The intangible heritage of folk art crafts

Semeritskaya Ol'ga Vladimirovna ORCID: 0009-0003-8831-6826 Researcher of the Museum-Estate of Ostankino and Kuskovo 140127, Russia, Moscow region, village 10A Srednyaya str., Starkovo semerinka@mail.ru

Folk arts and crafts of Russia are an actual phenomenon of modern culture. Crafts have a rich, diverse heritage in the form of a single integrated system of objects of artistic, industrial, archaeological, ethnocultural, religious, personal, architectural and urban planning heritage, formed as a result of industrial activities in the form of folk art ^[1]. The heritage of folk arts and crafts is holistic, systemic, multi-objective and is represented in material, intangible, natural and environmental terms. Such a broad understanding of the heritage of folk arts and crafts corresponds to the modern interpretation of cultural heritage as a system education ^[2].

Folk arts and crafts have a rich experience of study, which is generally limited to the art historical context ^{[3, 4, 5, 6]}. This has led to a narrow understanding of artistic crafts only as a form of existence of folk art, and the heritage of crafts as products of folk and decorative arts, which, in our opinion, significantly limits the information and value potential of crafts as an integral object of cultural heritage of Russia. In the post-Soviet period, folk crafts have become the object of historical research, where the issues of the economy of crafts, their socio-cultural characteristics, and ethnocultural originality are in the center of attention 7^{[7, 8, 9, 10, 11]} and so on, which to a certain extent led to the expansion of the concept of crafts as a cultural phenomenon. A landmark precedent is the recognition of folk art crafts as the intangible heritage of Russia ^[12]. It seems important and relevant to study crafts in the broad context of cultural knowledge in order to reveal all their information and value possibilities as a phenomenon of culture and to include their multi-object heritage in modern culture.

Folk arts and crafts are a phenomenon of traditional culture, containing in their heritage centuries-old experience of perceiving the world and traditional spiritual values. Each craft product embodies the traditional ideas of a particular craftsman, who is part of a certain social, ethnic, confessional, professional group and is influenced by historically determined external socio-cultural, economic and socio-political influences. At the same time, any craft product is a product of production that has its own specific technical and technological features due to various external factors.

A significant part of the heritage of artistic crafts is represented in an intangible form. The intangible heritage of crafts, due to the specifics of its existence, needs special measures to identify, fix, preserve and update in order to preserve folk art crafts as carriers of the national cultural code and the basis for the continuous development of culture. 

According to the International Convention for the Protection of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of 2003, intangible cultural heritage refers to customs, forms of representation and expression, knowledge and skills, as well as related tools, objects, artifacts and cultural spaces recognized by the public as part of their cultural heritage. Knowledge and skills related to traditional crafts are identified among the objects of intangible heritage.

In Russian legislative practice, the concept of intangible ethnocultural heritage appears, the object of which, among other things, defines knowledge expressed in an objective form, technologies, skills and forms of their representation related to lifestyles and traditional crafts, realized in historically formed plots and images and stylistics of their embodiment existing in a certain territory (Federal Law of October 20 2022 No. 402-FZ "On the Intangible Ethnocultural Heritage of the Russian Federation").

Undoubtedly, the attribution of craft as a type of human creative activity to objects of intangible heritage is an important stage in understanding this significant part of cultural heritage. However, in our opinion, folk arts and crafts should be separated into a separate type of traditional crafts as an organizational form based on authentic centuries-old traditions of folk art culture. Traditional craft is a broad concept that combines various kinds of activities for the manufacture of products by hand, such as, for example, cooperage, knitting nets, felting wool, where there is no artistic component.

Folk arts and crafts are an organizational form of creating decorative and applied objects in accordance with the aesthetic ideas of expediency and beauty that have been formed over the centuries and based on the collective experience of craftsmen passed on locally from generation to generation. 

The allocation of folk arts and crafts into a special type of traditional crafts is important in the context of determining the forms of preservation and actualization of their multi-object heritage, including its intangible component. However, no substantive analysis of the intangible heritage of artistic crafts has been carried out so far. The intangible component of folk art crafts has repeatedly become an object of study, but exclusively in an art historical context: the artistic and stylistic features of products of the main folk art crafts (Gzheli ^[13], Palekh ^[14], Gorodets ^[15], Khokhloma ^[16] and others were subjected to art historical analysis based on formal stylistic and semiotic-hermeneutic methods etc.), which, of course, is a valuable research experience, but extended only to a part of the heritage of crafts - artistic heritage, while the heritage of crafts is represented by a system of heritage objects of various species and types. 

Intangible heritage is a valuable part of the cultural heritage of Russia, which has experience in scientific understanding and determining the forms and methods of its preservation and translation ^{[17, 18, 19, 20, 21]}. Today we understand intangible heritage not so much as an addition to the material heritage, but as an intangible component of culture ^{[22, p. 52]}. If at the very beginning of the identification and definition of this type of heritage, it was identified with folklore and forms of folk art, which was based on a narrow understanding of tradition only in an ethnocultural context, then the humanitarian approach is relevant at the moment, which is based on "emphasizing the human factor, invariably inherent in both artifacts and cultural practices, and cultural spaces" ^{[23, p. 32]}.

