Blacksmith craft in ancient Russia. Kovka - The history of blacksmithing in Russia. Milestones in the development of blacksmithing

In Russia, iron was known to the early Slavs. Most old method metalworking is forging. At first, ancient people beat spongy iron with mallets in a cold state in order to "squeeze the juice out of it", i.e. remove impurities. Then they guessed to heat the metal and give it the desired shape. In the 10th - 11th centuries, thanks to the development of metallurgy and other crafts, the Slavs had a plow and a plow with an iron plowshare. On the territory of ancient Kiev, archaeologists find sickles, door locks and other things made by the hands of blacksmiths, gunsmiths and jewelers.

In the 11th century, metallurgical production was already widespread, both in the city and in the countryside. The Russian principalities were located in the zone of ore deposits, and blacksmiths were almost everywhere provided with raw materials. Small factories with a semi-mechanized blowing process, a mill drive, worked on it. The first chimney was an ordinary hearth in a dwelling. Special bugles appeared later. For fire safety purposes, they were located at the edge of the settlements. The early kilns were round pits one meter in diameter thickly covered with clay, dug into the ground. Their popular name is "wolf pits". In the 10th century, above-ground stoves appeared, the air was pumped into them with the help of leather bellows.

The furs were inflated by hand. And this work made the cooking process very difficult. Archaeologists still find signs of local metal production on the settlements - waste from the cheese-making process in the form of slag. At the end of the “cooking” of iron, the domnitsa was broken, foreign impurities were removed, and the kritsa was removed from the furnace with a crowbar. The hot cry was captured by pincers and carefully forged. Forging removed slag particles from the surface of the crown and eliminated the porosity of the metal. After forging, the kritsa was again heated and again placed under the hammer. This operation was repeated several times. For a new smelting, the upper part of the house was restored or rebuilt. In later domnitsa, the front part was no longer broken, but disassembled, and the molten metal flowed into clay containers.

But, despite the wide distribution of raw materials, iron smelting was carried out by far not in every settlement. The complexity of the process singled out blacksmiths from the community and made them the first artisans. In ancient times, blacksmiths themselves smelted the metal and then forged it. Necessary accessories for a blacksmith - a forge (smelting furnace) for heating a cracker, a poker, a crowbar (pick), an iron shovel, an anvil, a hammer (sledgehammer), a variety of tongs for extracting red-hot iron from the furnace and working with it - a set of tools necessary for smelting and forging works. The hand forging technique remained almost unchanged until the 19th century, but even fewer authentic ancient forges of history are known than domnits, although archaeologists periodically discover many forged iron products in settlements and mounds, and their tools in the burials of blacksmiths: pincers, hammer, anvil, casting accessories .

Written sources have not preserved to us the forging technique and the basic techniques of ancient Russian blacksmiths. But the study of ancient forged products allows historians to say that old Russian blacksmiths all the most important techniques were known: welding, punching holes, torsion, riveting of plates, welding on steel blades and steel hardening. In each forge, as a rule, two blacksmiths worked - a master and an apprentice. In the XI-XIII centuries. the foundry partly became isolated, and the blacksmiths took up the direct forging of iron products. In Ancient Russia, any metal worker was called a blacksmith: "blacksmith of iron", "blacksmith of copper", "blacksmith of silver".

Simple forged products were made with a chisel. The technology of using an insert and welding a steel blade was also used. The simplest forged products include: knives, hoops and buds for tubs, nails, sickles, braids, chisels, awls, shovels and pans, i.e. items that do not require special techniques. Any blacksmith alone could make them. More complex forged products: chains, door breaks, iron rings from belts and harnesses, bits, lighters, spears - already required welding, which was carried out by experienced blacksmiths with the help of an apprentice.

Masters welded iron, heating it to a temperature of 1500 degrees C, the achievement of which was determined by sparks of white-hot metal. Holes were punched with a chisel in ears for tubs, plowshares for plows, hoes. The puncher made holes in scissors, tongs, keys, boat rivets, on spears (for fastening to the pole), on the shrouds of shovels. The blacksmith could carry out these techniques only with the help of an assistant. After all, he needed to hold a red-hot piece of iron with tongs, which, when small sizes it was not easy for the anvils of that time, to hold and guide the chisel, to hit the chisel with a hammer.

