Fedoskino is located in Moscow Region situated about 30 kilometers (20 miles) from the Russian capital on the bank of the river Ucha.
Fedoskino work is instantly recognizable. At the first, it's being the only Russian lacquered miniature-painting village to create in oils. At the second, only this miniature is fulfilling on the mother-of-pearl plaque, metal foil and preparations powdered with metal dust. At last, pictures are volume, figures are naturally proportioned, and perspective is generally not inverted.
Famous Fedoskino glow are attained of very thinly diluted, and therefore transparent glazes hits direct painting with bold colors to provide highlights and details. Before polishing to a brilliant gloss the painting is covered with three layers of light lacquer. All together some twelve layers are involved.
It was in the Sixteenth Century two types of Oriental decorated boxes found their way in to Europe. One was the Persian casket, the second was of Chinese lacquer articles. Piotr Korobov invited fore craftsmen from Shtorbwasser factory in Germany to teach their know-how to the staff of his cardboard factory at the village of Danilkovo, the original village is situated on the opposite bank of the river. Korobov started out making lacquered peaks for military uniforms, but soon graduated to decorate snuffboxes. About 1818 Korobov's son Piotr Lukutin inherited the factory, expanded the workforce and ensured a higher standard of artistry. The last Lukutins died in 1902 and the factory closed two years later. The out-of-work craftsmen formed a cooperative society, the Fedoskino Labor Artel of Former Employees of the Lukutin factory.
During the nineteenth century, Fedoskino miniature art took much of its inspiration from classical Russian painting, as well as from ancient Russian engravings and popular paintings. Although in the 1920s and 1930s Fedoskino was still reproducing the themes of the Lukutin era and to this day demonstrated it's kinship with Russian lithography, folk pictures and Nineteenth Century easel painting, with the typical motifs of the "troika", the round dance, tea-drinking and other rural scenes. There has been a marked tendency since then to explore other subjects, notably the fairy-tales, also architectural vies and decorative flower compositions.
The process of production of lacquered papier-mache items wasn't undergoing changes from nineteenth century.
