Soslanbek Edziev, Дом и гробница с украшениями / House and gravetombs with decorations

sculpted self portrait of Edziev (1943)

collection North Ossetian Art Museum M. Tuganova.

exposition Moscow 2016/17

North Ossetia is an autonomous republic within the Russian Federation, with more than 700,000 inhabitants. It is situated in the northern Caucasus, an area geographically seen as marking the border between Europe and Asia.

Life and works

In this area Soslanbek Mikhailovich Edziev (1865-1953) lived, a well-known and appreciated self-taught artist, who initially only in his native region and meanwhile also in the Russian Federation has become known for his sculptures, carved rods and nicely shaped household objects, such as bowls.

Edziev was born in the remote mountain village of Khod, some 70 km west of North Ossetia's capital Vladikavkaz. His father was a mason, who on the request of villagers would make gravestones. After his primary school, Edziev following in his father's footsteps also became a bricklayer. He also proved to have an artistic talent, which he developed over the years.

As a young adult he moved to the neighbouring village of Sadon, where he worked as a bricklayer and plasterer. In 1890 he moved to the community of Karman-Sindzikau, some 50 km north of Sadon, doing the same kind of jobs and developing himself as a self-taught artist

In this community Edziev also built his own two-storey house.. He married, got a son and would live in Karman-Sindzikau until his death in 1953.

Edziev s house in Karman-Sindzikau

In the course of the years he became a productive self-taught artist. This post will focus upon Edziev's creative activities that can be associated with the field of art environments. This concerns the sculptures that decorate the walls of his house in Karman-Sindzikau, the grave tombs in this community and those in the village of Khod where he was born.

Sculptures on the walls of the house

Edziev constructed his house around 1905, when he was 40 years old and he probably already had a lot of experience in making sculptures. The sculptures on the outer wall mainly show individual people and a single couple, in any case there are no large ensembles.

this picture from website Otvet Mail, 

the next four from Chuchundrrra Livejournal

On above picture: left a (female) harmonica player, on the right a couple,

The pictures above show male persons in traditional outfit; the picture on the right also
shows a lying, maybe sleeping woman 

The picture above shows St George on a horse and (picture below) there are also 

self-contained decorative elements.

Currently Edziev's house is not inhabited and the sculptures probably have not been cared for during a long time, but some sculptures still have their paint and they seem to be in reasonable condition.

In circles of lovers of Edziev's artwork it is being considered to transform the house into a museum. However, in this respect financing is a major problem.

Decorated graves at graveyards

Traditionally, in North Ossetia a grave was provided with a tsyrt, kind of an obelisk. Edziev. who very often was asked to make a decoration for a grave, may be considered as a reformer of this tradition because he was one of the first to replace the tsyrt with a tombstone.

The internet has information about creations Edziev (in all probability) made for graveyards in his birthplace Khod and in his later residence Karman-Sindzikau,  but also about tombstones on cemeteries in the communities of Nogkau and Zadatesk. The graveyard in Khod has such a number of gravetombs created by Edziev, that this site ranks as an art environment. 

This probably also goes for the cemetery in Karman-Sindzikau.

these four pictures by 
Alina Akoeff, 
the two all above (2012) as on website Lost Ossetia, 

the two others (2011) as on Chuchundrrra Live journal

The series of pictures gives some impression of the way Edziev created the memorials on the graves. In almost all cases there is a representation of the deceased that characterizes the person as he or she was in daily life. Tradition meant that men were mostly depicted in combat equipment, while women would be surrounded by daily things

Characterizing the personality of the deceased corresponds to a certain extent to the work of Ion Stan Patras from Romania, who created grave signs for the cemetery in Sapanta.

Unlike the situation in Romania, Edziev's tombs are in danger of being lost if no protective measures are taken.

this picture and the next one SK news

But in this respect action has been taken. In February 2018 a group of volunteers, among whom members of the Union of Artists of North Ossetia, cleared the cemetery of Karman-Sindzikau and removed shrubs that had grown over time around the tombs created by Edziev.

Recognition

In 1944 Edziev got formal national recognition when he received the title of honored artist of Ossetia.

Maharbek Tuganov (1881-1952), an important person in the North Ossetian art world, in an early phase saw the importance of Edziev and encouraged the collection of his sculptures and wood works, in this way laying the foundation for the later collection of Edziev's artwork in the National Museum of North Ossetia Maharbek Tuganov In the 1970s this Museum would make efforts to identify and document Edziev's scattered graveyard sculptures.