It was difficult to make axes, spears, hammers and locks. The ax was forged using iron inserts and welding strips of metal. Spears were forged from a large triangular piece of iron. The base of the triangle was twisted into a tube, a conical iron insert was inserted into it, and then the spear bushing was welded and a rampage was forged. Iron cauldrons were made from several large plates, the edges of which were riveted with iron rivets. The iron twisting operation was used to create screws from tetrahedral rods. The range above blacksmith products exhausts all the peasant inventory needed for building a house, farming, hunting and defense. Old Russian blacksmiths X-XIII centuries. mastered all the basic techniques of iron processing and determined the technical level of the village forges for centuries.

The basic form of sickle and short-handled scythe were found in the 9th-11th centuries. Old Russian axes have undergone a significant change in the X-XIII centuries. acquired a form close to modern. The saw was not used in rural architecture. Iron nails were widely used for carpentry work. They are almost always found in every burial with a coffin. The nails had a tetrahedral shape with a bent top. By IX-X centuries in Kievan Rus patrimonial, rural and urban craft already existed. Russian urban craft entered the 11th century with a rich stock of technical skills. Village and city were still completely separated until that time. Served by artisans, the village lived in a small closed world. The sales area was extremely small: 10-15 kilometers in radius.

The city blacksmiths were more skilled craftsmen than the village blacksmiths. During the excavations of ancient Russian cities, it turned out that almost every city house was the dwelling of an artisan. From the beginning of the existence of the Kievan state, they showed great skill in forging iron and steel of a wide variety of objects - from a heavy plowshare and a helmet with patterned iron lace to thin needles; arrows and chain mail rings riveted with miniature rivets; weapons and household implements from barrows of the 9th-10th centuries. In addition to blacksmithing, they owned metalwork and weapons. All these crafts have some similarities in the ways of working iron and steel. Therefore, quite often artisans engaged in one of these crafts combined it with others. In the cities, the technique of smelting iron was more perfect than in the countryside. City forges, as well as domnitsa, were usually located on the outskirts of the city. The equipment of urban forges differed from the village ones - by greater complexity.

The city anvil made it possible, firstly, to forge things that had a void inside, for example, a tribe, spear bushings, rings, and most importantly, it allowed the use of an assortment of figured linings for forgings of a complex profile. Such linings are widely used in modern blacksmithing when forging curved surfaces. Some forged products, starting from the 9th-10th centuries, bear traces of processing with the help of such linings. In those cases where two-sided processing was required, both the lining and the chisel-stamp of the same profile were obviously used to make the forging symmetrical. Linings and stamps were also used in the manufacture of battle axes.

The assortment of hammers, blacksmith tongs and chisels of urban blacksmiths was more diverse than that of their village counterparts: from small to huge. Starting from the IX-X centuries. Russian craftsmen used files to process iron. Old Russian city forges, metalwork and weapons workshops in the X-XIII centuries. had: forges, furs, simple anvils, anvils with a spur and a notch, inserts into the anvil (of various profiles), sledgehammer hammers, handbrake hammers, billhook hammers (for cutting) or chisels, punch hammers (beards), hand chisels, manual punches, simple tongs, tongs with hooks, small tongs, vise (primitive type), files, circular sharpeners. With the help of this diverse tool, which does not differ from the equipment of modern forges, Russian craftsmen prepared many different things.

Among them are agricultural implements (massive plowshares and coulters, plow knives, scythes, sickles, axes, honey cutters); tools for craftsmen (knives, adzes, chisels, saws, scrapers, spoons, punches and figured hammers of chasers, knives for planes, calipers for ornamenting bones, scissors, etc.); household items (nails, knives, ironed arks, door breaks, staples, rings, buckles, needles, steelyards, weights, cauldrons, hearth chains, locks and keys, ship rivets, armchairs, bows and hoops of buckets, etc.); weapons, armor and harness (swords, shields, arrows, sabers, spears, battle axes, helmets, chain mail, bits, spurs, stirrups, whips, horseshoes, crossbows). The original complete isolation of artisans is beginning to be broken.

