Exhibition of ancient Santa Clauses from the collection of Alexander Mikhailovich Tatarsky
This unique exhibition "Frosty Grandfatherhood" was held at the end of 2007 in Moscow in the children's art gallery"Child's View" The exhibition was dedicated to the memory of the remarkable animator director, founder and permanent director of the Moscow animation studio "Pilot", Alexander Mikhailovich Tatarsky, who recently passed away.
Author of the cartoons "Plasticine Crow", "Last Year's Snow Was Falling", "The Koloboks Are Investigating", the plasticine screensaver of the program " Good night, kids" for almost ten years he collected a collection of antique Santa Clauses. Part of this collection, as well as antique New Year's toys and photographs from personal archives were presented at the exhibition.
The history of the collection, written by A.M. himself. Tatarsky, this is it.
Back in the mid-80s, Alexander Mikhailovich wrote the script for the multi-part series animated film"Grandfathers different nations". This was supposed to be an exciting journey-adventure of Santa Claus, who makes trip around the world, meeting with “his relatives abroad” - Santa Claus from the USA, Yultumte from Sweden, Uvlin Ung from Mongolia, Père Noel from France, St. Basil from Cyprus, Babbo Natale from Italy and many, many others. Unfortunately, it was not possible to make this film, but interest in the characters responsible for celebrating Christmas and New Year remained.
These characters have seen a lot in their lifetime. A.M. Tatarsky treated them as living beings, knew each one by sight, and communicated with them.
I was at this exhibition - it leaves a very warm feeling.
Unfortunately, it is not known whether the collection of A.M. Tatarsky is exhibited anywhere now.
A fragment of an article with the founder of the art project "Flea Market" Marina Smirnova:
Tell us, what antique New Year's toys and decorations are of interest to collectors? How much do certain things cost?
Before the revolution, Russian partnerships and artels made copies of German Christmas tree decorations. After 1917, Christmas trees were no longer decorated with religious and Christmas-themed toys, and were replaced by figurines. fairy tale characters, household items, symbols of the Soviet era.
But the most beautiful toys appeared in the late 50s and early 60s - cardboard, cotton ones. However, they quickly stopped being produced, new technologies appeared - the shelves were filled with Christmas tree balls.
Therefore, the highest prices are for cardboard and cotton toys. It all depends on the rarity and safety of a particular item. For example, at one Russian online auction, a cardboard toy went under the hammer for 7-8 thousand rubles, the cost of cotton toys reached 15 thousand rubles per copy.
However, at flea markets and specialized fairs, where many sellers gather at the same time, prices for old Christmas tree decorations are much lower. Toys from the 50s can be bought for 50-100 rubles, the most expensive - cotton ones - in good condition - for 700 rubles.
Most of all, of course, the collections are valued. For example, Soviet factories produced a series of Christmas tree decorations based on the fairy tales “Chippolino” and “The Golden Key”. The price of a complete collection can exceed 10 thousand rubles.
Many people collect cardboard flags that have now disappeared from sale. They lack the shine, gloss, and commercial overtones that are inherent in modern toys. The price of such flags, although they are not considered very rare, depending on their state of preservation, can range from 200 to 1000 rubles.
hunter201 01/12/2014 - 19:32
I often came across advertisements for the sale of old Christmas tree decorations, including on Avito. Well, simply stunning prices.
Below I will try to post photos of the old Christmas tree decorations I have, please knowledgeable people tell me - are they worth anything? (After New Year’s Eve I want a freebie! 😊)
mazzer 12.01.2014 - 19:48
Of these, I only have a traffic light left (made in the style of the penultimate one), I personally value them and will not sell them for any price 😊
hunter201 01/12/2014 - 19:55
Interesting - I insert new photos, but the old ones disappear somewhere.... 😞
In the second photo from the bottom, the inscription on the edges is “Beijing”. If I remember correctly, my father-in-law served in China in 1949-1952. It is quite possible that this toy was from those years, although I can’t say for sure - no one is alive anymore...
