Valenks biography

The photo of I. is about such shoes in the proposed publication. However, for us, these shoes are so familiar and familiar that it does not need description. In the representation of foreigners, boots have recently been known as an unofficial symbol of our country, one of the colorful attributes of the image of a Russian person. Indeed, both in the cold and in the heat, the legs shod in felt boots feel comfort, dryness and warmth.

The therapeutic effect of felted shoes, which warms the joints well, is widely known. All these properties were made by felt boots very popular in Russia with its cold winters. They were indispensable both on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War and at Siberian construction projects. In Soviet times, the party authorities, the command staff of the Red Army and the chairmen of wealthy collective farms were given out special felt boots - the so -called bucks made of white felt, sheathed with skin and on a leather sole.

At the beginning of the recent 20th century, boots were very common, which was primarily facilitated by their relative cheapness. However, prices for felted shoes are significantly falling only with the development of felting and wound production. Until that time, dumped shoes did not belong to the category of cheap. In the middle of the XIX century, for example, for felted boots they paid 2 rubles silver - considerable money at that time.

Today, in Moscow and in other large cities, felted shoes are not popular only for kids on walks, many parents prefer light and warm boots. She was replaced by elegant winter shoes and boots. Indeed, modern city life is not suitable for felt boots. To go from the car to the entrance or from the bus stop to the metro, boots are not needed. But the metropolitan resident of course will remember them, gathering in the winter for the country or fishing.

The best shoes for such purposes cannot be found! And in rural areas, where people are on the street for a long time, where public transport is poorly developed, warm, inexpensive and comfortable boots - as before, in the course. The boots have so firmly entered our consciousness that it seems: they have existed for centuries. The felt boots can be seen in the picture of the artist B.

The founder of the Ural factories will shower in white felt boots, very reminiscent of the buckthorn of the Soviet nomenclature. However, the widespread idea of ​​the antiquity of felted shoes is erroneous. In fact, neither under Peter I, nor even under Dmitry Donskoy Valyan shoes were not. Earlier information about their existence cannot be traced either by ethnographic data or by historical documents.

In previous articles on the history of shoes, I have already said how small the written sources are capable of helping in the study of material culture. The main role here is given to archaeological excavations. It is thanks to archeology that we know that a person has long learned how to make a felt. Even in the era of the development of nomadic cattle breeding, a person understood the valuable qualities of sheep’s wool and began to actively use it.

The earliest finds of felt belong to the Scythian period - things from it were discovered during excavations of the Pazyryk mounds in the Altai Mountain, the construction time of which scientists dates back to the 4th century BC. The unique conditions of permafrost have retained many objects of that time, including leather and felt products. In ancient times, felt houses were tightened with felt - yurts, from it they made hats, clothes, carpets and many more things.

During excavations of a wet, humused layer of a medieval Russian city, as a rule, a large number of fragments of leather shoes are found, even the remains of bast shoes, and scraps of woolen fabrics. Often there are felt insoles or just pieces of felt, but it has not yet been possible to find anything similar to felt shoes. More exhibits are presented in his exposition, among which you can see felt suits, tools of carrier artisans, as well as a real garlic machine for processing wool, accidentally found in the attic of a village house.

But the main part of the collection is of course represented by felt boots - moreover, all kinds of shapes and colors. Such a variety is hard to imagine! Recently, a similar museum has been discovered in the city of Myshkin, the Yaroslavl region, see the manufacturing process of such shoes quite long and requires certain skills. In artisanal production, raw materials for the dressing of felt boots, as a rule, are sheep wool - summer, or shreds removed from sheep in the summer.

At first, it is freed from impurities - blades, thorns - and broken, turning into a soft and fluffy mass. The more in the boots of summer, the softer they are. From loosened wool, sculpt the future model, carefully making sure that the walls of the felt boots turn out to be the same thickness. So there is a seamless formed model of the future felt boots.

Now it is wound on a rolling pin that has the appearance of a tetrahedral stick, and rolled out for a long time. Hence the second name of shoes - rollers or katans. The process of skiing alternates with soaking - for more compaction and shrinkage.Only after such a procedure, the felt boots are put on a collapsible wooden block and straightened by a wooden block.

Then the surface of the felt boot is rubbing with a pumice and put in a furnace for drying. For the final finish, the dried felt boots are once again rubbed with a pumice or wooden bar. So, for the blackening of the felt, alum, copper sulfate and a blue sandalwood were used, and for clarification the master used white milk mixed with fresh milk. A wide variety of experiments are still conducted with boots.

They are polished, polished and even varnished, having previously saturated the felt as carpentry glue. To achieve water resistance, use rubber dissolved in gasoline. The finish and shape of the felt boots also differ in an incredible variety: embroidery, application, rhinestones and even multi -colored feathers of exotic birds. And the shape of the felt boots can be very diverse.

The Museum of Valenok contains copyright works that demonstrate the incredible fantasy of artists - boots in the form of fly agaric, a clock with a cuckoo, an airplane, a steam locomotive and even a cell with a parrot. Such exotic models are rehabilitated by felted shoes, which entered the sayings as a symbol of simplicity. The editors thanks the Valenok museum in Moscow for the opportunity to take pictures of some exhibits.

In this house, a museum of felt boots is located along the 2nd Kozhevnikic Lane. Valyl -waist tools - rolling ropes, collapsible wooden pads, crests. Below are boots decorated in a modern way: embroidery and rhinestones. Chesal machine, with which sheep’s wool is prepared for the manufacturing process of felt boots. The appearance of these felt boots speaks of the incredible ingenuity of the master.

Embroidery and bright application make them very elegant. A fragment of the Scythian felt carpet found in one of the mounds of Pazyryk Vostochny Altai. Shoe shop offering boots and shoes. The drawing of Adam Olearius, a German scientist and traveler who has visited Russia three times in years. Traditional boots that differ only in size and color. So the boots are embroidered with a pattern.

Before you is the fruit of the richest fantasy of the master: for example, boots in the form of a watch and a steam locomotive photo below.