16 May 2021
On 1 May an exhibition opened at the Kolomonskoye Museum-Reserve in Moscow, covering the history of Russian printed cotton textiles, known in Russian as ‘Cитец’ (‘Sitets’ – sometimes translated into English as ‘chintz’ or ‘calico’). The exhibition marks the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Troitsko-Aleksandrovskaya manufactory, in the village of Karabanovo (Aleksandrov district of Vladimir region). Established by the Baranov family, the products of this factory are probably the most famous and most vibrant of all Russian sitets, and were great favourites for making items of folk dress in the 19th/early 20th centuries. Most of the exhibits are from the Sitets museum in Ivanovo and the Aleksandrov settlement museum.
Views around the exhibition
As this subject is so dear to my heart, I have been feeling sorry that I can’t get to see this exhibition in person, with travelling to Russia (or virtually anywhere else) impossible at the moment. (And it isn’t easy to arrange a visit there at short notice, even in ‘normal’ times.) So I have been very pleased to find out that at least two people who have been able to visit – Tatiana Nagorskikh and Elena Yunas – have posted photos and reports on Facebook about it. I should like to know what all the captions say, but at least I have a good idea of what is included in the exhibition and the story it aims to tell. I’m grateful to Tatiana and Elena for sharing so many images.
Tatiana Nagorskikh has written several articles for the Journal ‘Russkiy Mir’ on subjects relating to Russian textiles and dress (for example, these – in Russian – about the
Ivanovo museum and about
Baranov prints). Her report on Facebook about the
Sitets exhibition states that it is small, but well put together and with plenty of information provided. It shows how the textiles were constructed and coloured, how the dyes were fixed, the process of creating designs and transferring them to cloth, how the products were promoted and celebrated.
Early methods of printing; equipment
Tatiana expresses a feeling of pride for the illustrious past of this industry in Russia, for the incredible beauty and brightness of the Baranov textiles, and for the artists of the twentieth century who worked at the Ivanovo factories and created stunning designs for fabrics in the 1920s-30s and in the 1960s-80s.
She enjoyed the clarity of the information, the multimedia screens showing rare examples and videos explaining processes; also the reconstruction of the counter in a sitets shop, and images of ‘red goods’ peddlars. (Red – ie beautiful – goods was the name given to these bright prints used in folk dress, in the form of headscarves or shawls, in lengths to be made up into garments or in small pieces used for decoration.) For anyone who loves textiles and colourful designs, the exhibition is a treat.
Tatiana then expresses the point that I also wonder about myself, especially as I’m not as knowledgeable as I would like to be about the current state of the textile industry in Russia. She says – there is also something that causes sadness. If the exhibition makes everything clear about ‘yesterday’, demonstrating that there is something to be proud of, it does this by showing what was done in the past and can only be presented in the context of an exhibition. The title is ‘Sitets – yesterday, today, tomorrow’ and yet ‘today’ and ‘tomorrow’ are hardly considered at all. There is only one current enterprise represented – ‘Shuiski Sitsi‘ (from Shuia, near Ivanovo – another centre for the textile industry in the past). Tatiana feels it should have been possible to include modern fashionable sitets products and to show the use of printed cottons in interior design.
This prompts me to ask – are there any modern fashionable sitets fabrics being produced in Russia today? I need to find out. At the Quilt Festival in Suzdal two years ago, I bought some cotton fabrics which were an exact copy of well-loved Baranov prints. But these were produced in India and the Far East. There is a demand for these in the Russian ‘heritage’ market, with the burgeoning enthusiasm for creating Russian-themed art textiles, dolls and folk dress. But presumably it is not economically viable to produce them within Russia itself.
Some comments following another account of this exhibition I’ve read blamed ‘foreigners’ for the demise of the Russian cotton-printing industry. I suppose that’s true if the ‘foreigners’ are producers in other countries who can fulfil the demand for textiles more cheaply and efficiently than Russian manufacturers have been able to since the latter part of the 20th century. It’s just economic reality, and changing tastes. Russia is not alone in having seen the decline and near-extinction of its textile industry. It amuses me slightly that the city of Ivanovo still proudly refers to itself in publicity as ‘the Russian Manchester’. The textile industry in Manchester was in decline long before that in Russia itself. If you asked young people in Manchester today what their city is famous for, I think it’s unlikely they’d say ‘the textile industry’. (I expect it would be ‘football’…)
Not being able to consult the captions, I’ve tried to put these images into a roughly chronological order. Above, 19th century prints, and below 20th century?
The exhibition continues till 18 July.
PS We’re about to have our own exhibition in London about printed cotton textiles – ‘Chintz: Cotton in Bloom‘ – at the Fashion & Textile Museum, Bermondsey. (18 May – 12 September 2021.) On loan from the Fries Museum, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands.
My previous posts on aspects of the Russian printed cotton industry:
Russian Textile Workers, before the Revolution
The Russian Cotton Printing Industry – Part 1: Block printing
The Russian Cotton Printing Industry – Part 2: Factory Production and Peasant Dress
British Workers in the Russian Textile Industry before 1917
Ivanovo – the ‘Russian Manchester’