Alexander - 01/12/2014 - 20:15
Russian With Chinese - brothers on the CENTURY. They used to sing.
AP.
pakon 01/12/2014 - 20:19
They were the same. Every year the collection melted and melted like snow in spring. They are fragile and the inner layer has crumbled.
Now the balls are from IKEA
Griggen 01/12/2014 - 20:49
The prices at which old toys are on Avito do not mean that they are bought at these prices)
As far as I know, collectors value antique Christmas tree decorations with Soviet symbols, as well as technical ones - the shape of airplanes, locomotives, astronauts, etc.
hunter201 01/13/2014 - 11:12
Let's wait for more opinions! 😊
pakon 01/13/2014 - 11:43
Griggen
Collectors value antique Christmas tree decorations with Soviet symbols, as well as technical ones
RTDS 01/13/2014 - 11:46
hunter201
So I decided to ask the forum members - is this a myth or reality?
Who knows... I wouldn’t give a penny for them - I’m not a collector, I don’t feel nostalgia, and most of the old Soviet toys look like garbage... (I’m not specifically talking about yours - in general, because they are shabby due to age , the paint darkens and rubs off, etc.)
mageric 01/13/2014 - 13:11
I don’t know the topic, but if there are collectors for this product, then the prices can be mind-blowing. Well, for example, for the flight of the first cosmonaut they released a toy in the shape of an astronaut. And let’s say they released 1000 pieces. Or even 100 thousand. You can imagine how much a connoisseur will pay for such a treasure.
RTDS 01/13/2014 - 14:26
mageric
Well, for example, for the flight of the first cosmonaut they released a toy in the shape of an astronaut. And let’s say they released 1000 pieces. Or even 100 thousand. You can imagine how much a connoisseur will pay for such a treasure.
IN Soviet era events, such as the flight of the first cosmonaut, were accompanied by different souvenirs, produced in huge quantities... So that any collective farmer could buy it in his general store. There could be no talk of any “1000 pieces”...
mageric 01/13/2014 - 14:34
You know better, I’m telling you, I’m a zero in this topic.
hunter201 01/13/2014 - 15:51
pakon
Their poor children, there are a lot of toys, but most likely they don’t decorate the Christmas tree))))
“Poor children” don’t experience any shortage; on the contrary, they don’t know which toy to hang up and which one. leave, there are so many of them. But these toys are not used.
The topic is not aimed at the detriment of children, there is no need to make monsters out of grandfathers and parents, there is purely commercial interest here
BLIND MOLE 01/13/2014 - 15:59
"Wait forty years - it will be a rarity." Children grew up who played with these toys; when you are over 40, you increasingly want to remember your “golden childhood.” Therefore, they are already appreciated by those who collect and who are nostalgic. Example - at a flea market you can buy for 10, 15, 20 rubles. in thrift stores it will also be 50, 100, 150. So are they valued?)))
mageric 01/13/2014 - 20:22
tixaja 01/14/2014 - 01:46
So I’m wondering... how much for 😊 toys are never superfluous. I’m not going to sell them, I’m doing it for myself.
hunter201 01/14/2014 - 02:00
magericExcept for the top photo, all toys are photographed one at a time. And in the top photo are the rest, the remainder in the box, which you couldn’t take off one by one.
How many toys do you have in total ((pieces))? How much do you want to get for them wholesale?
In fact, there were more toys out of the box, I just took off one part at a time.
As for the price - in the title of the topic I ask the question, because... I don’t even know approximately. There is a site on toys, I found it yesterday, where specialists estimate at least a range of prices. I'll try to find out there, I registered yesterday.... but the Old New Year got in the way! 😊
I had to meet you 😊
This situation with prices is already familiar to me - about 2 years ago I posted a photo of an old shortwave (seemingly 😊) radio station, and asked a question - how much could it cost? And I started receiving emails asking me to sell it and for me to name the price! Well, I laughed, and I still have the radio station 😊 And now it’s waiting for its turn, I’ll post it again soon 😊
here are all the toys from this box
pakon 01/14/2014 - 07:53
hunter201Yes, I wasn’t talking about your children, but about the children of collectors
"Poor children" do not experience any shortage
From the author: “We found three boxes and one large bag of Christmas tree decorations on the landlord’s mezzanines.”