In 2015 the Museum had an exposition of Edziev's artwork on the occasion of his birth 150 years earlier At that time it was noted that Edziev could be seen as the forerunner of modern Ossetian sculpture. Edziev became known outside of North Ossetia, when in December 2016 the Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art had an exposition The Parallel of Two Legends about Edziev and Pirosmani (an artist from Georgia).

Documentation
* Articles by Alina Akoeff on Live Journal part 1 (March 9, 2011), part 2 (March 10, 2011) and a third one (October 24, 2011)
* Article on Live Journal (February 2014) with a report of a visit to Edziev's birthplace Khod
* Website Lost Ossetia with a page that documents a number of Edziev's grave tombs

Soslanbek Edziev
House and gravetombs with decorations
Karman-Sindzikau (house/graveyard)
Khod (birth place/graveyard)
North Ossetia Republic, Russian Federation
house and graveyards are located in public space

John and Jo Mew, Braylsham Castle

picture from website Unique Property Bulletin

Heathfield is a community of some 8000 inhabitants, located in the county East Sussex in South East England, some 77 km south-east of London.

In the rural area in the northeast of the town is a single-handedly built singular architecture named Braylsham Castle. which has the look of a fortified medieval manor, reinforced by both a round and a rectangular tower. However, the building is not medieval, it was constructed in the last decade of the 20th century.

Life and works

In 1990 John Mew, who was born in 1928 and had become an orthodontist by profession, together with his wife Jo, whom he had married in the early 1950s, bought an old ruined cottage with about 10 acres of associated land that connected to a site with a small lake partly already in their possession.

There was already a permit to restore the cottage, but John and Jo got the idea to demolish the old building and to use the demolition material to single-handedly build kind of a castle, inspired by the original Braylsham Castle (dating from about 1260), but then preferably on a location near the small lake.

It took more than a year to get permission to realise such a building, but after Mew had sent a watercolor impression of the intended building to all members of the planning committee, a tight majority of the committee decided to grant the building permit. 

signpost along Potttens Mill Lane

The construction project started in 1991 and after ten years, in 2001, the new building was ready.

John combined building activities with his work as an orthodontist and his wife, an adult daughter and two adult sons were also involved in the project, which -apart from building a castle- also included deepening and enlarging the lake, constructing a dam, forming an island on which the structure would rise and building an access bridge.

impression of the stained glass windows

picture from website Homebuilding and Renovating

The most striking parts of the structure are the two towers and a large hall. The two towers have been made of stones reclaimed from the demolished cottage, which greatly contributes to their authentic appearance.

The small round tower has battlements at the top, a dungeon in its basement and some five bedrooms in between. The large square tower has a spiral staircase, a master bedroom, a bath room and a dressing room. 

The large hall has an exceptionally large fireplace underneath an impressive chimney, the whole made of about 13,000 bricks, placed by a professional bricklayer.

Another professional stonemason helped with placing Gothic stained glass windows and windows from demolished churches in Carmarthenshire. in south west Wales

As the picture below shows once again, the result of ten years of single-handed building is an edifice in medieval style with -from the outside- a sober appearance without frills.

undated picture from Wikipedia

This relative sobriety fits well in the English building tradition, but is also present in art environments on the European mainland, such as the Olt Stoutenburght Castle by Gregorius Halman (Netherlands), the Eben-Ezer Tower by Robert Garcet (Belgium), the Tarodi Castle by Stephen Tarodi (Hungary), the Donjon by Didier Lobert de Bouillon Viéville (France) or the Castillo de las Cuevas by Serafin Villarán (Spain).  A recent project is the castle being built by Laurent Mercier in a village near Clermont Ferrand, France

Documentation
* Clive Fewines, "A Self Build Medieval Manor", article (October 2008) on website Homebuilding & Renovating
* Referral on website Unique Property Bulletin  (2015) showing that the site is available for weekend stays
* Some more photos (to order) on the website Country Life Picture Gallery 

John and Jo Mew
Braylsham Castle
Pottens Mill Lane
Broad Oak, Heathfield  TN21 8TY, South East England, UK
can be seen from the road, no public visits

Mikhail Semenov, Музей русских суеверий/Museum of Russian Superstitions,

the housing of the museum
photo from the website of the nature park

The Russian region of Kaliningrad, in the northwest of the country, has an inland sea called Curonian Lagoon. A small strip of sandy land, almost 100 km long, separates the lagoon from the Baltic Sea.

