Expedition to the Ancestors. Stoves and Benches
Today we will look at the model-diorama "Slavic village" from above, to get a better look at all its characters. This is a guard at the gate, in a helmet and cloak, a shepherd with a whip, who is chasing a lagging horse, three young blacksmiths and a young man with a spear, eager for fish. All these figures in a scale of 1:72 are converted from others. The fisherman is an Egyptian from an Italian set, the blacksmiths and the guard are knights-crusaders from a set by the company "Zvezda", and the shepherd is also an Egyptian, but "dressed" in a shirt made of liquid self-hardening plastic. Holes are drilled in their legs with a thin drill, after which pieces of wire are inserted into them with superglue. Such a strong fastening of the figures makes sense, because this model will be touched by children. And if you don't take care of the strength of the fastenings, then it won't be intact for long, no matter how the teacher watches it in class... The carved patterns decorating the huts are the products of the company AB-model. Everything is laser-cut and makes a very good impression. There is a set of parts in 1:72 scale and in 1:35 scale. Photo by the author
"Then Nebuchadnezzar was filled with rage, and his countenance was changed against Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And he commanded that the furnace should be heated seven times hotter than it was wont to be heated. And he commanded the strongest men of his army to bind Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and to cast them into the midst of the burning fiery furnace. Then the men were bound, in their robes, their garments, their bonnets, and their other garments, and they were cast into the midst of the burning fiery furnace."
Book of the Prophet Daniel, 3:19-21
Book of the Prophet Daniel, 3:19-21
History with their own hands. Today we continue our story about the antiquities of the Slavic home, and, of course, today we will talk about the stove. Because what kind of Russian hut would it be without it, it is simply impossible to imagine. By the way, I grew up in a house on a street where all its residents had stoves. In my house there were three of them: two on our half of the house - a large Russian stove and a Dutch stove, and at our relative, my grandfather's sister's, on her half. We started to heat both stoves early in the morning. We went to the barn for firewood and coal or peat briquettes. We raked the ash out of the ash pit into a bucket with a scoop, and swept the grate in the firebox with a broom. By the way, the ash was then poured onto the snow all over the garden, which is why everything was just wonderful there.
The firewood was placed on peat and coal or, conversely, under coal and peat (this depended on the size of the logs) and set on fire with newspaper, fortunately there was a lot of it in the house. They boiled and fried on a hot cast-iron stove, baked pies on the hearth inside the oven, and there was always a huge pot of water for washing dishes. They bought different types of firewood, but they always tried to buy several aspen trunks. It gave a strong flame that burned out the soot in the chimney! And later I learned that our Slavic ancestors did the same!
It was quite difficult to make a rake, pitchfork, spear, axe and blacksmith's hammer in 1:72 scale. For the shafts of the rake, pitchfork and spear, we used... broom twigs. As it turned out, both the color and thickness are ideal for this. But the handle of the axe had to be cut out of 0,5 mm thick veneer. Only the teeth of the spear were not visible in the scale, and they had to be made much larger. But this is already for didactics - children should see the spear and understand why it is exactly like that
It is interesting that the stove, just like the hut, has its own, and very interesting, history, and today we will introduce you to it, dear readers of VO.
Let's start with the fact that all our ancestors, including Neanderthals, and even their ancestors, warmed themselves by a fire. But when people began to settle in permanent dwellings, the fire turned into a hearth - the same fire, but lined with stones along the perimeter. They provided heat to the dwelling, but their efficiency was low. Such "heating" required a lot of firewood. It is difficult to say when a replacement for the hearth was invented. However, archaeologists believe that in the 6th century, the Slavs were already using a stove. But ... it looked completely different from the stove in my house. A stone stove - that's what they called the type of stove they used. The stove was not high, about a meter by a meter, and it was built of flat stones. Binding mortar was not used, but the walls of the stove were coated with clay. The top of the stove was covered with a large flat stone on which you could bake flat cakes. The northern tribe living on the Dnieper, as well as in Romania and Bulgaria, who built dugouts in dense, often rocky soil, simply dug a firebox in the wall of the "house". It is believed that such stoves appeared in the 7th century.
In the 20th century, solid clay stoves became widespread. The frame of the stove was molded from flexible rods, resembling a semicircle with two main openings - one for loading fuel and the other, vertically located, for the smoke to exit. In addition to them, holes with a diameter of about XNUMX cm could be made in the upper vault of the stove for ... pots in which food was cooked. The stove was first molded from clay, then carefully dried, and then a strong fire was lit in it. The clay was fired, and the frame inside it simply burned out.
