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Antique house wood carving. House woodcarving

House carving is a beautiful and practical solution for interior and exterior decoration. The carving was intended to decorate your home outside and inside with the help of carved items. With the help of a carved facade, you can make your home festive. All protruding and overlaid elements of the facade of the house were decorated with carvings: cornice, architraves, chapels, porch pillars, roofs.

Varieties of technology

There are such types of house carving: embossed, flat-relief, contour, slotted. If you need to decorate a table, mirror frames, a wardrobe, you should choose a blind relief carving. It has the appearance of a relief pattern and is performed on a dull background. When performing, floral ornaments, images of mythological creatures and animals are used. In the photo it looks like this:

Flat-relief carving is a “relief on a plane”. It is characterized by a deepening or selection of the background around the ornament by 5-7 mm. The image will be voluminous. In the technique of flat-relief carving, compositions depicting people, birds and animals look great. This type is very popular for bathing themes.

Contour carving is characterized by a contour outline of images. This is one of the most simple species threads. It is used to decorate dishes, cutting boards, household items. In contour carving, pictorial motifs are used: flowers, leaves, animal figures.

Slotted carving (openwork) was used to decorate railings, stairs, architraves, doors, etc. This is the youngest type of carving, which is about 150 years old.

Operating procedure

Preparing a rough sketch of the house;
We calculate the required amount of material, select the type of material and prepare the boards of the desired size;
We make the necessary templates for house carving. To do this, you should think carefully about the ornament, the elements of the composition must certainly be repeated;

Prepare machines for carving.

It is impossible to start carving without getting acquainted with its technique. You need to start with the execution of geometric patterns.

Templates can be made by the master to order. For this, your sketch, drawing or photo is provided. Many craftsmen make tape stencils for carving on their own.

Template making

Ready-made templates are used for the manufacture of platbands. They can be found freely available on the Internet. You can make a template yourself if you could not find the right option:

We select a suitable drawing;
We transfer the contours of the pattern to the tracing paper. To do this, use a ballpoint pen or a soft pencil;

If you need to enlarge or reduce the picture, use the grid. We transfer the contours to tracing paper. The image field is divided into squares and each is numbered. On a cardboard sheet or thick paper there should be the same number of squares with larger or smaller sizes. The selected image needs to be redrawn into a new grid;
With the help of carbon paper, the drawing is transferred to a wooden blank.

The template can also be made from plywood.

Features of the method

If we drive through the Russian hinterland, we will definitely see overhead elements of house wood carving on the facades of houses. Since pagan times, there has been a tradition to decorate the exterior with carved patterns. Today, it has regained relevance.

Russia has always been famous for its timber reserves and its forests. Therefore, most of the houses and outbuildings were built from high-quality wood, and many such houses still stand today.

The symbolism used in the traditional motifs of house carving has not only an aesthetic, but also a deep ethical meaning. In fact, a certain set of symbols applied around the “unprotected” sections of the house is a talisman. It is believed that the wrong combination of characters can be not only useless, but also harmful.

Ornament is usually classified into zoomorphic, anthropomorphic, geometric, and vegetal. The carving ornamentation is conservative and very traditional. It is thanks to the persistence of cultural traditions that we get the opportunity to see ancient symbols, elements that adorned the dwellings of our ancestors.

The idea of protecting a person, his home, household items, pets with the help of various magical images arose in ancient times and lasted a very long time. According to the ideas of the ancient Slavs, the animistic ubiquity of evil scattered in nature was so great that man could not resist it. Therefore, a person had to protect himself with the help of protective symbols. Protected primarily their home and clothes.

The house was decorated with benevolent pagan symbols placed on the most vulnerable parts of the dwelling and yard. Let us note that both in architecture and in clothing, the same principle of placing incantatory ornament was consistently carried out - all openings, all openings through which all kinds of "evil creatures" could penetrate to a person were ornamented. Decorative (and at one time magical incantations in meaning) elements are located on the gates, around the windows, at the gate; one or another "sacred" image (a horse, a deer, a goddess and birds, the sun) crowned the highest point of the house - the gable of the roof.

