Kurnaya Hut: Architectural and Design Features and Interior (on the Example of Tretyakov's House-yard, village Gar, Kargopolsky district)

Permilovskaya Anna Borisovna ORCID: 0000-0002-3221-7197 Doctor of Cultural Studies Doctor of Sciences (Culture), Head, Chief Researcher of the Scientific Center of Traditional Culture & Museum Preservation N. Laverov Federal Center for Integrated Arctic Research of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences 163069, Russia, Arkhangelsk region, Arkhangelsk, Severnaya Dvina Emb., 23 annaperm@fciarctic.ru Gerasimova Alena Igorevna ORCID: 0000-0002-2310-7244 Master student of the Higher School of Social Sciences, Humanities and International Communication, Northern (Arctic) Federal University named after M.V. Lomonosov Russia, Arkhangelsk region, Arkhangelsk, nab. Severnaya Dvina, 17 al.gerasimova19@gmail.com

Usov Aleksei Aleksandrovich ORCID: 0000-0002-0466-0124 PhD in Cultural Studies Associate Researcher, Scientific Center of Traditional Culture and Museum Preservation, N. Laverov Federal Center for Integrated Arctic Research of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences 163020, Russia, Arkhangelsk region, Arkhangelsk, Nikolsky Prospekt, 20 usov@fciarctic.ru Other publications by this author

Kargopolsky district or "the edge of the blue lakes", impresses with its beauty and authenticity. Kargopol is one of the oldest cities in Russia, which has preserved its original culture, the splendor of the architecture of the northern city. Over the centuries, Kargopol has been formed and developed on the basis of traditional canons of construction. It represents the whole individuality of the northern wooden architecture, which the Russian people are proud and admire. As B. N. Fedorov wrote: "the surroundings of Kargopol attract no less than the city itself. This region is intimate and beautiful with its villages ..., alluring winding roads… And any of these roads, sometimes climbing a sandy slope, then suddenly running down to a small standing forest lake, certainly leads to antiquity ..." ^{[17, p. 11]}. The expressive wooden architecture of Kargopol and its environs appeared mainly due to immigrants from the Novgorod land. That is why the local buildings are similar to those of Novgorod. In the Kargopolsky district, traditional kon dwellings have been preserved. XIX century., which became monuments of wooden architecture. Some of them are located in the villages of Bolshoy and Maly Haluy, Gar, Pogost, Kirillovo (Bolshaya Seredka), Trofimovskaya, Shiryaikha. These houses were residential back in the 1960s and 1970s. Later, due to the resettlement of people, they fell into disrepair. Their cultural and historical significance is now evidenced by their status as objects of cultural heritage of regional significance under state protection.

A dwelling is a habitable model of the world created by man, reflecting his way of life, culture and folk traditions that have been formed over the centuries; the connection between man and nature through natural materials and natural forms. The house symbolically embodied the main values and meanings of human existence, preserved the most important functions as a spatial and objective environment for satisfying the biological needs of a peasant family. First of all, the peasant dwelling was a place of food, sleep, procreation, a space of work and rest ^[11]. The hut performed the function of protection not only from the unfavorable climatic conditions of the North, but also protected people in the sacred sphere of peasant life. The house can be called an "open book" telling about its inhabitants.

The main building material was wood. In construction, the peasants preferred to use pine, larch and spruce. As E. N. Shveykovskaya writes: "... the tree warmed and shone" ^{[18, p. 139]}. Carpenters learned to work with it and in their hands the tree became flexible and malleable, which allowed creating magnificent forms of wooden architecture in the Russian North. In the Kargopolsky district of the XIX century, 49.4% of the forest area was state-owned, 49.8% of the forests belonged to peasant communities ^{[16, p. 52]}.

The peasant house is an integral part of the folk culture of the Russian North. When determining its architectural and structural features, it is possible to identify elements that are characteristic directly for Kargopol. By the XIX century, carpenters here used several types of connection of the residential and economic part of a wooden peasant house: "timber" with a widened barn, "glagol", "T-shaped connection", "purse", two-row connection ^{[11, p. 108]}. The connection of the hut and the yard was of a practical nature, facilitating the life of the northern peasant. It made it possible to run a farm, take care of cattle in winter, without leaving a closed room. The complex household complex of the house-yard is perfectly thought out in the smallest details, compact and adapted to harsh climatic conditions.

