Regional versions of the tile decor. About the concept of “Northern Dvina style”

It is well-known that tiles produced in Muscovy in the 17^th and partly in the 18^th century, in terms of its plots and artistic features, had uniformity and an obvious standard. The reason behind that lays in fact that the very history of tiles’ distribution comes from one particular center which is, indeed, Moscow, and, of course, in its printing, because tiles were made according to one specific technology and served unified usage, such as designing the exteriors and interiors of status buildings, including such an important for the national culture architectural form as stove. Thus, paying attention to the individual local tends and formation of local centers which are different from the metropolitan ones is very important for understanding of the Russian province’s culture development. Among them, we can distinguish monuments of tiling basically connected with Veliky Ustyug and, partly, with Totma, which are located in the basin of the Northern Dvina River, and, maybe, some other large towns, such as, for example, Vologda. There is no such term as “Northern Dvina style” in the modern scientific literature. The very possibility of highlighting the “North Dvina Style” in the art of Russian tiles and using this term as a tool in a discussion about the peculiarities of the development of the material culture of the Late Middle Ages and the New Age in the North deserves special consideration. This required, firstly, referring to the materials of the archive of A.V. Filippov, which made it possible to understand the course of his thought and restore the foundations, on which he relied in the selection of tile masters of Veliky Ustyug and Totma into a separate craft group. Secondly, the field and analytical studies carried out in recent decades in the specified region were reviewed anew. Thirdly, the samples of the products of this school were revised and redefined, which are presented in large numbers in the collections of a number of the largest museums in Russia, but are usually incorrectly attributed. The article discusses the history of the emergence of this concept, which takes place in the works of Alexey Vasilyevich Filippov, the famous Russian researcher of applied art and history of silicate building materials production technology. Here are given the data on the collection of materials during A.V. Filippov's special research trips to the North in 1927, where he examined and studied more than a hundred old tiled stoves, at that time been in the houses of local residents or already dismantled and turned into sets of tiles, and also tiles on the facades of churches. The following is the history of the largest center of tile production and the characteristic features of Ustyug tiles, which determined the originality of the "North Dvina style". The conclusion of the study confirms the validity of distinguishing of a special style of tiles by A.V. Filippov, the objective nature of the term he proposed and the need for its actualization in modern scientific discourse.

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