One of the boxes was dusty, scary, and, moreover, sealed to death with a stapler. For three thousand years, no one apparently had any interest in its contents. "Cool!" - I thought. - “We have to get in!” There were Christmas tree decorations in the box, just like in the other two, but they were old, quite patina and unusual, and some (the coolest ones, well!) were also broken. But there are still not very many broken ones.
I don’t understand anything about this, I can’t date it, and I’ll be glad if someday someone tells me more about these fragile, beautiful things. And here there will be photographs. Judging by the aesthetics and some of the items, it can be dated. The first photo is from the second half of the 1960s, closer to the seventies. Icicles, lanterns, top (second from left, top row). A flashlight on a mount - we repeated toys from the GDR. They came to us en masse around 1967.
The second photo with peas, mushrooms and birches - looks like the late Khrushchev))) 1960-1962.
The third photo is of two tops, mid-1960s or earlier. The 1950s were mostly stars.
The fourth photo is icicles. I won’t say for everything, but the striped duvets on the right are pure 1970s, even the early seventies, when sideboards, floor lamps and coffee tables suddenly appeared.
The fifth photo is with a Chukchi youth. It's like a mix of times here. Chukotka guy - late 1950s. The orange basket with the dog is either already from the 1980s, or it’s a foreign toy, some kind of Polish one, which doesn’t look like the GDR. The chicken on the left too late period or also import. Owl, tumbler and squirrel - mid-1960s.
The sixth photo is lanterns. All 1960s. Middle and towards the end.
The seventh photo is an acorn and a basket of vegetables or fruits, corn - late Khrushev.
Eighth photo - cones. Including sugar - it's all 1960s and maybe a little 1970s. We borrowed sugar ones from the GDR.
I can’t say anything about the Ninth and Tenth photos.
Eleventh photo - bells: bottom row on the left with the tongue + on the right the white ribbed beater looks like the 1960s. The blue bell and top pink are from the 1980s, or late 1970s.
I really like this series, such vegetables and fruits, very naturalistic, uneven, nicely colored, especially the cool apple and garlic... and pepper, and pea pod)) in general, everything is cool! and I like this “icicle” in birch color.
It’s clear that these are tree tops.
Here's some more incredibly cool stuff! Especially this naive Chukchi youth on the right is good, and the house under him.
Fungus and acorn are my favorites here!
I'm not sure about the top row of pine cones, they look new, the ones in the bottom row are cooler, but the top ones were in the same box, and in general... I like them too)
These tops with clothespins, like on a transparent star, are the first time I’ve ever seen them, I really like them.
But this wonderful parrot is alone, all alone, there was nothing else so crazy in the box, except for another exotic bird, but she was completely injured and lost her beak, so the parrot here is lonely and beautiful, like a romantic hero)
This year we decorated a spontaneous Christmas tree with these unexpectedly found ones. Spontaneous because Nastya Kryuchevskaya brought it, and we ourselves didn’t plan to put anything up, we only bought a couple of wreaths, entwined them with ribbons, and okay, it seemed... But Nastya came and brought a tree) For some reason, that’s what I like best - when things happen themselves. A thread from there, a thread from here - and Fenka. Nobody was waiting for her, but she is there.
“Crible, crable, boom! - said the Storyteller from “ Snow Queen“Remember – the magic begins!”
And we are approaching the only holiday on the entire planet - the Old New Year. Only we have the Old New Year, from January 13 to 14 - this is necessary, what a miracle! And January 14, New Style, is the Feast of the Circumcision of the Lord, as one of the authors correctly reminded me.
My great-aunt Elizaveta, Aunt Lilya, despite Soviet power, always celebrated the Old New Year. She invited all her relatives. I baked an unforgettable Napoleon cake, cabbage pie, gingerbread - that’s what I could remember. Aunt Lilya lived on Kuznetsky Most opposite the Pet Shop. The house is still standing. Last old house, adjacent to the new KGB building.
