Nickolai Gurgeiff - Pavlovo-Posad Shawls

Among unique, well-known in the world products, presenting pride and glory of Russia, a particular place occupy shawls from an ancient town of Pavlovsky Posad. Every year "Pavlovo Posad Shawl Manufactory issues 200 kinds of shawls, scarves of natural fibres: wool, cotton, silk. Declaration of high art and cultural value of the products is the reference of "Pavlovo Posad Shawl Manufactory" to the enterprises of folk art crafts of Russia.

At work

The work on every new product starts with a design.On the creation of designs labours a group of gifted artists, from generation to generation passing ancient traditions and creating new composition solutions. All prepared designs are considered and affirmed by Art Council, to which are invited merited artists of the factory, representatives of the Minestry of Culture and of the territorial art and expert Council on folk crafts of Moscow region. The distinctive particularity of our craft is the aspiration of all the collective to embody the initial author art plan of the shawl.

The base for woolen shawls is a high quality fine fleece wool, of which the weavers produce different kinds of fabric. A particular airness and ecological purity of fabric allows not only to save a hair style, but to protect a hair against "the hotbed effect".

As soon as a design is affirmed, to the work on it are attached colorists. Their task is to make up recipes of print colors, trying to get as exact as possible reproduction of author's design executed in gouache, by means of textile dyestaffs. The main difficulty of this work is that the true color will be seen only after a steam treatment (this operation is necessary for a solid fixation of dye-staffs on the wool fibre) and a washing. Thus, a colorist is forced to make a lot of test dyings before a final recipe will be obtained.Every design is printed in several versions (colors). New color solutions are proposed by an artist and colorists, and also are affirmed by a special commission after a severe selection. Depending on difficulty of the design there are different ways of design drawing on the fabric. Printing is realized on manual print tables and on many-colors printing machines. The most responsible operations are executed by hand.

Long ago sinked into oblivion time, when shawls were printed by means of wooden blocks. Since some decades ago shawls in the factory have being produced by screen print method.

There are many different operations have to be made for giving birth to unique in its qualities Pavlovsky Posad shawl! Its production technology combines a careful attitude to the traditions and the using of the most advanced achievements of scientific and technical ideas. The factory is the first in the world who had introduced a plasma chemical treatment of fabrics before the printing instead of using ecologically harmful chlorination, having left for many years behind other enterprises, only now beginning to realize all advantages of this method. An article collection of the factory is various. Side by side with traditional design articles there are a lot of modern ones, consistently developping rich traditions of Pavlovsky Posad shawl.