It is clear that the smoke from such stoves went straight into the living space, that is, the houses were "smoky". To prevent the smoke from stinging the eyes, the houses did not have a ceiling, and the roof was made higher, so that the smoke floated in the dwelling above human height. It came out through the reed, reed, or straw roof covering. The smoke impregnated it with soot, which gave the roof water-repellent properties. Smoke houses were also advantageous in that they never got damp or rotted. Nets were stored under the roof, for which "smoking" brought only benefits, some products, for example, smoked pork hams, as well as military armor, which was not threatened by rust there. True, before use, they always had to be cleaned of soot.
To prevent soot from falling on people from the ceiling, canopy shelves, the so-called "sypukhi", were installed above the benches along the walls for sleeping, stretching along the perimeter of the hut at the level of the lower limit of smoke distribution. Under them, there were also "clean" shelves - "politsy" for dishes. They also used a hatch in the roof - a "dimohon", which was opened with a long pole (just like it was done by the Haida and Tlingit Indians). And it also happened that a large hut was divided in half by a wall. The stove was in one half, and there, under the ceiling, smoke swirled, but the second half was "clean", it was also called a "gornitsa" (from the word "gorniy", that is, "high"), because they often climbed there by a ladder. The room was heated through the wall and due to the circulation of warm air below the level of smoke distribution.
Making the "water" turned out to be not very difficult. To imitate it, epoxy glue EDP with the addition of blue paint was poured into the riverbed. When the resin began to harden on the diorama, white sealant was added to it, with which it was mixed. This made it possible to show both the foaming streams of water on the rapids and its swirls. On top of the blue color of the "epoxy" after hardening, green acrylic was applied with a brush and, in places, zapon varnish, imitating sparkles on the water. The "reeds" sticking out of the water are nothing more than inflorescences of ordinary moss. They are just in the scale we need. Well, and the pier boards are 5-millimeter coffee stirrers! By the way, all the huts on the model are smoky, but already decorated with carved patterns. That is, this is somewhere around the XNUMXth-XNUMXth centuries. The very eve of the baptism of Rus
Stoves increased in size in the 1515th-1520th centuries and began to reach two meters or more in length. At the same time, the first chimneys began to appear in southern Rus', which looked like... an inverted wooden gutter coated with clay, which came out through a side window cut in the wall. The inconvenience of such a "pipe" is obvious - when the wind blew from the window, the smoke was driven inside the room. That is why such a design did not take root and the smoky hut, in which all the "smoke" came out through the roof, became our traditional home for centuries. And in the West too. Not long ago here on VO we already published an article with an illustration "February" from the "Grimani Breviary". There, right through the open door, you can see the hearth, where the owner of the house and his wife are warming themselves, and a hatch in the roof, from which the smoke comes out. But this breviary was not created in the most backward country, but in terms of time – around XNUMX-XNUMX.
By the way, the stoves in ancient Slavic huts were installed so that their mouth looked towards the door, and the stove itself was in the right corner. The fact is that a burning stove gave not only heat, but also light. And the light was needed by the woman who sat by the fire and spun: she turned the spindle with her right hand, and spun the thread with her left. And, of course, she needed to look at this thread. In winter, it was illuminated by the fire at the mouth of the stove, which was convenient. But if the stove was to the left of the door, then the light from it fell inconveniently for work. It is not for nothing that in the dictionary of V. I. Dahl such a hut is called "spinning hut", that is, it was inconvenient for a woman to spin in it!
The stove was the center of the Slavic home also because it had healing properties: it warmed people with powerful infrared radiation. And people noticed this property of the stove, which is why they usually gave it to the elderly and the sick, that is, "infirm people". The brownie, an indispensable inhabitant of the ancient Slavic hut, also lived under the stove. And he, of course, chose the most reliable and warm place in the house! In Christian times, the stove gave up its first place to the "red corner", in which holy icons stood on the shrine. However, it is difficult to say which place was considered more important. After all, there is a saying "to start from the stove", that is, from the very beginning, but there is no saying "to start from the red corner"!
PS
Next in line is a model of an estate from ancient Kyiv of the 10th century, which will be based on the reconstruction of P. P. Tolochko and V. A. Kharlamov. And when it is ready, we will definitely continue our story about ancient Russian wooden architecture.
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