The festival “Illusions of Old Village” organized by employees of the Museum of Dionisy’s Frescoes and teachers and students of the Vologda Regional Training School of Culture was held near the walls of the Ferapontov Monastery on Saturday, June 13. A summer green ball was the subject of this year’s event that took place for the fourth year running. The festival was opened with a theatre performance at noon. Local residents – peasant girls, village and town merchants with their families - came to the ball. They walked along the village, presented and sold their goods to all guests.
In the craft quarter, potters S.G. Fenveshi, N.G. Trubnikov and A.V. Gurin showcased their skills and taught everybody to make earthenware; O.V. Pestereva told about creation of birch bark kitchen utensils and N.A. Kuznetsova shared lace-making secrets.
Every year the organizers prepare something new and interesting for visitors. For example, this time experts from Cherepovets delivered a master-class in wax candle making. Ancient typewriters were very popular with the guests of the holiday – somebody saw them for the first time and first slowly, and then more confidently pressed the buttons typing the famous poem of Nikolay Rubtsov about Ferapontovo and their impressions and requests to the organizers.
Besides, the open air exhibition “Native Antiquities” was staged on the shore of Lake Borodaevskoye. Adults and children examined rural household articles with interest – a wooden bucket, a mangle, irons, balance, a butter churn, a cart wheel and others, asked questions about their application and could even touch all these exhibits.
The guests of the festival had a wonderful opportunity to get to the atmosphere of the village life of the early 20th century. They listened to folk songs and romances, gusli and button accordion compositions, had their pictures taken in the retro photo salon, bought tickets of the village lottery and got useful prizes, and participated in peasant amusements and games: walked on stilts, jumped over the rope, ran a race holding shoulder-yokes, threw pretzel-shaped articles to the oven forks. Both children and grown-ups were fascinated with a hay-making process: first they raked hay and after work could taste newly-baked bread from the Russian stove with salt according to the traditions of our ancestors.
The youngest guests of the festival “Illusions of Old Village” created their masterpieces on the easels during the Ferapontovo plein air. Everybody could see their pictures on that day.
Participants of all games and contests were given sweet prizes in the spirit of that epoch – sweets, stick lolly and lump sugar. A haystack was very popular with the visitors – they had their pictures taken and were pleased to jump on it like on the trampoline. The age of jumpers varied from 12 months to 75 years.
Having walked and played in the open air, everybody went to the tea house to have tea from the samovar with pies and fruit sugar and to listen to the story about traditional Russian tea-drinking.
During the festival, the guests marked the cities they came from on the geographical map of Russia and the Vologda region. As a result, their variety was really amazing - residents of Vologda, Kirillov, Cherepovets, Belozersk, Nikolsk, Veliky Ustyug, Murmansk, Syktyvkar, Kazan, Chelyabinsk, Yekaterinburg, Volgograd, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Noyabrsk, Samara, Vladivostok, Dneprodzerzhinsk and many other cities gathered in Ferapontovo.
They gave favourable and enthusiastic comments, in which they thanked the organizers for a wonderful holiday, afforded pleasure and preservation of traditions.
“Thank you very much for the great organization of the festival in Ferapontovo. Everything is marvelous and interesting. Wonderful contests, careful presenters. It is so nice that in our modern, vain time, there are people who support traditions and hand them down from generation to generation. The family from Yekaterinburg”.
“We thank Ferapontovo for the given pleasure of kind, sincere relations and smiles! Meetings are interesting, the organization is great, and the artists’ performances are wonderful. We are pleased to be here. You feel a real Russian person here! Ferapontovo, congratulations on the holiday! Russia, congratulations of the Day of Russia! N. Komarova (Vologda), I. Konovalov (Cheboksary)”.
