Please Note: zoom the photos to see everything in details, please. The photos form part of the description! All vintage items are sold in as-is condition, they always have “traces” of time. Real colors may vary slightly when displayed on screen. You can request additional photos. Don't hesitate to ask questions before purchase!

Authenticity certificate on request!

Osip Fillipovich Vishnyakov founded his workshop in the village of Ostashkovo (Moscow region,close to Fedoskino) in the 1780s with his sons Piotr, Vasiliy, and Andrey. Vishnyakov was a former serf freed from the Sheremetev Family Estate.

Osip Vishnyakov earned the right to place the Imperial Stamp on the back of his items, and won numerous awards at exhibits. Vishnyakov and his sons produced a variety of papier-mâché lacquer ware items including: snuffboxes, tea boxes, eyeglass cases, matchboxes, and Easter eggs. They sold their wares in Moscow at the various fairs and markets. This workshop flourished into the mid-1800s.

The secrets of making and painting papier-mache lacquers have for 200 years now been passed from one generation to another.

Several layers of pasted cardboard, boiled in linseed oil and then repeatedly dried in a hot oven, form an original material - hard as wood, light and waterproof - that can be sawed, polished, primed and lacquered.

Lacquer miniatures of the Moscow region were made with the help of multi-layer oil painting on the primed papier-mache surface with special linin. Most of the Fedoskino papier-mache wares have a black background on Ihe outside and are covered inside with scarlet, bright-red or cherry-colored lacquer. Papier-mache lacquers of the Moscow region were closely linked to Russia's graphic art of that period. Miniature artists mastered and copied drawings, engravings, cheap folk prints and lithographs which were sold in separate sheets and albums.