RUSSIAN LACQUER BOXES

Beautiful, carefully-made small things sometimes dazzle and amaze more than big, showy, in-your-face, elaborate objects. Thirty-five years ago on a visit to the U.S.S.R. I bought a small box made in the the village of Fedoskino near Moscow. Over the years I have been drawn back again and again to the little box for the same reasons I am drawn to another of my favorite painting, "The Luncheon of the Boating Party," by Auguste Renoir, at the Phillips Collection Gallery in Washington, D.C. At the Phillips, I go into the room where the very large Renoir hangs (by itself the last time I was there); and sitting on the bench in the middle of the room, I rest and stare for a long time. I always feel as if I am a spectator in the cafe where the people in the painting are having lunch, and I wonder what they all mean to each other. At home I pick up the little box (2” X 4” X 1.5”), sit in a comfortable chair, and stare for a long time. Both paintings profoundly move me and transport me to places in my memory for which I no longer have addresses.

The technique for painting on the boxes, the same technique used in making icons for Russian churches, was handed down from father to son until midway in the Soviet period. By the middle of the last century as many women as men were painting the boxes. My box is signed simply “mo” in Cyrillic script, followed by the numbers 117-582. I know it was made for the Moscow tourist trade because “Made in the U.S.S.R” is handwritten on the back in English script.

Usually the pictures on lacquer boxes are scenes from popular fairy tales and legends. I have several of those, and I like them; but the box I like best is this one that, as far as I know, is simply a scene from the Russian countryside, not a scene from a story. Perhaps it is the sense of mystery that allows me to lose myself in it.