One of the differences between the Kargopolsky district and the rest of the territories of the Arkhangelsk region is the long age of kurny ("ore") huts. The name "ore" type of hut was derived from the word "ore" in the meaning of dirty, blackened, soot, black furnace ^{[6, p. 535]}. Thanks to the tradition inherited from the Novgorod architecture of the construction of houses with high ceilings, huts with a stove "in black" existed in Kargopolye up to ser. XX century .

There are several reasons for such a long existence of chicken huts in Kargopolye. First of all, these are "climatic conditions – high humidity of the Kargopol lake district. Open fire and smoke from the furnace dried and soaked the walls of the log house, a kind of preservation of wood took place, as a result, the age of black huts was longer. The black stoves were arranged by the owner in one or the other hut to dry the log house, so the stoves in them could be reworked many times. The chicken oven heated the room better, created a temperature in the hut up to 25 degrees, without requiring a lot of fuel... The black stove was convenient for farming, the smoke dried clothes, shoes, nets. The nets, soaked in smoke, served 5-6 times longer than the nets dried in the air. For a peasant artisan engaged in carpentry, leather and other crafts, such a hut, in addition to its direct purpose, served at the same time as a workshop where he could dry the necessary raw materials: wood, leather, and the primitive device of an adobe kiln did not require large expenditures for its construction" ^{[12, pp. 257-258]}. Among the highlighted reasons for the preservation of "ore" huts in Kargopolye – the main one is practical – it is a convenient, perfect smoke removal system provided by a high (3-4 m) trapezoidal ceiling device.  Such a design minimized the inconveniences of chicken huts: cases of fumes, the possibility of eye and respiratory tract diseases, the danger of colds due to frequent ventilation of the premises in the cold season, but above all the abundance of soot that accumulated on the ceiling, flaked off and scattered throughout the room. Nevertheless, the peasants kept the huts neat, although it required considerable effort: "The floors, smoothly hewn log walls, wide benches, a stove – everything sparkles with cleanliness, so common for the huts of northern peasants" ^{[9, p. 54]}.

The advantages of the kurnaya hut fully compensated for its shortcomings – which influenced the long life of these buildings; in addition: "... the power of tradition was very great, and the peasants of Oshevensk point to such a reason for the long existence of ore huts as a "habit"" ^{[2, p. 7]}. The fact is also important That the majority of those living in the Oshevenskaya volost were Old Believers: in 1976, they made up a significant part of the population in the villages of Bolshoy and Maly Haluy, Gar, and Niz ^{[3, p. 5]}. Because of their conservative views, they prevented the restructuring of chicken huts.

The classic house-complex with a wooden hut is presented in the Museum of Wooden Architecture and Folk Art "Malye Korely" (Fig.1) 

Fig. 1. Tretyakov's chicken hut, d. Gar, Kargopolsky district, Con. XIX century. (Museum of Small Korela). Photo by N. Chesnokov from the archive of A. B. Permilovskaya.

The house-yard of M. A. Tretyakov was moved to the museum from the village of Gar, Kargopolsky district of the Arkhangelsk region in 1972 ^{[19, p. 2]}. The authors of the kurnaya hut restoration project are D.A., prof. A.V. Opolovnikov (residential part), architect V. A. Titov (economic part). "Tretyakov's house was located in the central part of the village of Gar, not far from the road. It was built in the second half of the XIX century and belonged to Mikhail Andreevich and Anastasia Ivanovna Tretyakov" ^{[15, p. 48]}. In this village, almost all the huts were heated "in black". Later they were rebuilt for the furnace "in white" ^{[14, p. 251]}. The monument under study has not been rebuilt and has preserved the architectural and planning device typical of the area, the archaic heating system, and the interior characteristic of Kargopol.

The house-yard of M. A. Tretyakov, like most of the monuments in the Kargopol-Onega sector of the museum, is characterized by the power of log cabins. As G. V. Alferova points out: "The largest huts are in the Burning" ^{[1, p. 107]}.