The production of weapons and military armor was especially developed. Swords and battle axes, quivers with arrows, sabers and knives, chain mail and shields were produced by master gunsmiths. The manufacture of weapons and armor was associated with especially careful metal processing, requiring skillful work techniques. Although the swords that existed in Russia in the 9th-10th centuries are mostly Frankish blades, archaeologists, nevertheless, in their excavations discover the presence of artisans-gunsmiths among Russian townspeople of the 9th-10th centuries. In a number of burials, bundles of forged rings for iron chain mail were found, which are often found in Russian military barrows from the 9th century. The ancient name of chain mail - armor - is often found on the pages of the annals. Making chain mail was labor intensive.

Technological operations included: iron wire forging, welding, joining and riveting of iron rings. Archaeologists discovered the burial of a chain mail master of the 10th century. In the 9th-10th centuries, chain mail became an obligatory accessory of Russian armor. The ancient name of chain mail - armor - is often found on the pages of the annals. True, opinions are expressed about the origin of Russian chain mail about receiving them either from nomads or from the countries of the East. Nevertheless, the Arabs, noting the presence of chain mail among the Slavs, do not mention their import from outside. And the abundance of chain mail in the guard mounds may indicate that chain mail craftsmen worked in Russian cities. The same applies to helmets. Russian historians believe that the Varangian helmets differed too sharply in their conical shape. Russian helmets-shishaks were riveted from iron wedge-shaped strips.

The famous helmet of Yaroslav Vsevolodovich, thrown by him on the battlefield of Lipetsk in 1216, belongs to this type of helmet. It is an excellent example of Russian weapons and jewelry of the XII-XIII centuries. The tradition has affected the overall shape of the helmet, but technically it is very different from the helmets of the 9th-10th centuries. Its entire body is forged from one piece, and not riveted from separate plates. This made the helmet significantly lighter and stronger. Even more skill was required from the master gunsmith. An example of jewelry work in the weapons technology of the XII-XIII centuries is, as is believed, the light steel hatchet of Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky. The surface of the metal is covered with notches, and on these notches (in the hot state) sheet silver is stuffed, on top of which an ornament is applied with engraving, gilding and niello. Oval or almond-shaped shields were made of wood with an iron core and iron fittings.

A special place in blacksmithing and weapons business was occupied by steel and hardening of steel products. Even among the village kurgan axes of the 11th-13th centuries, a welded-on steel blade is found. Steel's hardness, flexibility, easy weldability and ability to accept hardening were well known to the Romans. But hardfacing steel has always been considered the most difficult task in all blacksmithing, because. iron and steel have different welding temperatures. Steel hardening, i.e. more or less rapid cooling of a red-hot object in water or in another way is also well known to the ancient blacksmiths of Russia. Urban blacksmithing was distinguished by a variety of techniques, the complexity of equipment and a variety of specialties associated with this production. In the XI-XIII centuries, urban craftsmen worked for a wide market, i.e. production is on the rise.

The list of urban artisans includes ironsmiths, domniks, gunsmiths, armor makers, shield makers, helmet makers, arrow makers, locksmiths, nail makers. In the XII century, the development of the craft continues. In metal, Russian masters embodied a bizarre mixture of Christian and archaic pagan images, combining all this with local Russian motifs and plots. Improvements continue in the craft technique aimed at increasing the mass production. Posad craftsmen imitate the products of court craftsmen. In the XIII century, a number of new craft centers were created with their own characteristics in technology and style.

But we do not observe any decline in the craft from the second half of the 12th century, as it is sometimes asserted, either in Kiev or in other places. On the contrary, culture grows, covering new areas and inventing new techniques. In the second half of the 12th century and in the 13th century, despite the unfavorable conditions of feudal fragmentation, Russian craft reached the most complete technical and artistic flourishing. The development of feudal relations and feudal ownership of land in the XII - the first half of the XIII century. caused a change in the form of the political system, which found its expression in feudal fragmentation, i.e. creation of relatively independent states-principalities. During this period, blacksmithing, plumbing and weapons, forging and stamping continued to develop in all principalities. In rich farms, more and more plows with iron shares began to appear. Masters are looking for new ways of working. Novgorod gunsmiths in the 12th - 13th centuries, using new technology, began to produce blades of sabers of much greater strength, hardness and flexibility.

