Wood is a very convenient material for carving. Masters of artistic carving are called woodcarvers. With the imagination of a craftsman, house carvings and interior carved decorations turn an ordinary house into a fairy-tale palace. In the past, with the help of a carved pattern, a hand spinning wheel was marked with a special pattern, magical plumage of a wood chip bird was carved, houses were «dressed in laces».

 

Very little space was given to the carved decor in northern houses as it was difficult to «dress up» the entire building with carvings. In the Russian North it was common to decorate the porch of the outside staircase to the second floor, which stood along the wall of the house. Great attention was paid to the design of the massive pillar on which the porch stood, resembling a fairy-tale teremok («little house»).
The porch had winding columns, a small ridge on the roof and a cornice, latter of which ran down the stairs’ canopy like a narrow lace. A narrow lace pattern was also cut on the vergeboards of the huge pediment. Sometimes they were completed with «towels» (hanging boards) which also had carvings. The window of the front room located on the pediment often had a small balcony decorated with the same narrow wooden lace and winding columns.

On the top of this graceful, colossal northern building there was a ridge beam (ochlupen) — huge log of larch, rhizome of which was given the shape of a horse, duck, or sometimes a deer. Once, they were considered sacred animals and kind deities here. Centuries have made the shape of these ancient idols so flawless and beautiful that people no longer remembered the idea of protection coming from them. The ridge beams were put not only as a necessary detail of a complex wooden building, but also as a mandatory decoration of the house. Even now, in the far north, in remote places near the Mezen River, villages with such houses have been preserved. On the high riverbank, above the vast northern river stands strict giant houses. The clear, proud silhouettes of the wooden horses, the duck, rise into the sky, which are shown in their refined expressive form.

Photo credits to: O. Tretyakova, O. Sitnikova, N. Vymorkov
Information was prepared by the staff of the Arkhangelsk Regional Scientific Library named after N.A. Dobrolyubova, more information on the website http://cultnord.ru/