One of the components of the intangible heritage of artistic crafts is the artistic and visual language of handicrafts, as well as the set of knowledge, values, norms that make up their content. Thus, traditional elements of painting or ornamental drawing of products of a particular craft are intangible objects of its artistic heritage, such as, for example: floral ornament and plot drawing of Gzhel majolica and white-blue porcelain Gzhel; painting "gingerbread", "grass" and "kudrina" Khokhloma; plot painting Gorodets; painting Sergievo-Posad, Polkhov-Maidanskaya and Semenovskaya matryoshka dolls; ornamental pattern of Vologda, Yelets, Balakhninsky lace, Krestetsky stitching, Gorodetsky and Torzhok gold embroidery, etc.

The decoration of handicrafts is always traditional, that is, it is perceived by craftsmen as a value that is carefully passed on from generation to generation, bringing modern interpretations and personal interpretations to it, carefully preserving and protecting it from alien external influences. The artistic and stylistic tradition of a craft was born, as a rule, from aesthetic ideas about beauty peculiar to the first masters of craft, who often drew inspiration from the samples of decorative and applied, most often ecclesiastical, art available to them. Thus, the painting of the Gzhel majolica was born as a result of the transfer to ceramics of the stylistic language of the Old Believer handwritten liturgical books of the Old Believers-Guslyaks, who settled Gzhel by the middle of the XVIII century; Khokhloma painting – as a result of the transfer to wooden household objects of iconographic techniques of plant painting on a golden background, etc.

The religious heritage of crafts is an important component of the intangible heritage of folk art crafts. Artistic crafts were designed and developed during the period of traditional society, in the functioning of which religion played an important role, acting as "a certain structure-forming principle of the entire system of cultural relations" ^[24].

The confessional affiliation of the craftsmen largely shaped the way of life, customs, and way of life in the crafts, which, in turn, found expression in the artistic traditions of the craft art.

Crafts for the most part received registration in the peasant environment with the patriarchal way of life peculiar to the peasant class, a combination of pagan and Christian in the worldview, where "the rational was born as a result of the expediency of harmony with the world" ^{[25, p. 16]}. The materialized embodiment of such a worldview of the surrounding world were the northern paintings on spinning wheels, the shape and drawings of clay toys, the ornamental pattern of embroidery, patterned weaving, etc.

A significant part of the intangible heritage of crafts is the ethnocultural heritage of crafts, which contains the anthropological component of their entire volume – a set of unique socio-cultural values of the local community as a subject of the heritage of crafts, whose identity is determined by various ethnic factors peculiar to a particular area. Thus, the bearers of the tradition of fishing can act not only directly masters / artists of the craft, but also members of the local community living in the place of the existence of the craft, included in its socio-cultural space as a historical and cultural environment and reproducing the intangible heritage of the craft in the form of a characteristic way of life, mores, customs.

Kaluga embroidery, Vologda lace, Krestetskaya stitch, Gorodetsky and Khokhloma wood painting, Gzhel ceramics, Velikoustyug northern rabble, Rostov finifty, Zhostovsky trays, Palekh caskets are works of Russian folk and decorative and applied art. Part of the Tatar culture is a lumpy scan, gold embroidery, mortgage weaving, tambour embroidery; part of the Mordovian culture is the Tavlin toy, Mordovian embroidery; part of the Bashkir culture is patterned felts, applique on fabric and cloth; etc.

Various ethnic groups have their own special artistic traditions of patterned weaving, ceramics, metalworking, stone and wood, etc., and in each case their artistic and stylistic features are largely determined by distinctive ethnocultural traditions.

A key component of crafts as a type of human creative activity, as a form of reproduction of folk art culture, is tradition, which includes both heritage objects and processes, as well as methods of inheritance, social transmission mechanisms ^{[26, p. 46]}. In our opinion, ensuring its continuity is possible only with the preservation of traditional technologies and manufacturing techniques, as well as social mechanisms for the transfer of experience in the fishery, which, in turn, is also one of the most important intangible components of the heritage of crafts.

The technology of manufacturing products in the field is also an intangible heritage of crafts. Over time, technical improvement of the processes of manufacturing products was allowed in the fields (as, for example, in Gzhel, over time, there was a transition from wood-fired firing of ceramics, first to peat, fuel oil, and later gas and electric, grinding of porcelain mass – from manual and horse traction to machine). But the main technological features of production remain unchanged, with a large proportion of manual labor, with the traditional division and specialization of labor. Authentic Palekh jewelry boxes are made of papier-mache, which goes through the process of priming and drying for several weeks, and then they are painted with tempera according to the canons of Palekh painting and covered with oil varnish. Khokhloma products are turned out of wood, primed with a clay solution, covered with drying oil and tin powder, on a layer of which a vegetable pattern is made, varnished with linseed oil and tempered at high temperature in an oven.