“The sum of such amulets, constantly present in all vulnerable areas of the house, turned each “khoromina” into an inaccessible shelter for all family members” (Rybakov B.A. Paganism ancient Rus'). Inside the house, all everyday items were also covered with guarding signs, which made it easier to overcome the evil inside the shelter. Traditionally, in the house carving of the Slavic dwelling, much attention was paid to the windows through which the "ubiquitous navy" could penetrate. Slits in the windows, drafts, winter cold, everything that could cause illness - all this was transformed in the minds of the ancients into images of invisible, intangible "navia" that bring various misfortunes to people "on evil winds". In connection with this, such an important element of incantatory decoration as the platband, window framing, usually richly saturated with pagan symbols, arose. Window framing has always been a very significant element, because a window opening is not only a window to the world, to the “white light” for the inhabitants of the hut, but also a peephole for strangers and third-party evil forces that can peep into it life inside the dwelling.

The Siberian settlers of the 17th century, exploring Western and Eastern Siberia, brought with them the traditions of house carving of the Russian North and central Russia, which, in turn, were based on ancient Slavic pagan ideas. “The hut of the Russian peasant is not just his dwelling, it is his world, in which the whole universe is reflected and his place in it is determined. The house served as protection, protected. These ornaments and details are requests and wishes addressed to the forces of nature and symbolizing the unity of man with it ”(Opolovnikov A.V., Opolovnikova E.A. Wood and harmony).

Ethnographic studies testify to the stable and widespread image of the "heavenly abysses" of the "upper sky" - wavy lines, on the sides of house roofs. The most common is a wavy ornament, or a pattern of "towns", which at a distance are perceived as waves. Usually the waves go in two rows, as if emphasizing the depth of the "abyss". Very often, along with wavy lines, small circles are depicted, obviously symbolizing raindrops, those “heaps” that, according to the pagans, were the cause of life on Earth. “Breast dewy” - “drops of dew, life-giving moisture of heaven. Russian pagans believed in the XII-XIII centuries that the dew falling from heaven in the form of a fog-cloud is sent by the sky god Rod exactly as the all-giving moisture of life ”(Rybakov B.A. Craft of Ancient Rus').

We know about the existence of piers with the image of wavy jets in the Novgorod, Arkhangelsk, Vologda, Yaroslavl regions, in the Russian villages of Karelia and in a number of other places. central Russia, the north of the country and Siberia.

The chapels of Russian huts were decorated in two or four rows, the same order we see on the cornice and chapels of Prokopiev's house (end of the 19th century). Top row is occupied by a zigzag line, which was an archaic and stable ideogram of water, in this case - "heavenly abyss", inaccessible rain reserves. The system for constructing the decor of izbyanyh pits consisted in the fact that two ideas inextricably linked with each other were carried out: firstly, the presence in the upper sky (above the firmament) of rainwater reserves (zigzags and meanders), and secondly, the transfer of this water down to earth to the plowmen, shown by means of the mythological symbol of the breasts of heavenly goddesses, irrigating the earth with "dewy maternity heaps."

The wide existence of this system throughout the Russian North allows us to consider the rows of patterns of Russian chalets on the huts of the 19th century, located in the museum, not as an accidental set of ornamental techniques, but as a relic of ancient cosmological ideas about the heavens that give rain.

With amazing rigor, this ancient picture of the world was observed in the system of architectural decoration, which was a repetition of the macrocosm in the microcosm of the Slavic dwelling; the path of the sun across the sky is emphasized by the fact that to show the sun signs in the proper zone, artificial, special "towel" boards that did not play any constructive role, descended vertically down from the piers, were used. Solar signs on these "towels" were placed below the zone of celestial waters of the piers, against the background of the pediment shaded by the roof.

The midday sun was depicted on the facade of the hut at the very top, under the figure of the dominant horse, but still below the "abyss of heaven", which was the upper sky.

Falls - protrusions up to 1.5 meters of two or three upper logs of the log house - served to support the roof, which was extended far forward from the main facade. Povals have always been a very important constructive detail of Russian huts. As well as okhlupen, traditionally fells looked like a horse's head. The image of the head is not always naturalistic, sometimes only by the characteristic curvilinear shape one can guess that the plows are carved in the form of “solar horses” with legs in the form of semi-roller clusters. This form of povla with half-rollers (from two to six pieces) is typical for the Siberian huts of Russian settlers. Its semantic meaning is immediately clear, because the horse is a symbol of the sun - a solar sign, the main "defender" of the Russian hut from evil forces.

