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$249.00
This beautiful one of a kind unusual book shape box was intricately hand painted and signed by Russian artist Vishnyakov from Palekh Art school. The painting represents the famous Russian icon Virgin of Vladimir. The box is one of a kind, you receive what you see on the pictures. Size 4.3 x 2.8 x 1.5''. At Russian Island we sell only original hand painted Lacquer boxes. It takes a lot of time and skill from highly experienced artists to create a fully hand painted box. We guarantee that our boxes are fully hand painted in Russia by professional artists. Russian lacquer boxes are well known all over the world. The main schools of Russian lacquer miniatures is a unique branch of world applied art. There are four villages located not far from Moscow, which create Russian lacquer miniatures. The schools of this art (named by villages) are PALEKH, MSTERA, KHOLYI, and FEDOSKINO. Artists of these schools painted religious icons (miniatures) for many centuries. After the Communist revolution (1917) they were not permitted to do icons and they began to make lacquer boxes. Each village has its own style and favorite subjects: fairy tales, village scenes, landscapes, and bouquets. The first Russian lacquer factories appeared at the beginning of the 18th Century. The villages worked together to create the unique designers, using methods that have been passed on for generations. Some cut the cardboard to size, cover it with paste, and press it in mold to dry it and then deep it in linseed oil. That is when the carpenters take over. They plane and sand the forms they apply putty made by hand to each box and smooth it so the painters can readily coat each box with lacquer, then send the box to the artist. The artist draws an outline, paints it in with zinc white, and covers it with colors, which are egg emulsion tempera made fresh in extremely small quantities. Gold leaf is applied and burnished with a wolf tooth. All artists make own brushes from squirrel hair and often paint their detailed designs with one hairbrush under magnifying glass. Each box requires incredible amount of work. Some sellers on the internet sell inexpensive fake boxes with the prints glued on top of the box, some of them might even have a little touch up paint (painted by amateur “artistsâ€) to top of the box. They will try and call these “hand painted†but they use those words to simply mislead buyers. This fake method does not take nearly the time and effort it does to truly hand paint a lacquer box with a single haired brush (we are talking days vs minutes). You can check the authenticity of the box by looking at the top under a strong magnifying glass. On the fake ones you will see the small dots from the print on the larger picture areas.