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The origins of blacksmithing go back to ancient times. The first mention of blacksmiths is found in myths ancient greece: from the time when the divine blacksmith Hephaestus forged nails for the crucifixion of Prometheus on the Caucasian rock. This is where the history of blacksmithing began.

The name of Cain, the first son of Adam and Eve, etymologically means "blacksmith". Among his descendants was Tubal Cain, who chose blacksmithing. The Bible identifies him as an inventor different kind copper and iron tools used both for agriculture and for military operations. One of the first mentions of blacksmiths is in the story of the construction of the Jerusalem Temple under King Shlomo. Among those who built the walls of Jerusalem under Nehemiah were blacksmiths who made doors and gates with locks and bolts. In Jerusalem, before its capture by the Romans in 70 BC, some streets and quarters were inhabited exclusively by blacksmiths.

In Russia, iron was known to the early Slavs. The oldest method of metal processing is forging. At first, ancient people beat spongy iron with mallets in a cold state in order to "squeeze the juice out of it", i.e. remove impurities. Then they began to heat the metal and give it the desired shape.

Already in the 7th-9th centuries. the Slavs have special settlements of metallurgists. Forges in Slavic settlements were located away from residential buildings, near rivers: the blacksmith constantly needed fire in the forge to soften the metal and water to cool the finished products. blacksmith craft It was considered among the Slavs a mysterious and even witchcraft occupation. No wonder the very word "blacksmith" is related to the word "intrigues". The blacksmith, like the plowman, was a beloved hero of Slavic folklore.

In the products of the ancient Slavs, the ornament is very calm, and the images do not inspire fear in a person. Inhabitant of the endless wilds, ancient slav saw in fantastic creatures that inhabited, as he believed, forests, waters and swamps, not so much his enemies as patrons. They protected and protected him. He felt involved in their life, and therefore in art, in forged products, he sought to emphasize this indissoluble bond. The artistic tastes and skills that formed then did not disappear with the rise of feudalism and the adoption of Christianity.

The process of feudalization led to the formation in the 9th century. Kievan Rus, a large state that quickly gained fame throughout the world of that time.

The name of the legendary founder of the city of Kiev - Kiy - is related to the word "forge"; the name itself could mean "club", "hammer". In Ukraine, legends are known about how a blacksmith harnessed a monstrous snake to a plow and forced him to plow furrows that became riverbeds or were preserved in the form of ancient fortifications - “serpent shafts”. In these legends, the blacksmith is not only the creator of handicraft tools, but also the creator of the surrounding world, the natural landscape.

The complexity of the process singled out blacksmiths from the community and made them the first artisans. In ancient times, blacksmiths themselves smelted the metal and then forged it. The necessary accessories of a blacksmith - a forge (smelting furnace) for heating a cracker, a poker, a crowbar (pick), an iron shovel, an anvil, a hammer (sledgehammer), a variety of tongs for extracting red-hot iron from the furnace and working with it - this is a set of tools necessary for melting and forging works.

For Kievan Rus, the adoption of Christianity was of progressive importance. It contributed to a more organic and deeper assimilation of all the best that Byzantium, which was advanced for that time, had.

In the X-XI centuries, thanks to the development of metallurgy and other crafts, the Slavs had a plow and a plow with an iron plowshare. On the territory of ancient Kiev, archaeologists find sickles, door locks and other things made by blacksmiths, gunsmiths and jewelers.

In the 10th century, above-ground stoves appeared, the air was pumped into them with the help of leather bellows. The furs were inflated by hand. And this work made the cooking process very difficult. Archaeologists still find signs of local metal production on the settlements - waste from the cheese-making process in the form of slag.

In the 11th century, metallurgical production was already widespread both in the city and in the countryside. The raw material for obtaining iron was swamp and lake ores, which did not require complex technology for processing and were widely distributed in the forest-steppe. The Russian principalities were located in the zone of ore deposits, and blacksmiths were almost everywhere provided with raw materials.

Very quickly the culture of Kievan Rus reached high level, competing with culture not only Western Europe but also Byzantium. Kiev, one of the largest and richest cities in Europe in the 11th-12th centuries, experienced a brilliant heyday. According to Titmar of Merseburg, a German writer of the early 11th century, there were several hundred churches and many markets in Kiev, which indicates a brisk trade and vigorous building activity. The applied art of Kievan Rus, the art of blacksmiths, was distinguished by high skill. Having gained distribution in everyday life, it equally manifested itself in cult objects (salaries, carved icons, folding crosses, church utensils, etc.).