From the second half of the 19th century, artistic processing of architraves became widespread in Siberia. Village Siberian craftsmen liked to decorate architraves with geometric patterns. The predominant motifs were solar rosettes (semicircles), rhombuses, circles. Architraves in the Baroque style are especially common in the cities and villages of Siberia. Siberian rural architraves differ from urban baroque architraves in that most often complex geometric, zoomorphic, anthropomorphic elements or a solar rosette are placed between the volutes instead of a flowerpot and a baluster in the middle of the composition.

Siberian village craftsmen, knowing the basic compositional elements of the Slavic carving of the house, introduced their own ornamental motifs, borrowed from the urban architecture of the middle of the 19th century. And although the ancient magical meaning of the house carving ornament was almost forgotten by the end of the 18th century, its main motives and methods of placing ornamental elements remained almost unchanged and were passed down from generation to generation by wood carvers, builders and carpenters. This is especially well seen in the example of wooden house carvings, preserved in the Siberian hinterland.

Horizontal ornaments of slotted house carving

House wood carving is the decoration of the house inside and out with the help of carved products. House carving is one of the oldest types of carving. At first, carving was used to decorate wooden huts, now it is used in modern design private houses, baths.

Wooden house decorations, with the right choice of material, are resistant to weathering and can last for years. House carving, according to our ancestors, helps protect housing from evil spirits and bad energy. Charm signs, over the years, lost their original symbolism and turned into an ordinary, albeit beautiful, ornament. Now carved house decorations are just a tradition of arts and crafts.

Decorative woodcarving is actively used in modern interiors and housing construction, in the manufacture of furniture. With the help of decorative carving, it will not be difficult to decorate both interior details and intended purpose items.

How to choose wood for house carving

Wood for house carving must be weatherproof. The basis for house carving are pine and spruce boards, sometimes: aspen, oak, larch. Boards can be of various thicknesses and widths. The material for carving should be cheap and affordable, because house carving is designed for large sizes of products. Any birch blanks cannot be used for home carving, it quickly deteriorates on outdoors, is festering.

The appearance of wood may vary depending on the processing, a relatively stable color is typical for oak, maple, pear.

The procedure for working with house carving

First you need to prepare a rough sketch of the house.
Next, we calculate required amount and type of material, we prepare boards of the required size.
We are preparing templates for house carving. In order to achieve stylistic unity in the design of the house, you should think carefully about the ornament, the details of the composition must certainly be repeated.
Due to the large volume of work, it is better to use carving machines.

Types of house carving

Depending on the technique and nature of the carving, house carving has several directions: relief carving, flat-relief carving, contour carving. A characteristic difference between house carving is the repeated repetition of the same elements in different areas.

Deaf embossed

Carving is used to decorate cabinet furniture, table, mirror frames. This type of carving is carried out on a dull background and has the appearance of a relief pattern. Relief carving is well suited for decorating window and door frames, pediments of the house. Mostly, a floral ornament is used, the image of animals, mythological creatures: a vine, a mermaid, a lion, a Phoenix bird, flower rosettes.

relief carving

It is characterized by choosing a background or deepening it, around the ornament by 5-7mm. Another conditional name for the technique is “relief on a plane”. The image is voluminous, due to the same height of most of the protruding details of the pattern, in relation to the background. Floral ornaments, compositions depicting birds, animals, people look great in the technique of flat-relief carving.

The bath theme is incredibly popular in flat-relief and deaf relief carving. Souvenirs for a bath are perfect for a country interior, diversify it and add comfort. You can decorate with carvings bath doors, windows, as well as a ladle for collecting water or bowls that are used to prepare ointments. Pine and hard hardwood trees are best suited for bath decor. Such wood is resistant to hot temperatures and moisture. Wooden products are environmentally friendly and therefore very suitable for use in a steam room. In the waiting room, you can place a wooden sculpture of Neptune or comic bath figures. Shelves in the bath will decorate wonderfully geometric carving. Knotty wood is perfect for making hangers for bath towels. You can also make door handles from thick knots.

It is considered one of the simplest techniques. It is ideal for decorating cutting boards, dishes, household items, wall panels. Contour carving is characterized by a contour outline of images with a pronounced notch line. Contour carving, close in technique to geometric. The difference is that pictorial motifs are used in contour carving: leaves, flowers, animal figures.

house carving

A beautiful and practical solution for interior and exterior decoration. House carving combines modern achievements and originality of carved art. In modern housing construction, carved elements will add individuality and style to the house. Your home will definitely not go unnoticed.

