The Gzhel (Gzel) porcelain and majolica is not only a brand of the Russian ceramics known throughout the world. This is the cradle of the Russian Gzhel ceramics manufacture where real magic is born that has its own secrets in production and also in marketing and industrial tourism. EcoTourism EXPERT visited the village of Gzhel located not far from Moscow and got to know about how the world-famous Gzhel ceramics with unique painting is created today.
First of all, it is worth mentioning that there is not just the Gzhel village, but the real ‘Gzhel cluster’, and today, about 200 thousand Gzhel ceramic pieces are manufactured annually in 27 villages and townships of the former Gzhel Rural District where, by the way, the writer of these words was born.
It is worth mentioning one interesting fact that in the village of Gzhel, there are no large ceramics factories today. The Gzhel Porcelain Factory is located in the village of Rechitsy, the Gzhel Art Painting Factory is in the village of Troshkovo, and the Gzhel Association Factory is located in the village of Turygino that is part of the township of Elektroizolyator. So, those who decide to go on a journey to find Gzhel ceramics on their own, they should enter in the sat navigator not just ‘Gzhel’, but a specific destination.
However, tourists won’t be disappointed even if they buy some blue-and-white souvenir along the way. The matter is, that the concept of a ‘real Gzhel’ piece, in general, does not exist. All Gzhel ceramic pieces are real, as they are made in the old traditions of this craft. The only thing is that some of them are made by craftsmen at home, while others are made at a factory.
Well, let’s go to the village of Turygino and make a tour of the Gzhel Association Factory, first of all, because the museum exhibition in the village is worth special attention.
But firstly, the tourist group usually makes a tour of the factory’s workshops to look at the work in some of them. Firstly, it’s interesting to visit the gypsum press mold workshop. Workers fill the press molds with white clay diluted with water. Then, the joint seams are cut off from the workpieces (each press mold filled with clay consists of two parts) and sent for the first cycle of baking. The visitors find out that the blue-and-white Gzhel crockery is originally pink! The pink color is explained by a magenta (special fuchsine dye); this is used to check all the workpieces for cracks after the first cycle of baking, and if there are no cracks, the workpieces are marked and sent for painting.
The visitors of the painting workshop are not allowed to stand near a painter, they can watch from behind a glass wall how the painters use their art paintbrushes to create real art pieces - stroke by stroke - thanks to their craftmanship. And the visitors not just watch the painters at work but realize that they were ‘deceived’ once again, because it turns out that Gzhel ceramic pieces are not white-and-blue but black-and-pink!
This happens because after treatment by magenta, the pink workpieces are painted with a cobalt oxide ceramic pigment, which is actually black. The pieces are then dipped in glaze to make them white. And only then, during the last cycle of backing, the glaze becomes transparent, the pink magenta evaporates, and the cobalt oxide...turns blue! This is how the world-famous colors of the amazing Gzhel porcelain and majolica items are obtained.
By the way, one more secret should be kept in mind. During the backing process, porcelain loses 14 to 17 percent of its volume. Just imagine how experienced a craftsman should be to to understand at the very beginning of his work on a certain Gzhel piece what the initial size of the press mold is required!
The next point of the excursion is the Gzhel Association Museum. By the way, there are also many surprising things, starting with the fact that the first ceramic items found in the Gzhel area dated back to the 2nd-3rd centuries B.C., so they are 2,200 to 2,300 years old! As evidence, a pot with an ornament is on display in the show-case. It turned out that it was not an ordinary one, our guide told us that the scientists found out that the pot was used as a real thermos as it has double walls.
The visitors can see original figurines, watches, vases, cups in the museum, as well as chess, plates, and crockery and cutlery, and they can find out, for example, that the production of blue-white Gzhel ceramics was actually revived after the Great Patriotic War, and that the Russian scientist Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov was the first to discover the amazing properties of the white Gzhel clay.
Attending a workshop session is the final stage of the excursion that gives an idea about the history of the Gzhel craft. All tourists sit at the desks and use paintbrushes to paint a Gzhel ceramic piece! At first, they are explained the right way to move a paintbrush to get the famous ‘Gzhel stroke’ with a color transition and they get to know that the most famous ornament - the Gzhel rose - was called Agashka in the handworkers’ community, because many young women-painters coming from the neighboring villages had that name in the 19th century. Handworkers usually learn to draw a rose for a month, six hours every day. By the way, that is why they sometimes joke at tourists during workshop sessions - at how different their works are from the painting made by a real Gzhel painter.
Gzhel porcelain and majolica pieces are really inspiring. And they surprise people. It’s really surprising that the process of creating a plate or saucer can be multi-staged and that a Gzhel item can be not an item painted in blue-and-white colors, but also in other colors because everyone can experiment. It’s also surprising because while creating Gzhel ceramic items, the designers and skilled craftspeople use their craftsmanship and also make their art works with humor. The Gzhel ceramics is very beautiful! And beauty will save the world!
