Fabergé, Konovalenko and the Ural’s stonecutters: myth and history
The article refers to the history of Russian stone-cutting art of the mid-twentieth century. The focus is on the technique of three-dimensional mosaic, the traditions of its application, and the continuity in the application. The relevance of the article is due to the established and actively broadcast scheme of continuity and artistic superiority of various Russian centres, based on outdated approaches to the consideration of Russian stone-cutting art and its history. According to this concept, the development of three-dimensional mosaics takes place along the line of Faberge - Konovalenko - St. Petersburg masters of the turn of the 20th - 21st centuries. Such statements are repeated many times in publications devoted to the activities of V. Konovalenko and the history of the “St. Petersburg stone-cutting school”. Meanwhile, this concept seems to be at least incomplete. Despite the presence of earlier publications of the author devoted to this problem, a new appeal to the topic is connected with the need to once again articulate the missing “links” in the history of the development of a special stone-cutting art - figurines created using the technique of three-dimensional mosaic. The relevance of this statement is supported by the exhibition project that took place in the summer of 2022 - in the winter of 2023 in the Fabergé Museum (St. Petersburg). It showed the works of students of arts and crafts school No. 42 (now the Ural Technical School “Rifey”) for the first time in many decades, outside the Ural region. These works have become part of the exhibition of works by modern Ural stone cutters, most of the presented works are made in the technique of three-dimensional mosaics. The retrospective of the “Ural” line of development of this direction, with the marked points of intersection with more popular masters and centres of domestic stone-cutting art, clearly proves the transparency of the boundaries between the “capitals” and “province” in this form of art.