Written sources have not preserved to us the forging technique and the basic techniques of ancient Russian blacksmiths. But the study of ancient forged products allows historians to say that the ancient Russian blacksmiths knew all the most important techniques: welding, punching holes, torsion, riveting plates, welding steel blades and steel hardening. In each forge, as a rule, two blacksmiths worked - a master and an assistant. In the XI-XIII centuries. the foundry partly became isolated, and the blacksmiths took up the direct forging of iron products. In Ancient Russia, any metal worker was called a blacksmith: "blacksmith of iron", "blacksmith of copper", "blacksmith of silver".

The simplest forged products include: knives, hoops and buds for tubs, nails, sickles, braids, chisels, awls, shovels and pans, i.e. items that do not require special techniques. Any blacksmith alone could make them. More complex forged products: chains, door breaks, iron rings from belts and harnesses, bits, lighters, spears - already required welding, which was carried out by experienced blacksmiths with the help of assistants.

The production of weapons and military armor was especially developed. Swords and battle axes, quivers with arrows, sabers and knives, chain mail, helmets and shields were produced by master gunsmiths. The manufacture of weapons and armor was associated with especially careful metal processing, requiring skillful work techniques. Russian helmets-shishaks were riveted from iron wedge-shaped strips. The famous helmet of Yaroslav Vsevolodovich, thrown by him on the battlefield of Lipetsk in 1216, belongs to this type of helmet. It is an excellent example of Russian weapons and jewelry of the XII-XIII centuries.

In the XI-XIII centuries, urban craftsmen worked for a wide market, i.e. production is on the rise.

In the XIII century, a number of new craft centers were created with their own characteristics in technology and style. But we do not observe any decline in the craft from the second half of the 12th century, as it is sometimes asserted, either in Kiev or in other places. On the contrary, culture grows, covering new areas and inventing new techniques. In the second half of the 12th century and in the 13th century, despite the unfavorable conditions of feudal fragmentation, Russian craft reached its fullest technical and artistic flourishing. The development of feudal relations and feudal ownership of land in the XII - the first half of the XIII century. caused a change in the form of the political system, which found its expression in feudal fragmentation, i.e. creation of relatively independent states-principalities. During this period, blacksmithing, plumbing and weapons, forging and stamping continued to develop in all principalities. In rich farms, more and more plows with iron shares began to appear. Masters are looking for new ways of working. Novgorod gunsmiths in the 12th-13th centuries, using new technology, began to manufacture saber blades of much greater strength, hardness and flexibility.

In the architecture of Ukraine 14-17 centuries. Fortress architecture was of great importance. The territory of Ukraine then represented the arena of fierce struggle (Poland, Lithuania, Hungary), was subjected to devastating raids of the Tatar and then Turkish hordes. As a result, the products of blacksmiths also served to protect the fatherland, and decorative means were used very restrainedly.

From the middle of the XIII century, the dominion of the Golden Horde was established over Kievan Rus. Events 1237 - 1240 became perhaps the most tragic in the centuries-old history of our people. The cities of the Middle Ages suffered irreparable damage. The craftsmanship accumulated over the centuries was almost lost. After the Mongol conquest, a number of techniques familiar to Kievan Rus disappeared, and archaeologists did not find many objects common to the era preceding the yoke. Because of Tatar-Mongol yoke in the XIII-XV centuries. there has been a significant lag in the development of the cities of feudal Russia from the cities of Western Europe, in which the bourgeois class begins to emerge. A small number of household items of the 14th-15th centuries have survived to our time, but even they make it possible to judge how the development of crafts in Russia gradually resumed. From the middle of the XIV century. a new boom in handicraft production began. At this time, especially in connection with the increased military needs, iron processing became more widespread, the centers of which were Novgorod, Moscow and other Russian cities.

In the second half of the XIV century. For the first time in the country, Russian blacksmiths made forged and riveted cannons. An example of the high technical and artistic skill of Russian gunsmiths is the steel spear of the Tver prince Boris Alexandrovich, which has survived to this day, made in the first half of the 15th century. It is decorated with gilded silver depicting various figures.

