Decorative Panels

This page tells in general terms about decorative panels, their varieties and the role they played in the Soviet industry.

**Navigation menu with lists of decorative panels**

**divided by art technique categories**

PaintingWoodcutEmbossingWire

## General information about panels as an industry

The production of decorative wall panels was a very usual and rather strongly and universally developed branch of the Soviet industry in the field of art and souvenirs production. In the twentieth century, under the conditions of the Soviet state monopoly, planned economy and almost complete absence of free trade, the manufacture of art products was also largely subject to state control, and most of these decorative panels were produced in huge quantities at various enterprises, sometimes not directly related to artistic activities, such as wood and metalworking enterprises, factories of plastic products, electronics, clothing products, leather goods, etc., and sometimes even collective farms.

At the factories, this was carried out by consumer goods departments. Departments of consumer goods are special units that existed in the Soviet era in almost every factory or plant. Their main task was to manufacture consumer goods from recycled industrial waste accumulated at a particular enterprise. This procedure was mandatory and was part of the state economic program, with its own production plan and government orders. This was done in large part with the aim of minimizing production losses as much as possible and making maximum financial benefits from even the most seemingly unrecyclable material residues.

Types of products varied depending on the materials used in the enterprise. Factories of plastic products and toys made handles for tools from remelted plastic, pins and other small items, automobile, aviation and other factories that dealt with metal also made pins, as well as cutlery and other small items, sewing enterprises could make art panels and souvenirs from scraps, etc. That is why manufacturers of decorative panels made of wood often turned out to be enterprises that dealt with woodworking, for example, furniture factories.

This approach to production had its own significant drawbacks that affected the quality of products, including decorative panels. Firstly, the principle "Quantity is more important than quality" was often dominant in the Soviet industry, and the rush to fulfill and overfulfill the sometimes terribly large established state plan often showed itself as a rather rude and primitive execution of such consumer goods. Often there are very absurd situations when the product looks extremely rude and negligent, but its circulation indicated on the label is ten, fifteen and even twenty-five thousand copies. Secondly, the decision to entrust the manufacture of art products to simple factory workers who have no art education also quite obviously affected the aesthetic value of this kind of product. And thirdly, materials deficit and limited use of purely waste industrial products also affected the ability of manufacturers to create something aesthetically valuable. Even on a purely psychological level, the mere fact of working with, literally, "garbage", in fact, set people up to treat work accordingly, especially when it was a compulsory matter in accordance with the state. plan.

But among the panels there were also a large number of exclusive and more carefully designed author's products created in a single copy. This was done either by the people themselves for themselves, or as a gift to someone, or order from a master from an artel of folk crafts or in a corrective labor colony. The labor of people serving time in places of deprivation of liberty played a big role in the country's economy and a large number of art products were produced there. Due to the fact that prisons and colonies did not have strict state plans on goods production and that prisoners usually had a lot of free time, their products could often be much more carefully and detailed in comparison with factory made ones, although they sometimes stood out for a very specific and kitsch aesthetics.

Below is a list of the main techniques in which decorative panels were made.

## Painting

Artistic painting is the most basic and most common technique in which wall panels were made. Its essence is that an image was painted on a prepared wooden board with oil or some other paints, and then covered with a layer of varnish. Depending on the type of board and the thickness of the lacquer, wood fibers acquired a kind of shine and gleam, this technique was widely used in the furniture industry and was a kind of big fashion of the time back then. The main producers of these products were furniture factories and collective farms.

## Embossing

Copper embossing is an artistic technique that came to the USSR from Georgia, where it has historically been an ancient folk craft. In addition to purely decorative items, copper jugs and other household items were decorated with embossing. During Soviet times, this technique was actively popularized throughout the Soviet Union and was actively used for the manufacture of wall panels. Most of embossings are individual author's products, very unusual and different in style, although there are also panels with labels indicating a specific manufacturing factory.

## Woodcut

Wood carving is another common artistic technique which uses wooden board as a main base. Usually, the traditional monochrome technique is most common, the surface of a board made of light wood is covered with black paint and then the pattern is cut out exposing the unpainted wood to form a contrasting black and white image. Of course, sometimes there are also rare examples of carving where different areas are painted in other colors.

## Marquetry

Marquetry (from the French ''. marqueter'' - to vary) is a simplified version of the intarsia technique (from Italian intarsio - cutting, deepening), which consists in composing a mosaic image from veneer pieces of differently toned types of wood. The difference between marquetry and intarsia is that different materials, wood, stone, pearl, etc., can be used for intarsia, and each element looks voluminous and convex with edges rounded at the border with another element, while marquetry, in turn, is absolutely flat mosaic image, which involves the use of only veneer of various types of wood. Marquetry also gained great popularity in the USSR, usually various decorative wall panels were made using this technique, very rarely it was used for decorating interior items. Due to the higher complexity and difficulty of the technique which requires a lot of time, high concentration and accuracy, the state failed to put marquetry products on a mass industrial flow, therefore almost all products of this kind are author's works made in a single copy.

## Straw

Another ancient folk technique, the historical homeland of which is Belarus. In the first half of the twentieth century, its popularity faded significantly but later it underwent a revival starting with the opening of the Zhlobin inlay factory in 1961 and began to be actively popularized throughout the Soviet Union. The essence of the technique is that hard stems of various grains, such as rye, barley or wheat, are taken, cut to internodes, the resulting tubes are cut lengthwise, soaked in water, straightened and then dried under pressure. From the obtained strips, an image is subsequently formed, usually traditionally on a black background. Panels of this kind often turn out to be souvenir products of various enterprises, perhaps one of the reasons for the active popularization of this technique in the USSR was the high development of bread production, which provided the state with a profitable opportunity to benefit financially from such seemingly useless waste as grain stalks.

## Wire image

A purely Soviet technique, quite rare, but still capable of presenting a large number of products produced by various Soviet enterprises. The essence of the technique is that a very thin wire chopped into small pieces about 1 cm long is poured onto a smooth flat surface (usually a sheet of bakelite) covered with glue. The wire is initially painted in different colors, which allowed to form an image with a varied palette. Colored areas are separated from each other by a thicker bent wire serving as outlines. It is quite obvious that working in such a technique at home is very difficult, it was formed in exclusively factory conditions and mainly on wire manufacturing enterpirses where the presence of this kind of scraps constantly accumulating in large quantities is an everyday occurrence, so panels of this kind are purely factory-made consumer goods.