It is a tall proportional four-wall with 4 windows on the main facade. The type of connection of the residential and economic part of the "timber" on a high basement – thus, all rooms are combined in an elongated rectangular volume of the log house.  The residential part includes three rooms: a chicken hut and a room on the second floor, as well as a winter hut ("back room") on the first floor (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2. The plan of the house-yard of M. A. Tretyakov. I floor: 1 – basement, 2 – basement, 3 – canopy, 4 – winter hut, 5 – passage to the yard, 6 – utility yard, 7-10 – cattle sheds; II floor: 11 – black hut, 12 – canopy, 13 – gorenka, 14 – crate, 15 – passage on the roar, 16 – roar ^{[15, p. 50]}.

Under a common gable roof with them there is a spacious utility yard with a porch. It should be noted that the planning structure of the building can be characterized as "unclean timber" or "timber with a widened shed" – because the economic part is much wider than the hut, and in the resulting corner there is a log truck leading to the river ^{[15, pp. 48-49]} (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3. Delivery of M. A. Tretyakov's house. Photo by A. Permilovskaya.

Such a house is comparable to a large ship, on which each room is endowed with a certain meaning and is responsible for its function. There is nothing superfluous in it, everything is done in such a way as to provide safety, warmth and comfort to the people living here. The entire internal architecture forms a single harmonious whole and is in full harmony with the external appearance of the people's dwelling, in turn, inscribed in the surrounding natural and cultural landscape ^{[13, p. 131]}. (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4. M. A. Tretyakov's hut in the structure of the Kargopolsko-Onega sector of the museum "Small Korely". Photo by A. Permilovskaya.

The exterior decor of the dwelling is traditional for Kargopol. The "hens" on which the tes of the roof is held are processed in the form of a bird's head. The crevices on the pediment of the main facade are formed by three boards ornamented with carved towns; large "rosettes" are made at their ends. The joint of the crevices is closed with a complex carved "towel" of almond shape with a cross in the center and a figured completion. The end of the shell above the pediment is treated with a relief pattern of three rollers. An expressive decorative element of the chicken huts crowning the roof is the carved completion of a wooden chimney ^[15].  

The interior of a peasant's hut is also traditional. It is devoid of festive finery and contrasts with the familiar interior of a dwelling with a furnace "in white". The center and "heart" of the hut is an oven standing on a wooden stove. They tried to make it high so that to remove the smoke it was only enough to open the drag window. The mouth of the stove is facing the windows of the front facade of the house, under them benches embedded in the wall are built into the walls and shelves-funnels, which are located at the top around the perimeter of the hut, next to the poles "hangers" on which clothes or fishing nets were dried. The high ceiling, to which they tried to give the shape of a dome (trapezoid) in such a hut minimized, as far as possible, the inconvenience of the furnace "in black". From the mouth of the furnace, the smoke rose to such a ceiling, spreading over its entire area, cooling down, descended to the Vorontsov shelves, which served as a kind of smoke boundary, pushed off from them and stretched out into the drag window located on the side above the entrance. (Fig. 5)

Fig. 5. Tretyakov's house before transportation to the museum, reconstruction. Drawing from the archive of A.B. Permilovskaya.

Such a window was dragged open, behind it there was a wooden box ending with a carved chimney-smoker on the roof. All this was of a practical nature, the peasants seemed to control the smoke, thereby facilitating living in a hut. The Vorontsov shelves served to delimit the premises. Further than the funnel going from the furnace to the wall parallel to the threshold, guests cannot pass without the permission of the owner, and the space behind the funnel, which is directed to the front facade, is female. "The furnaces on high opechki, were not brick, but broken. In one of the houses in the Kargopolsky district, the furnace is already falling apart. There is a stove pole, a tent beam and a pie. Shelves are present almost everywhere. The partitions also remained" ^[10].

Behind the stove there was always a place for cooking and storing kitchen utensils – a cupboard. It is separated from the main room of the hut by a paneled cabinet-fence, painted with a free brushstroke or free-brush painting with a floral motif. Built into the wall, it saved space in the hut and was convenient to use. (Fig. 6)

Fig. 6. Painted cabinet-fence, con. XIX century . Photo by A. Permilovskaya.