From the middle of the 16th century in Ukrainian architecture, the influence of Renaissance art is felt. The influence of northern Italian, German and Polish art is most noticeable in architecture and applied arts cities of Western Ukraine, especially Lviv. The spirit of medieval aloofness and asceticism was replaced by secular aspirations. In products blacksmiths the motifs of nature, inspired by the landscapes of the Carpathian region, are lovingly conveyed. The ornament, decoration "vine" has found wide application.

In full force, the artistic features of iron were revealed later, especially in Ukrainian art of the 17th-18th centuries.

Window openings were closed with openwork wrought iron bars, gardens and parks were decorated with skillfully made wrought iron fences and wrought iron gates. Richly decorated iron doors with forging elements decorated stone temples, palaces, in the construction of which masters of all types of crafts took part.

In the 18th century, forging was widely used to make fences for city estates, mansions, and churchyards. The technique of iron casting competes with it, displacing forging as an expensive work. But originality artistic solutions, which is achieved by forging, retains interest in it in the 19th century.

In 1837 A new master plan for Kiev was approved. In 1830-50s. a number of large public and administrative buildings were built in the city: the Institute of Noble Maidens (1838-42 architect V.I. Beretti), the Kiev University Ensemble (1837-43 Beretti), offices (1854-57 M.S. Ikonnikov ). Appeared new type buildings - tenement houses that had floors for shops, a hotel, a restaurant, an office.

The fantasy and skill of blacksmiths, ingenuity, mastery of technology, excellent knowledge of the features and capabilities of metal made it possible to create highly artistic works of blacksmithing, an infinitely large and expressive world of forged metal.

The use of forms of various historical styles - Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, as well as many oriental elements, led to the emergence of eclecticism.

Fancy patterns are created from bindings. In fences, balcony railings, stairs design, everything is dominated by capricious curvilinear outlines, stylization of plant motifs, especially herbs, flowers, with curved stems and bizarre petal shapes.

In the 20th century, decorative forged metal was replaced by welded structures, which is associated with the development of rolling and stamping industries, artistic forging began to be simplified.

The variety of directions and concepts in architecture and applied arts contradicted the goals of the totalitarian regime that was being formed at that time. By the beginning of the 1930s, the authorities had established tight control over art and architecture. The main components of the Soviet decorative arts 1920-30s - simplicity and functionalism. The totalitarian government perceived the formal search for artists and architects as too apolitical, too democratic, not amenable to ideological control. The violation of democratic principles in the life of society was reflected in the creative atmosphere. The foundation of the creative process was violated - the artist's freedom of expression. The years of Stalinism are one of the most tragic periods in the history of art in our country. The method of socialist realism, shackled by the rigid framework of directives, is the only direction of art in the 30-50s. Forging production was recognized as "bourgeois" and ceased to exist for a long time. Only after the collapse of the USSR and the fall of the socialist. systems blacksmith art got the opportunity for uncensored, creative development.

Currently, the popularity of forged products is growing. Decorating a house, garden, apartment and office with forged interior items has become "fashionable" among wealthy people. Nothing can transform, emphasize the individuality of an apartment, house, garden as truly beautiful and stylish forged interior details. And this is indisputable, since it is artistic forging that is one of the last "living" crafts in our age of standard products produced in mass circulation.

rebirth artistic forging is of great importance for modern arts and crafts.

Artistic forging makes it possible to create products that are unique in their beauty and virtuoso sophistication, ideally complementing architectural ensembles. The fire of the blacksmith's forge gives the dwelling high reliability and a special feeling of warmth, fanning it with the spirit of the high art of the past. Strength and elegance, thoughtful harmony of lines, clarity of contour - this is not a complete list of the advantages of forged items.
Artistic forging — production of elegant household items from metals by methodsforging . Artistic forging differs from simple forging in that forged products acquire artistic value, become a work of art. Forging is used in architecture to create the grandeur of buildings.
Artistic forging products can be: forged gates, gates, fences, signs, visors, garden swings, gazebos, weathercocks, lattices, forged stairs and railings, chandeliers, candlesticks and even forged beds and tables.