Tatar Jewelry Art: Question of TatarRussian Syncretism in Handicraft Traditions of Kazan Volga Region

Abstract

The article is devoted to the identification and archaeological and ethnographic interpretation of technical and technological features of the Tatar jewelry art. Kazan was one of the largest jewelry centers in the Russian Empire, distinguished by the peculiarities of technical and technological and ornamental techniques of jewelry, formal and morphological content of jewelry. Tatar jewelers had a grip on almost all technological processes, but they acquired a special skill in the art of filigree and embossing. In historiography there was a belief that the so-called knobby filigree is “distinctive and unique appliances that have not received distribution in jewelry of other Nations” (Tatar encyclopedia, p. 468). However, recent research (RFFI, project № 13-06–97056) showed that it was common in the jewelry of some of the peoples of the European part of Eurasia since the 11th century. Analogues of Kazan Tatar lumpy filigree of the 18th – the first half of the 19th centuries were revealed for the first time in Russian (religious) and European (secular) traditions of jewelry art. Original kind Tatar coinage is the coinage identified by the researchers (F.H. Valeev) as a high-relief. On the products, which were made using this technique, presence (merger) of regional traditions characteristic of Tatar and Russian art have been revealed. Manifestations of syncretism, whoch are observed in a number of technologies of Tatar jewelry production, are probably due to the existence of numerous Russian jewelry centers in Kazan, the Kazan Volga region as a whole (usually in monasteries), including a large handicraft in the village of Rybnaya Sloboda.

Keywords

• filigree
• tatar
• russian jewelers
• embossing
• jewelry technology