Based on interviews with residents of the village of Bolshoy Haluy, Shiryaikha, Kargopolsky district, it can be concluded that although the houses have fallen into disrepair, but the cabinets-fences have remained untouched by time; some paintings have been preserved: "There are usually no decorations in the interior living areas of the house, only in some places you can find paintings ... They took care that the housing was comfortable, warm and cozy" ^{[5, p. 66]}. The pool is the cleanest place in the hut, because it is separated not only by a built–in wardrobe, but also sometimes has a separate ceiling. Thanks to this design, soot did not fall from the main ceiling of the hut on the dishes and utensils stored in the shelter. The side wall of the furnace is a continuation of the wall of the club and is not adjacent to the main one, so this room has its own red corner with an icon. As in the main space of the black hut, a table was placed under the icons in the club.

The main red corner is located in the right corner from the entrance along the greater diagonal from the furnace. Less soot flew here, and additional protection was provided by the Vorontsy regiments, which formed a kind of niche, and the goddess herself. In the red corner there are several icons and a cast copper fold consisting of four flaps. A lamp hangs in front of the icons. Under the icons in the same corner, a table was always placed along the floorboards. It was said that the table was like a throne in a church, so it was not allowed to hit it with your hand, fist, stick a knife. For everyday meals, it was not covered, only on holidays it was covered with a white homespun linen tablecloth. The peasants washed, scraped the countertop, gave it the appearance of fresh wood. There was a side bench or "women's bench" next to the table. It is made of a solid spruce trunk, on the one hand, the roots of the tree serve as legs, on the other – it rests on a mortise bench. On it, according to the rules, the girls were sitting at a meal. This is one of the few movable pieces of furniture in the hut (Fig. 7).

Fig. 7. The red corner with the Easter treat. Photo by A.B. Permilovskaya.

Most of the furniture (benches, cabinet-fence, shelves in the club) is embedded in the walls and remains stationary. As a result, more space is freed up in the hut to perform various handicraft or commercial work: rewinding threads, repairing nets, etc. Women were engaged in spinning, weaving, brought hand looms, in Kargopol they are called "krosna" or "staviny". In con. XIX-beginning. XX centuries, the most recent type of weaving mill – composite - was widespread. Spinning wheels were used for spinning-kopylki – self-spinning wheels in Oshevensk were not widely used ^{[3, p. 21]}.

In most cases, there were a large number of children in families, so for the youngest in the center of the hut weighed a wobble (cradle). It was suspended on a bird cherry tree, which was thrown over the funnel and fixed on the matic. The canopy at the wobble was made from the mother's worn sundress. The fluctuation could be delayed and it began to waver. The child was usually followed by the younger children in the family. But they quickly got bored of rocking the swing: "We'll rock the swing and run outside. We hear the child starts crying again, we run, we rock again and run away to play" ^[10]. Sometimes, in order not to run home every time, they went to some tricks: "We took a goat out into the street, tied it under the windows, we'll put a frame out of one window, we'll pull a string through the window at the wobble and tie it to the goat's horns. He walks, shakes his head, and the wobble is swinging. The child is calm, and we are not distracted from the game" ^[8].

The corner by the door was intended for the work of the owner of the house. Here he was engaged in repairing nets, weaving birch bark, etc. All the garbage was swept away and thrown into the oven, without spreading it all over the hut.

Next to the stove were all the necessary items for cooking: hooks, broomsticks, tongs, shovels. A washbasin with a "washbasin" was also installed here – this was the name of a simple linen towel. An interesting fact is the maintenance of small livestock in winter in a typo. To keep the chickens from freezing in the yard, they were put into the hut under the stove. Also at the furnace there was a svetets – an iron rod with several branches at one end, and the other built into the svetechny bench. Splinters were inserted into the branches. Depending on the place where lighting was required, it could be easily rearranged.

In the hut, built-in benches were used as a place to sleep. They also slept on the floor. At night, floorboards were brought from the cage, a mattress stuffed with hay was put on top of them, they lay down with their heads in a red corner and covered themselves with fur coats. Starting with con. XIX-beginning. XX centuries, homemade wooden beds appear ^{[3, p. 18]}. Such a bed is presented in the interior of the upper room of M. A. Tretyakov's house (Fig. 8).