This is the Curonian Spit. The strip became a nature park in 1987 and was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2000.

view from the air on the Curonian Spit

this picture and the next ones screen shots from the video by Voddann

On the grounds of the visitors' center of the park, apart from the usual facilities and a museum about the nature around, there is an art environment in the capacity of a special museum with wooden sculptures depicting spirits, demons and fairy-tale characters in Russia and other Slavic countries.

Life and works

The large collection of wooden sculptures exhibited by the Museum of Russian Superstitions  has been created by self taught artist Mikhail Alekseevich Semenov, who in 1951 was born in the city of Kaliningrad.

Semenov became a television presenter, he wrote songs and published books. He has said that from his father, who died when Mikhail was ten years old, he inherited the talent for seeing beauty in ordinary things and a vivid outlook on life.

In 1982 Semenov visited the National Art Museum MK Ciurlionis in Kaunas, Lithuania, where he saw an exhibition about devils. This led him to study books about superstition. which showed him that the world of folklore and superstition knows dozens of ghosts and other characters.

Although he did not have any training in sculpting, in 1985 he started making wooden sculptures of a few characters he had come to know through this study. This became a real passion and around 2000 he had created such a large number of sculptures that in 2002 a small museum could be set up on the grounds of the visitor center of the nature park.

Semenov himself became the director of the museum, where he also installed his workshop and, together with his wife Irina Semenova, welcomed visitors, took care of the interior of the museum and kept making sculptures.

From the opening the museum attracted many visitors, not just those who visited the nature park, but also holidaymakers from the nearby seaside resort Zelenogradsk, located on the Baltic coast.

Since Semenov had founded the museum without any expectation and partly as a joke, he probably did not expect this success. Managing the museum came as an unexpected but welcome change of his life.

Due to a disagreement with the owner of the building, in 2008 the museum moved to the neighboring community of Yantarny, where it was housed in the museum at Amber Castle, a building dating back to the 14th century, which was commissioned in 1995 as a museum on local history, in particular the gathering of amber.

After a stay in the Amber Castle, in 2012 Semenov's museum returned to its original location at the visitors center of the nature park at Curonian Spit.

The approach of the museum is not aimed at glorifying the devilish, it mainly seeks to present the collection in the context of folklore and tradition.

So already at the outside of the museum visitors will see the cabin of Baba Yaga (picture below), a famous character of Slavic folklore.

Inside one can see the wooden sculptures, generally executed in small format. In Slavic mythology there are some eighty spirits known that could help or harm people. These spirits had their own habitat, like there were forest spirits, water spirits, ghosts of the night, of the field, of the road or of the house.

In the museum, in general, every type of spirit has its own sculpture, accompanied by an explanation in Russian and in German.

Spirits depicted in sculptures in the museum are for example:

-Bolotnyanik, the spirit of the swamp,
-Leshy, the protective spirit of the forest,
-Basilisk, a mythological character that comes from a cock and has a deadly gaze that changes everything that lives in stone and dies himself when he sees his reflection in the mirror,
-Babai, an evil spirit, walking around like an old man in the night with a big bag in which he would take on naughty children,
-Vostrukha, a spirit who stays in a house behind the stove, watches thieves and ensures that nothing will be lost in the house.

A more detailed overview, with many images, is included in an article in Life Journal

Countrymen

Semenov has also began making a series of wood and ceramic sculptures representing people who lived in the Kaliningrad region and who in some way made a mark on its history  from the thirteenth century on. The new collection is entitled Countrymen and it is kind of a portrait gallery.

This series, nowadays comprising about 40 items, can be viewed on the second floor of the museum. Short annotations indicate when the persons lived and at which events they were involved.

Documentation

* Article  about the museum on the website of the National Park
* Article on the website Slavyanskaya Kultura
* Article on website Veni Vidi (November 2009
* On Live Journal a large series of pictures of te sculptures and a description of a variety of spirits

Video

* Video by Voddann (6'30", YouTube, October 2013)

Mikhail Semenov

Museum of Russian superstition
on the road from Zelenogradsk to Klaipeda
Curonian Spit, region Kaliningrad, Russian Federation
entrance tickets can be bought at the entrance of the nature park