Artistic crafts, especially in the pre–industrial period of their history, are the history of generations, families, through which knowledge and skills, traditions of craft, subtleties of craft, technical and artistic secrets of production were transmitted from the elder to the younger. In many organizational forms of fishing, it was the family that was and is still the organizational unit in the fishery (for example: Kargopol clay toy, Polkhov-Maidan fishery, gzhel of the pre-revolutionary and modern periods, etc.).

During the period of the development of crafts in the XX century, the national craftsman was replaced by a professional artist who received a professional art education. But his acquisition of specific skills of craftsmanship, technological and artistic features of the craft continued through the so-called podsadnichestvo to experienced craftsmen in production, learning "from under the hand", which ensured the continuous development of fishing traditions.

One of the varieties of the intangible industrial heritage of crafts can be called the so-called "sociofacts" ^{[27, p. 100]}, such as working folklore, professional language, everyday traditions of workers, including family groups.

 It is worth noting that today the preservation and protection of part of the intangible heritage of folk arts and crafts (in terms of artistic and artisanal heritage) is in the sphere of state interests. Thus, the Federal State Budgetary Institution "State Russian House of Folk Art named after V.D. Polenov" is systematically working on the formation of the Federal Register of Intangible Cultural Heritage, which records the techniques and technologies of certain types of crafts. Also, the products of folk arts and crafts are subject to control for compliance with their historical stylistic traditions through the activities of artistic expert councils of folk arts and crafts at the regional and federal levels.

The ideal conditions for the preservation and actualization of the intangible heritage of artistic crafts are existence in a natural environment through the continuous development of a living culture of folk art craft, where the bearers of tradition – directly craftsmen or members of the local community – constantly reproduce it.

In a situation of partial or even complete extinction of the commercial culture of a particular trade, loss of its existing state, it is possible to revitalize, reconstruct and/or model ^{[28, p. 56]} certain objects of the intangible heritage of crafts, such as technologies and/or techniques for manufacturing commercial products using the artistic and visual language of a particular crafts, rituals, holidays and other ethnocultural traditions.

Common ways of representing the tradition of crafts are workshops on creating / decorating/ painting products in the tradition of a particular craft, as well as festivals at the places of crafts, reconstructing the tradition of fairs, trade fairs, etc.

The broadcasting of the intangible heritage of crafts can take place both at the place of existence of crafts, and outside it, directly by the bearers of the tradition of crafts or by people who have mastered it. Of paramount importance in this case is the problem of ensuring the authenticity of the broadcast heritage. In the case of broadcasting the intangible heritage of crafts by the bearers of the tradition of fishing, the problem is only as an accomplished act, that is, it is purely subjective. In the absence of a genuine bearer of the tradition of fishing, the problem of the authenticity of the broadcast heritage acquires a cultural and ecological character.

Only a museum, whose institutional activity is based on scientific theories of documentation, thesaurus and communication, can provide the heritage with the opportunity to broadcast all the cultural, symbolic meanings that they carry. The museum, with its scientific approaches to the preservation, study, presentation and broadcasting of heritage, provides it with the opportunity to perform its functions as effectively as possible to ensure the continuous development of culture. However, it seems difficult to protect the object form of the intangible heritage and ensure high-quality translation of the meanings that carry them in the conditions of a collection museum. A museum specialist cannot become a genuine bearer of the tradition of the craft, but he is able to ensure its authenticity at the time of broadcast through its study and development and act as an intermediary between the heritage and the museum visitor, being in this case the keeper of the tradition. 

In our opinion, a comprehensive environmental museification of the craft in the territory of its traditional existence with maximum inclusion in all museification processes of the local community as a carrier of the tradition of the craft provides great opportunities for preserving and updating the heritage of folk art, including its intangible component. The new quality of the museumified environment created in this way seems capable of producing conditions for the constant reproduction of the traditions of the craft, objectified mainly in an immaterial form. This method of preserving and updating the heritage of crafts still needs theoretical understanding and practical testing.

The intangible heritage of artistic crafts – the artistic and pictorial language of handicrafts, techniques and technologies for their manufacture and decoration, social ways of transferring knowledge and skill, customs, way of life and lifestyle in the craft - has high informational and ontological value both as a component of the entire volume of the heritage of crafts as an integral system education, and as the most important basis for intergenerational development folk art crafts. Identification of objects of the intangible heritage of crafts, their fixation, representation, maintenance of their living condition, and in case of loss of tradition – their revitalization, reconstruction and modeling – this is the necessary set of measures to preserve and include in modern culture this significant part of both the heritage of crafts and the cultural heritage of the peoples of Russia as a whole.