Tue 2 March 2010
Talk
Russian Arts and Crafts in Britain
an illustrated talk by Robert Chenciner
PUSHKIN CLUB PROGRAMME

Language: In English

Robert Chenciner is perhaps best known as an art historian and ethnographer for his study of material culture of Daghestan, part of the Russian Caucasus, and his book on madder red, based in part on virtually unknown Russian sources. In May and June 2009 he curated the Pushkin House exhibition ‘Carved and Coloured Village Art from Tsarist Lands’, which contrasted Russian folk art, Daghestani village art, and Russian Arts and Crafts from the artists’ colonies of Abramtsevo and Talashkino. While he researched the Arts and Crafts section of the catalogue, he found out little-known information about ‘Russian Peasant Industries’ a 1900s shop at 41 Old Bond Street in London, where Cartier’s is today, and linked it to the sensational Russian pavilions at the Glasgow 1901 International exhibition and the Ballets Russes London debut in 1911. These strands paint a picture of a greater effect of Russian Arts and Crafts in Britain than Russian comment thought was evident from the V&A International Arts and Crafts exhibition of 2005.

Robert Chenciner has been a senior associate member of St Antony’s College Oxford since 1987 and an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1991. He collects British, Russian and Daghestani Arts and Crafts