Batka (the Father)

This is one of the most poetic compositions produced by “Svyatogor” workshop, showing a Cossack and his faithful companion — a black horse. The fearsome chieftain is gently stroking the horse’s mane. Today, few stone-cutters can carve the figure of a horse with such care and skill as the Ural masters do. They work with such precision and use their power of observation so much that the animal looks as if it were alive. No matter how many other stone-carvers worked in Russia before the October Revolution (1917), only the masters employed by Carl Fabergé’s company were able to produce a sculptural group of two figures — a man and a horse. Just remember the “Ice Carrier” composition which shows a feeble horse barely able to haul a quartz sledge full of crystal ice chunks along the dirty snow road that many wheels have travelled over before it, and the driver boy commanding it to go faster.

The stone carvers working at “Svyatogor” celebrate the beauty of nature like true poets, showing the power of thoroughbreds galloping full speed, and “the Cossacks’ fast horses”, a theme so loved by Baron Peter Clodt von Jürgensburg and Eugene Lanceray, Russian sculptors of the nineteenth century. Displaying virtuosity and understanding of the animal’s anatomy and movements, the author of the concept and the stone-cutters who were performing the job used black dolerite to portray a standing horse clad in the exquisitely carved nielloed silver harness, with a gracefully arched neck and a magnificent mane carved from jasper. One cannot but admire the expressive silhouette and the curves of the horse’s supple body. It was with equal skill that the masters produced a true-to-life portrait of the Cossacks’ Ataman dressed in wide trousers made of jasper, a chalcedony shirt, and a green coat with sleeves that are split below the shoulder line, belted with a broad belt made of tiger’s eye, with a knife and a gun tucked under it. TheAtaman stands tall on his land, bowing his head stubbornly, deep in thought, so that there can be no mistake about the Batka’s personality, strong, domineering, and ready to go any length if needed. Just like in case of the other works produced by the workshop, this is an elaborate composition of exquisite beauty. The artists’ power of observation is admirable — their eye penetrates into the heart of the stone and sees its amazing artistic potential. Thus, to create acamp icon that is carried in a chalcedony sling, they chose layered moss agate with a peculiar pattern. As the stone-cutters say, the Virgin’s face showed in it while they worked; her cameo image is set in the frame of fossilised wood.