Medieval samples and new technologies in late binding by Old Believer masters of the Southern Urals and Trans-Urals

The article is devoted to the representation of medieval heritage in Old Believer culture at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, when society’s attitude towards Old Believers changed: they were perceived as guardians of folk democratic traditions, «ancient Piety», and antiquity. The focus is on technological changes in the bookbinding of the Old Believers, who cultivated massive binding in embossed leather, made by hand on the basis of wooden covers. The source base consists of books in such bindings from the Antiquities Repository of the Ural Federal University’s Laboratory of Archaeographical Studies and libraries of the Chelyabinsk Region. Analysis of the notes, stamps, and embossing on the leather cover of the books allows us to identify the work of four previously unknown Old Believer masters who created bindings in the Southern Urals and Trans-Urals. For each of them, characteristic technological techniques were identified, and an arsenal of embossed decor was reconstructed. The conclusion is substantiated that medieval binding continued to be cultivated by the Old Believers. However, not only the metropolitan but also regional craftsmen at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries turned to innovative design solutions and materials when creating books, and also actively used name marking of their products for positioning in the market.

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