Palekh Lacquer Miniature

Palekh painted icons for centuries and was good at it, and in 1917 the trade ended overnight. In 1924 a group of the painters formed an artel and applied the same technique - egg tempera on a prepared surface, gold leaf detail, elongated figures, no perspective in the western sense - to papier-mache boxes coated in black lacquer, taking their subjects from folk tales, Pushkin, songs and rural scenes. The black ground is what makes it: figures and gold seem to float on it. The style spread and there are now several lacquer centres, Palekh, Kholuy, Mstyora and Fedoskino, each different, and Palekh is the one with the icon-painting drawing behind it. The village museum holds the historical collection, the workshops still operate, and the Krestovozdvizhensky church in the centre was painted by local masters. A single good box takes weeks and is priced accordingly.

What you actually see

• The black lacquer ground - figures and gold on a deep black surface.
• The icon technique - egg tempera, gold leaf and flattened space carried over from icons.
• The village museum - the historical collection from the 1924 artel onward.
• The painted church - the Krestovozdvizhensky, worked by local icon painters.

When to go

All year. Two hours. Workshop visits are arranged in advance.

Honest expectations

Genuine hand-painted Palekh is expensive and slow to make; most cheap boxes sold as Palekh elsewhere are printed transfers. The village is small with limited food and transport. The museum is Russian-labelled. Buses from Ivanovo are infrequent.

Nearby

Shuya is about 30 km; Kholuy, another lacquer village, is nearby.