ARCHITECTURE
wooden architecture — research, maintenance and restoration

According to its structural layout the house exemplifies the so-called ‘koshel’ type, i.e. a square framework in plan, within which are connected in parallel the habitable part and the section including household areas. The house is covered with an asymmetrical gable roof (one eave is lower than the other). The basis of the design of the structure is a plain parallelepiped with an almost square base. The habitable part is two-storied. The lower floor includes a room for wintering (‘izba’), the lower anteroom (‘seni’) and storerooms; one of them has its entry from the entrance hall and the second one from the southern ‘izba’ on the upper floor. The attic room in the garret above the anteroom of the upper floor is covered with a gable roof. The habitable part features a gallery running along the upper row of windows on three facades. The gallery rests on the butt-ends of the logs protruding from the walls and wooden corbels. One can get to the gallery from the upper anteroom.

The household section is two-storied as well, with cattle-sheds placed on the lower floor and a shed on the upper one. The sitting room ‘gornitsa’ sides with the southern ‘izba’, is located on the upper floor. Under the ‘gornitsa’ there is a complementary room which doorway is on the lower floor. Near the northern wall of the shed there is a room for dairy produce. The ramp to the shed links on to the southern wall.

The logs of exterior walls are notched at the corners according to the traditional method with the log ends protruding or extending beyond the corners of each wall (a notch joint called in Russian ‘v oblo’). The roof is a nailless construction, made of boards.

The walls of the household section rest on pillars dug into ground. Each of the ‘izbas’ on the upper floor has three windows on the main facade. There is a balcony made between them to connect two parts of the gallery. A front porch is rather small with three steps.

End walls carry attic windows and arched balconies (the northern one has one arch, the southern one three). The attic room also faces the arched balcony. Various patterns of carvings and fretwork are found on the facades. Each of the ‘facial’ boards is actually a board decorated with five tiers of carvings; the fretwork includes reach-through holes on the edge. It reflects a kind of ornamentation common in Zaonezhye – a combination of oval projections and rectangular cogs.

The uppermost joints of ‘facial’ boards covered with the so-called ‘towels’ also have some fretwork – a swirling-type rosette on the northern one and an encircled square with a four-leafed rosette on the southern one. The ‘towel’ on the western facade reveals a curvilinear contour. On its upper part there is the inscription with the date of construction. The ornamental details on the balconies are never the same. Turned balusters are found on the southern and western balconies, tracery flat planks on the northern one. The head elements of the decorative window trim for the windows on the upper floor are volutes; the ones on the lower floor have no volutes. Flat balusters with some fretwork were used for the gallery.

At the moment the exhibition representing the interior of a well-to-do Zaonezhye farmer in the late XIX – early XX is inside the house. Details typical for those days habitation have been also reconstructed – a stove, benches along the walls, shelves above the benches.