Gorodets painting
Bright narrative painting on wood: horses, birds, tea parties and festivities framed by large flowers. The craft took shape in the 19th century in villages near Gorodets in the Nizhny Novgorod Region.
Gorodets painting grew out of the decoration of distaff seats. At first the makers of the villages of Gorodets volost, such as Kurtsevo, Koskovo and Savino, inlaid them with wood of a different species; they then moved on to tinted carving and, from the 1870s, to free painting.
Narrative scenes appeared on the distaff seats: horsemen, young ladies and their suitors, feasts with a samovar. The images are stylised and decorative, often with a touch of humour, and framed by lush flowers and leaves.
Besides distaffs, makers painted yarn boxes, baskets, harness arches and children’s chairs. Well-known masters at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries included I. K. and V. K. Lebedev, F. S. Krasnoyarov and I. A. Mazin.
An artel was founded in Gorodets in 1936, and from 1960 it became the Gorodets Painting factory. Today the painting is applied to tableware, chopping boards, caskets and furniture.
Photographs
Gorodets painting 
Gorodets painting 
Gorodets painting