And since we are celebrating the Old New Year, let me tell you what I know about old New Year’s toys. It so happened that my family never threw away anything rare, and I unwittingly found myself the owner of a small toy collection. Christmas tree decorations are glass, they break, and every year vintage toys They are getting smaller and more expensive.
With great pleasure we visited the city of Klin, at the Klin Compound museum at the pre-revolutionary Yolochka factory. We were told the history of the creation of toys, shown the manufacturing technology, we visited the museum and New Year's performance Santa Claus. I was delighted to recognize my toys in the museum. Unfortunately, I was filming on my mobile phone through the window glass, something may be a little out of focus, sorry.
The history of the origin of glass toys was told to us as follows:. A long time ago, in Holland, Christmas was celebrated. It was the main Christian winter holiday. In Europe, it was customary to bring a live Christmas tree into the house and decorate it with apples, nuts, gilded cones, white and pink roses from shortcrust pastry, as well as candles. Gifts for children were brought by the infant Christ or St. Nicholas, Santa Claus.
This is what a decorated Christmas tree looked like in those days:
But one day there was a very cold summer, and the apples did not ripen. There was nothing to decorate the Christmas trees with! And one master glassblower blew glass balls, which craftsmen painted “apple-like”. They say that this is how the first Christmas tree decorations made of glass appeared.
Interestingly, the first Russian Christmas tree decorations looked different. In the South Russian Empire were fashionable bright glass beads.
If the balls are blown out, like this:
And painted:
And painted by hand:
The technology for making beads (and any Christmas tree figurine of complex shape) is different.
The beads were made from a hot glass tube placed in special molds - tongs (photo on the right, in the foreground):
Then they were covered with amalgam, became “silver”, and then painted. It turned out something like this:
The peddler hung beads around his neck and walked around the villages with them, selling them to women and girls. It is clear that in winter no one really needs beads - they are not visible under a zipun, and then peddlers came up with the idea of selling them as New Year's decorations.
This is how Christmas tree beads and figurines made from them appeared:
Here is one of my acquisitions this year (they gave me a gift, thanks a lot) - traffic light made of beads!!!
Pre-revolutionary jewelry was also made from cotton wool. To strengthen and shine the outer layer, the toys were covered with glue and glitter and painted.
These dolls have porcelain heads - German toys that now cost incredible amounts of money.
Every year we have this cute stork hanging on our Christmas tree. The children were very upset that the stork was hung by the neck, but for what else? And every time the ancient old man hangs below, so that it is not visible... But - tradition. A child decorating a Christmas tree knows that mommy will still make you take out the box again for the sake of the stork, and there are still a lot of things there that are valuable to a collector... they hang it up in silence.
Many decorations were made from cardboard. For example, here is such a wonderful angel - a cardboard head and glass beads - to decorate the top:
All kinds were popular garlands of flags:
Bonbonnieres(boxes with a surprise, or “surprise boxes”), firecrackers and "Dresden cartonage"- figures extruded from cardboard, glued in halves - the result is a three-dimensional cardboard figure:
"Dresden cartonage"
This is what the Christmas tree might have looked like in the fairy tale “The Nutcracker”:
After the 1917 revolution, the Christmas tree was declared a relic of the past..
But in 1937, J.V. Stalin decided to revive the traditions, and New Year’s lights shone again, and New Year’s trees appeared in clubs and apartments again. St. Nicholas and the Infant Christ were replaced by the fabulous Father Frost and his granddaughter Snegurochka, and - there was a need for Christmas tree decorations!
I found a picture of the first invitation card in Column Hall of the House of Unions in Moscow and a photograph from this Christmas tree.
Some families still had toys, and everyone remembered how to make them at home. That's how I told it A. Gaidar in the story “Chuk and Gek” about preparations for the New Year:
“The next day it was decided to prepare a Christmas tree for the New Year.
They couldn’t imagine making toys out of anything!
They tore off all the color pictures from old magazines. They made animals and dolls from scraps and cotton wool. They pulled out all the tissue paper from my father’s drawer and piled up lush flowers.
