory for carving is no less suitable than mammoth. Products are just as noble and spectacular. Working with ivory, the author is not limited in the choice of carving technique, although relief carving with active elaboration of lines is most often used for optimal game chiaroscuro. Ivory is as large as that of a mammoth, so if necessary, one-piece overall figurines are obtained from it.

Products made of ivory or mammoth ivory amaze the imagination with unusual lines and graceful silhouette, they are an example of author's artistic art. No wonder they are very expensive.

Wood carving - what is it

To hone the art of carving, the authors use not only bone, but also more affordable wood. ancient art wood carving is passed down from generation to generation with features characteristic of the culture of each nation. Compared to bone, wood is simpler and more convenient to process, while the final result is in no way inferior to bone products, neither in refinement, nor in exclusivity or originality. Simple and rough figures are cut out of wood, multi-layered lace is “weaved”.

The choice of carving technology is influenced by the intent of the master and the type of wood. Relief and sculptural works are obtained from soft wood, such as birch or linden. For the manufacture of figures with an abundance of small elements, pear, beech or maple are suitable. Interior items and furniture are made of valuable breeds with a final treatment with transparent varnish. The best examples of furniture are made from mahogany, birch or walnut. Some samples of furniture from these species still delight visitors to museums in different parts of the world.

How is it carried out

Another kind of art is stone carving. The artist stone cutter is a master and creator, able to breathe life into a solid, unattractive and shapeless block of stone. The task is complicated by the author's need not just to give the stone a certain shape, but to highlight its natural potential, character, structure.

We end here, we will be glad to know what wood carving of bone and stone impresses you, where you had the opportunity to see the best examples works. Share this post with your friends, exchange photos of interesting sculptures!

Team LyubiKamni