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[BILIBIN] Russkaia zemlia: Almanakh dlia iunoshestva [i.e. The Russian Land : Almanac for the Youth]

Item #2496

Paris: YMCA-Press; Izd. Religiozno-pedagogicheskogo kabineta, 1928. 101, [3] pp.: ill., 2 ills. 24×19 cm. In original illustrated wrappers. Slightly foxed wrappers, but otherwise in very good condition.

An interesting almanac consisting of prose and poetry works by Russian emigrants. Both inserts feature 8 photographs of wooden buildings illustrating Ivan Bilibin’s article “Folk Art of the North”.
The text is decorated with Bilibin’s woodcut headpiece. Bilibin published two different articles under this title and headpiece: a large essay printed in ‘Mir Iskusstva’ [The World of Art] in 1904, while living in Russia, and – smaller summary – in the 1928 emigre almanac. In 1902–1904, he traveled to three provinces of the Russian North and this influenced him greatly. In the article he recalls this trip: about endless forests and numerous rivers and lakes, stately northern people (who had never been serfs) and wooden buildings. The latter interested him a lot.

He considers wooden churches closer to folks than stone ones, due to the non-participation of architects in the construction, and talks about wooden churches. Along with the adoption of Christianity, Ancient Russia gradually adopted urban stone architecture, which was much more familiar to southern Byzantium than to the wooded areas of the northern country. That is why the first temples were built of wood, including a church that preceded St. Sophia Cathedral in Novgorod. Bilibin identifies the main types of wooden churches and outlines them briefly. The artist praises Kizhi structures and turns to wooden huts, which were even more difficult to preserve due to their active use.
During that trip, he also met a large amount of household items and ornamented clothes. Bilibin writes about the production of patterned fabrics, about animalistic and floral ornaments of the North, which transformed real images into fabulous ones. He had met keepers of embroidery traditions, local elder women, and they were enthusiastically talking about the old crafts. Unlike the criticizing article of 1904, this text was caused by Bilibin’s nostalgia for the Russian northern provinces and their art. He revised the previous text and wrote the new one, recalling places, objects and his impressions.
Cover design of the almanac was created by Feodor Rojankovsky (1891–1970), a Russian emigre artist who gained fame as Rojan. Along with Bilibin, the almanac attracted I. Bunin, A. Kuprin, I. Shmelev, A. Remizov, M. Osorgin, V. Zenzinov, A. Iablonovsky, A. Cherny, G. Florovsky, I. Lagovsky, V. Zenkovsky, B. Vysheslavtsev and A. Alexandrovich.

Price: $100.00