Wooden Rus'… From time immemorial, houses, huts and entire farms were built from wood. This was done for the sake of human life, so that there was somewhere for a Russian person to bow his head, and to spend the winter warm. And live on your own, and attach cattle. And the stone was in abundance, and there was enough clay, but everything was built from wood, since wood is a warm, lively, infinitely grateful material, it is cool in the hut in summer and warm in winter. And so appeared in the expanses of Russians whole wooden cities, villages and villages. And where people live, there churches are built, large and small, cathedrals with chapels, parishes and presences.

Life demands beauty. The peasant's wooden house, although well built, looks simple and unpretentious. Carpenters began to invent decorations, compose ornaments, boards with carved patterns, “towels”, valances and berths. There was a house carving. Of the tools, the architect had only one ax, and a chisel with a chisel. However, hunting is worse than bondage, since you really want to cut something beautiful, then the hatchet can be sharpened so that it will ring, and the carving from under it will come out thin, but intricate. There were real master finishers and with them house woodcarving, applied art, which gave the carvers a wide field for creativity. Competitions began, who cuts wood better, cleaner and faster.

This was all in ancient times. Today, wood carvers, specialists in such an art form as house carving, have a wonderful set of tools, and there are no impossible tasks for them. Fine technologies are varied, from simple flat-surface carving to through ornamental carving with the most complex interlacing pattern. Way artistic carving"Tatyanka" is indispensable for the embodiment in the tree of natural scenes with leaves, grass, flowers. Baroque carving is used to frame church iconostases. And the facades of residential wooden houses decorated with cut-out boards-valances.

Each owner of his own house is concerned about the attractiveness of the facade of his home. I would like the house to be decorated according to the principle of exclusivity, with unique carved patterns. The greatest degree of uniqueness is given by the so-called Gorodets house carving. This technique combines the deaf embossed "Tatyanka" with its inherent natural scenes, which are reflected in the Gorodets carving in the form. The rich plant content of the Gorodets carving is the most in demand when decorating the facades of wooden houses.

Some craftsmen also willingly use Art Nouveau ornaments from the order of stone architecture in their work. Their elegance and practicality are the best suited to the tasks

At present, wood carving in the form of bas-relief sculptures carved from hardwoods is coming into fashion. The image is half-recessed into the surface of the wall or panel of the house. The visual surround effect is amazing. This technique makes it possible to reproduce bas-reliefs on any topic, Chinese and Japanese, African and Latin American, the choice of subjects is not limited. Sculptural bas-reliefs can be combined with other carvings, such as artistic openwork. Also, for the exterior design of the house, an overhead house carving without a through cut is suitable, the elements of which are glued with waterproof glue.

House carving is a way of decorating a home by carving various ornaments, patterns or figures on wooden structures. The traditions of such decoration are rooted in the deep past - scientists believe that carving originated among the ancient Slavs around the 10th-11th century. Masters decorated all the protruding elements of housing - balusters, porch, wind boards, roofing, cornices and architraves. Woodwork was carried out with the simplest tools, protective runes were applied to the boards, scaring away evil spirits and inviting prosperity to the house, images of the gods and the surrounding nature, symbols of rain and sun. Runes and symbols served as amulets, protecting the house space.

With the introduction of Christianity in Rus', their magical and incantatory function was lost, and house carvings began to be used exclusively for decorative purposes. But even today, ancient symbols and runes are visible in ornaments and patterns - rows of triangles and semicircles, symbolizing rain and heavenly moisture, images of animals and trees, fields and forests. With the help of carving, you can decorate your home, give it a decorative and complete look. appearance returning to the traditions of the ancestors.

The procedure for performing work in the workshop "Carved Business"

In the past, craftsmen had to make decorative elements by hand, which was associated with high labor costs and the process dragged on for several months. Today, overlays are created on modern machine with numeric program management and cuts are made with a laser. This technology has serious advantages: planks and overlays are identical, and cutting wood pores are sealed from high temperature and slightly charred (additional protection from moisture). In addition, now there is no need to wait for manufacturing for several months - it takes 2-3 days to make platbands in a wooden house of a classic size, depending on the complexity of the work.