The Legendary "Fifth Village"
If you travel 11 hours south of Moscow by train you will run into a town. Of course there will be a town somewhere but this is a special town in the realm of lacquer art.
In the late 1960s, a director of a large Soviet refigeration company became an enthusiastic collector or Russian lacquer ware. His name was Yevgeniy Prokopyevich Chalykh.
Being a very resourceful and powerful person at the time, he decided to invite several artists from Palekh and Kholuy and offered them free flats in Lipetsk.
The first families to move out to Lipetsk were the Romanovs and Denisovs.
Lipetsk is a steel town where in the late 1960's a group of young Kholuy artists set up the School of Experimental Decorative Art.
Their objective in this was to preserve the future of lacquer art in another region of Russia.
The style they developed is uniquely their own. It is both graphic and symbolic, as well as highly traditional. The art produced there is generally like the art of Kholuy and Palekh. Lipetsk even has its own lacquer box factory that produces high grade paper-mache. Lacquer art pieces by Lipetsk artists are known for their bold, graphic quality and high standards of finishing their pieces.
A company called "Handy Craft Co "Finist" exists under the ownership of Vladimir M. Dolonin in Lipetsk:
8, Ushinskaya St. Lipetsk, Russia Tel. 7 0742 48-10-10
Resources:
Armstrong D., 1992, "RUSSIAN LACQUER BOXES", Detskaya Kniga, Russia, ISBN 5-900308-03-0 Page 47
The Association of Folk Handcrafts of Russia, 1998, "FOLK HANDCRAFTS OF RUSSIA", Interbook Business Publishers, Moscow, 5-89164-038-3 Page 49
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