Russian art: Mezen painting

Today we changed our design a little bit. Now the background is taken from the samples of the Mezen painting - Мезенская роспись. 

Let us introduce it to you.

The element of Mezen's paining was taken into the ornament of the Winter Olympic games in Sochi-2014

Mezen painting on wood - the type of painting utensils - spinning wheels, buckets, boxes, formed by the beginning of XIX century in the lower reaches of the river Mezen.  Mezen is located in the Arkhangelsk region, between the two largest rivers in Northern Europe, North Dvina and Pechora, on the border of the taiga and tundra.


The style of Mezen painting can be attributed to the most archaic forms of painting. Items thickly covered with a fractional pattern - stars, crosses, dashes, made in two colors: black - soot and red - "earth colors" ocher. The main reasons for geometric ornament - solar discs, diamonds, crosses - reminiscent of similar elements of the triangular-notched thread.
Among the ornaments - friezes of stylized schematic images of horses and deer, which begin and terminate at the boundaries of the subject. Made of black and red colors, figures of animals seems to appear out of the geometrical ornament. All images are static and only through repeated many times there comes a sense of dynamics. 


Mezen painting one of the most ancient Russian arts and crafts. Its origin is lost in the remote ages of the initial formation of the Slavic tribes.

 The origins of characters Mezen painting primarily lie in the mythological worldview of the people of the ancient  north. The three tiers - the three worlds (the lower, middle, and upper or underground, ground and sky). In Mezen painting the lower and middle tiers filled with deer and horses. Upper tier - the birds. Swirls of black and red horses in tiers may also mean the worlds of the dead and the living. Placed around the horses and deer are numerous solar symbols emphasize their heavenly origin. The image of the horse of the peoples of the Russian North is also the guardian (the horse on the roof), as well as a symbol of the sun, fertility, the source of life's blessings.

Here are some interpretations of the samples













Here are some pictures

To see the souvenirs where this ormanet is used, please follow the link


Doesn't it look fantastic? (from here)