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Khokhloma lidded bowl (sugar bowl), Soviet export ware
Object/Artifact
Turned-wood lidded bowl in the Khokhloma idiom. A hemispherical body sits on a red turned foot-ring; the domed lid carries a small turned black knop. Decoration is the classic Khokhloma scheme — gold leaves and grasses with clustered red/orange berries (rowan and stylized strawberries) and green tendrils scrolling over a black ground, a gilt band below the rim, and red banding at the foot. The lid repeats the berry-and-leaf motif.
2025.25.2
María Teresa Cornide Hernández collection
2025.25
Gorky
Eastern Europe
U.S.S.R.
Europe
Maker: Not named on the label (the Soviet export sticker carries no workshop attribution). Khokhloma craft of the Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod) region — most plausibly one of the two principal Soviet producers, the Khokhloma Painting association at Semyonov or the Khokhloma Painter factory near the village of Khokhloma (Koverninsky district). (Tentative; workshop not specified.) Date: Soviet manufacture, USSR, per the "MADE IN USSR" export label (hence pre-December 1991). No year present; the label type and ware are consistent with circa 1960s–1980s production. The exact year cannot be confirmed within 1959–1990 and may fall just outside it, though the Soviet/pre-1991 attribution is secure. Place of Origin: USSR — Khokhloma craft, Gorky (Nizhny Novgorod) region, RSFSR.
Paper export label on the underside: an ornate gilt filigree frame on black enclosing a red disc lettered MADE IN USSR; beneath it a printed АРТ. (Артикул / article) line completed with an inked, partly illegible number (approx. "1292"?). No painted artist's signature visible.
bowl, lid
Wood
Materials: Turned wood (likely linden or birch); aluminum-powder ground, heat-resistant oil paints, oil/linseed varnish cured to the characteristic gold tone; paper label. Technique: Traditional Khokhloma lacquer painting — metallic (aluminum) ground, freehand oil painting in red/black/green, varnished and kiln-hardened so the varnish turns gold; "over-painting" (верховое письмо) with gold leaf-forms reserved against a painted black field. Lathe-turned body, lid, and finial.
Fair
Maria T. Cornide Hernández
owner
Havana
Cuba
Caribbean
Central America
use
Gorky
Eastern Europe
U.S.S.R.
Europe
production
Khokhloma originated in the 17th c. in the village of Khokhloma, Koverninsky district, Nizhny Novgorod (Soviet Gorky) Oblast. The "gold" is aluminum powder under heat-cured varnish, not gilding. The Soviet revival from the 1960s was concentrated in two enterprises — Khokhloma Painter near the village and the Khokhloma Painting association in Semyonov. Soviet Khokhloma was a flagship export line, shipped abroad with "MADE IN USSR" stickers of exactly this red-disc / gilt-filigree type. The footed lidded form corresponds to a sugar bowl / general lidded bowl, a standard production item.