Gzhel ceramic school in 1918–1925 in the archival documents of the Russian State Archive of Literature and Arts and Central State Archive of the Moscow Region

Abstract

The article considers the documents related to the work of the Gzhel Ceramic School in the first half of the 1920s. This period became one of the defining stages of the development of art and industrial education on the territory of the distribution of the oldest folk art craft in the Moscow province. The Gzhel Ceramic School of the People’s Commissariat of Education, which began its activity in the autumn of 1918, was the successor of the drawing classes opened here in 1899 by the Imperial Stroganov Central Art and Industrial School. The analysis of the School’s work allows us to ascertain the leading role of the state in the formation of art and industrial education, a characteristic feature of the development of which in those years was the search for optimal organizational forms of training, aimed at mass training of master ceramists in combination with their general secondary education. In the first post-revolutionary years, the development of handicraft production in the places of the traditional existence of folk arts and crafts was an important area of activity for the Soviet republic. In the 1920s the products of folk crafts were one of the few goods produced in the RSFSR that were in demand abroad, which made it possible to consider it as a means of obtaining foreign currency. In addition, the development of crafts, which employed a significant number of workers in imperial Russia, seemed to be one of the ways to level the social tension associated with unemployment in the regions that had previously been distinguished by the relative prosperity of the residents. The article notes the role of the School’s management and the teaching staff in its educational, economic and awareness-raising activities.