Fig. 8. Interior of the gorenka of M. A. Tretyakov's house. Photo by A. Permilovskaya.

In the women's part behind the stove (the club), the furniture was located in the same way as in the hut – along the walls. There was a large number of utensils in the club. The hostess spent almost all her time here: cooking, baking, washing. The utensils were mostly located behind the stove. There is also a tripod for water, along the side wall there is a cut–in bench. Next to it was placed a cupboard for dishes, the upper part of which served for cooking. Above the cabinet were shelves for dishes. A zablyudnik was used to store large flat dishes. There was also a shelf-a "millstone" for millstones. In rich huts in the beginning . In the XIX century, cabinets appeared in the club, but because of their large size, they were inconvenient, so they rarely stood here ^{[3, p. 22]}. A characteristic feature of the Osheven huts was a hatch in the basement in the floor of the club.

The Northern region is considered a treasure trove of wooden architecture. It is here that most of the monuments of wooden architecture have been preserved. The centuries-old folk art was revealed in all its splendor precisely in the architecture and skill of the architects of Kargopol. But not all monuments of wooden architecture have reached our days in their former form. "Wooden architecture is the most short–lived.... The structure at best lives for three to three and a half centuries, when the roofs are blocked in a timely manner, rotten logs are replaced, or even it is sorted to the ground. That is why two or three "generations" of them have been replaced in Kargopol churchyards for many centuries ^{[7, p. 49]}.

In con. XIX-beginning. XX centuries., in Kargopolye there was a developed type of hut, heated in black and almost not found in other areas. The hut of the house-yard of M. A. Tretyakov represents the most archaic, typical interior. The design solutions inside the hut reflect the lifestyle of the Kargopol peasant: the furniture is mostly primitive, but its simplicity does not affect the functionality in any way. The layout is ancient, in which each corner of the living room has a certain function (the female corner at the window facing the front facade of the house and the male corner at the door). The tradition of the situation is indicated by the fact that such canons existed in the interior of the Old Russian dwelling back in the XVI-XVII centuries ^{[3, p. 37]}.

The ore hut has retained elements associated with the archaic furnace "in black". The high trapezoidal ceiling, the funnel shelves, the drag window – all this has not lost its original function here, unlike the huts with a furnace "in white". The entire interior of the hut obeyed the canons of construction in Russia. In simplicity, the master conveyed all the beauty of wooden architecture. Already in 1976, the interior, close to the con. XIX-beginning. XX centuries. could be seen only in the huts of Old Believers ^[10].

It follows from archival documents that the transportation of M. A. Tretyakov's house-yard to the museum of wooden architecture "Malye Korely" was aimed at showing the typical interior of the hut of a peasant-middle peasant who lived in the Osheven parish of the Kargopol district in the second floor. XIX century . The exhibition presents elements of traditional Kargopol folk applied art, as well as crafts related to wood carving, birch bark weaving and home weaving. It follows from archival documents that after transporting the house to the museum, it was planned to create the interior of the hut so as to more fully reveal the daily life of the Kargopol peasant and show the reasons for the long preservation of the furnace "in black" in Kargopol ^{[4, p. 2]}. The hut of the Tretyakov house-yard is a clear example of the fact that life in the Russian North, where "traditional wooden architecture acts as an adaptive mechanism in ensuring a comfortable organization of life" ^{[14, p. 263]} was not easy, and the peasant adapted to the surrounding climate and space.

The Northern village is the most perfect kind of architectural ensemble, where carpentry was a popular cause. Folk architects skillfully revealed the best qualities of the natural landscape. The living environment of the northern village has always naturally entered into nature, organically fitting into it, included natural structures, forming an integral architectural and natural complex. The peasant dwelling in the system of wooden architecture occupies an exceptional position, which was embodied in its architectural, planning and constructive solution, and was adapted to the harsh conditions of the region. The Northern hut is not just a house, but a module of full life support for a family of several generations during a long, harsh winter and cold spring. This is an adaptive mechanism of traditional architecture, inscribed in the habitat, which was used by the Russians in the development and organization of the living space of the northern and Arctic territories.