Why was the watchman gloomy and unsociable, and when he brought firewood, he stopped for a long time at the door and marveled at their new and new undertakings. Finally he couldn't bear it anymore. He brought them silver paper from wrapping tea and a large piece of wax that he had left over from shoemaking.
It was wonderful! And the toy factory immediately turned into a candle factory. The candles were clumsy and uneven. But they burned as brightly as the most elegant store-bought ones.
Now it was time for the Christmas tree. The mother asked the watchman for an ax, but he didn’t even answer her, but got on his skis and went into the forest.
Half an hour later he returned.
OK. Even if the toys were not so elegant, even if the hares made from rags looked like cats, even if all the dolls looked alike - straight-nosed and pop-eyed, and even if, finally, fir cones, wrapped in silver paper, did not sparkle as much as fragile and thin glass toys, but then, of course, no one had such a Christmas tree in Moscow. It was a real taiga beauty - tall, thick, straight and with branches that diverged at the ends like stars.”
Magnificent molded toys show that in 20 years “without a Christmas tree” the craftsmen have not lost their skills:
And if someone still has toys like these, which look unattractive, don’t throw them away - you are a happy owner expensive rarity!
Peaceful life our country was interrupted by a terrible destructive war. There was no time New Year's holidays, but after the war the production of Christmas tree decorations resumed.
The 50s-80s were boom years for the toy industry. What our factories haven't produced! And balls, and “flashlights”, and a wide variety of molded toys. They made decorations from foil and cardboard. And what original garlands replaced the candles!
I will talk about this heyday in the next article.
Thank you for reading and wish you a Happy Old New Year!
With age, sometimes an irresistible desire arises to remember your childhood, to feel some nostalgia for the times of the USSR. For some reason, the New Year in the Soviet style most reminds those over thirty of times that, despite the shortage, you remember with rapture of the heart, considering them the best.
Nowadays there is a growing tendency to celebrate the New Year in the style of the USSR. It’s no longer surprising to see a Christmas tree decorated according to the American model in three colors. More and more I want to decorate the Christmas tree with old Soviet toys. And be sure to put cotton wool simulating snow and tangerines under it.
Variety of Christmas tree decorations
Often the Christmas tree in Soviet families was decorated with an abundance of toys and decorations. Special attention deserve clothespin toys, which are very convenient to attach to the middle of a Christmas tree branch. They were presented in all sorts of forms: Santa Claus, Snowman, Snow Maiden, candle, matryoshka doll.
The balls, as now, were different sizes, but the unique highlight was in the balls with round hollows, into which the light of the garlands fell, creating a fabulous illumination throughout the Christmas tree. There were also phosphor patterned balls that glowed in the dark.
Since the New Year begins at midnight, toys in the form of watches were produced. They were given a central place on the tree. Often such Soviet Christmas decorations hung at the very top, just below the top of the head, which was certainly decorated with a red star - the main Soviet symbol.
Christmas decorations of those times were also represented by decorations made from large glass beads and beads. They were usually hung on the lower or middle branches. Old Soviet toys, especially pre-war ones, are carefully stored and passed on from grandmothers to grandchildren.
From icicles, houses, clocks, animals, balls, stars, a unique design was made.
Was it raining?
There was no such fluffy and voluminous rain as there is now during Soviet socialism. The Christmas tree was decorated with vertical rain and beads. A little later, horizontal rain appeared, but it was not thick and voluminous. Some voids on the tree were filled with garlands and candies.
Feel the atmosphere for a few days Soviet Union you can use a Christmas tree decorated in retro style. Unique Soviet-era Christmas tree decorations, decorations and tinsel should be looked for in the bins of our grandmothers or purchased at city flea markets. By the way, auctions and online stores are being created online for the purchase, sale and exchange of Christmas tree decorations from the USSR era. Some even collect such toys, many of which are already considered antiques.
All that remains is to decorate the Christmas tree with old Soviet toys, turn on the Irony of Fate and for a second remember your childhood.
