Perfection and intrinsic value of caskets and trunks: history, typology, aesthetics, cultural traditions of decoration

Passing the gallery

A photo: Mikhail Stepanov

Text: Natalia Utochkina

Magazine: N5 (61) 2002

All of our cunning and artless things, among which are genuine jewels, memorable trifles and all sorts of cute trifles, are supposed to be in places specially designated for storage. Ideally, caskets, caskets, chests, safes are finally adapted for this ... There is no need for these “vaults” to be often much more perfect than the contents. In our case, it is such items that have an official status "for ..." are of interest. The logic of the habitat of things in the house has its own characteristics. If the object is not of a fair size, but, on the contrary, is very small, then its owner every time meets the need to place the "spool" in a small box. Preferably from an ancient pedigree. Excuse me: if it is designed to safely hide something from immodest eyes, then it should initially be safe - the most flawless guardian of the number of chests. Sober practicality retreats before the feminine and therefore excessive uselessness of the casket: it is also intended to hide something, but unlike the safe, it does this work as if "showing off." However, we will be supportive of the cherished casket at least for the fact that for several thousand years it faithfully accompanies a person, appearing in unexpected guises and eventually becoming self-valuable, like any beautiful trifle. If you look closely, "Miss Box" - a small, closed form - invariably opposes the assertive pragmatist of urbanism, while remaining a symbolic refuge for individualism. Our ancestors carried and kept the most valuable things in chests and chests - gold, jewelry, and sometimes all their wealth. Since the Middle Ages, the chest and casket have been a symbol of wealth and have taken the place of ceremonial furniture in the house. While perfecting, the typology of the chest included caskets proper, working boxes for ladies' crafts, strict travel bags, flirty jewel boxes, which themselves represented an expensive miracle of art. It is impossible to forget about the music box, so refined and at the same time naive fun, filling the house with the atmosphere of Hoffmann's fairy tales. And the so-called grandmother's styling, from which the most necessary little things were extracted! In antique caskets, the secret is especially valued: the most expensive in the antique market are caskets with a double bottom, with secret drawers and compartments, with mirrored tricks. Such caskets in Europe reached perfection in the Renaissance, and even then their quality and prices were measured by princely possibilities. So, by order of the Medici family, Sandro Botticelli himself painted the caskets. But in Russia, caskets, borrowed from Byzantium, were replaced only by Peter I. Dialed boxes and carved, inlaid and painted, caskets in their historical dynamics of forms are arranged in complex associative ranks. Laconism and culture of the plane surface of the empire caskets enter into a plastic dialogue with modern interior items. The redundancy of forms in things of oriental origin, be it Moroccan caskets or Indian and Chinese incense burners, is due to the fact that decor for the East is often more important than form. The meaning of the old proverb about the chest is read the other way around: the casket in fact is not simple, and very difficult to open ...