A CENTAUR OF THE RUSSIAN HINTERLAND

I first saw it some twenty years ago in an Arkhangelsk home: a fairytale cross between a man and a horse. It was standing proudly amongst the cutglass in a sideboard, wearing a cocked blue hat. Its right hand was raised as though asking to be set free from the glass prison, and it was winking slyly with its left eye as if it were about to divulge a secret.

    "Where does this 'centaur' come from?" I asked.
    "From Kargopol, of course," was the reply.
    "Have you never heard anything about Kargopol?"
    Of course, I knew something about Kargopol. A northern township on the beautiful Onega River, it's located not far from the river's source. The settlement is believed to have been founded by people from Novgorod in the llth and 12th centuries. But why it's called Kargopol, no one knows. Inhabitants of Novgorod, who maintained close trade relations with Byzantium, could well have given it a Greek name, "Kargopolis", meaning "harbour." Equally plausible is a Finno-Ugric origin, for Finland is close by; and "kargun-uoli" means "bear's country." This etymology, however unlikely it may seem, is probably closer to the truth. Back in the early sixties the abandoned houses in Kargopol's remote villages (their former inhabitants had moved into towns) were occupied in winter by bears that, presumably, had been spoiled by modern civilization. For why bother to make a lair when you can move into a log house, with a timbered roof to boot?!

But how did the central-Russian craft of toy-making ever come to be practised in these dense woods? Archaeologists say that the first human settlement appeared here at least four thousand years ago. People came here from the Volga, the Oka and the Kama, three great Russian rivers.Close to a hundred settlements dating back to the neolithic era, the time of the birth of ceramics, have been discovered in the Kargopol area.Most probably, the old Kargopol craft of toy-making would have remained a subject of interest only at the local lore museum but for the efforts of an enthusiastic teller of folk tales, Ulyana Babkina, who both made toys and composed tales about them. Aged nearly 90, she has passed on her craft to many young people. When the firm of "Byelomorskiye Uzory", which aims to revive ancient handicrafts, was set up in Arkhangelsk (Kargopol is part of Arkhangelsk Region), a branch of it opened in Kargopol.And Ulyana Babkina's former pupils started training youngsters in the art of toy-making.
Kargopol clay is very good for modelling toys. It is viscid, clean and pebble-free. Normally, it's dug in the summer, for in winter it becomes as hard as stone. Hardened clay is immersed in boiling water, and then it rises like dough, becoming soft and manageable. After a toy is modelled it is baked in the oven. This is no simple thing. Seasoned pine wood is used, and to ensure an even heat and a gradual rise in temperature, the oven is first loaded with kindling wood, and then with larger logs.
Now all kinds of paints are used in toy-making, including even gouache and tempera. As for Ulyana Babkina, she used mostly chalk and Indian ink to colour her toy creations. But sometimes her combinations of colours were truly incredible. Asked, for instance, why she had painted a bear blue, she answered that it was because she'd been into the forest to pick berries recently and had seen one exactly this colour. Who knows,maybe it was one of those lazybones wintering in the abandoned houses. It could well have been that he'd acquired his interesting colour while rubbing himself against a blue stove. Everything is possible in that fairytale land.