This still life from the museum’s collection depicts the typical workspace of a peasant woman. She would usually sit in the area of the house that gets the most light — on a bench near a low window. The painting’s rich color palette is based on the contrast between the cold shades of a dull winter landscape outside and the warm colors of the grandmother’s own little world inside, with its bright patterns of a painted distaff, the mittens knitted for her grandchildren, and the cheerful calico curtain that separates the grandmother’s cozy corner. The painter captured the characteristic details of a Russian cottage: the window frames are insulated with cotton wool to keep the house warm, and there is a container on the windowsill to collect condensation from the windows.
A mezenka is a one-piece distaff, also known as a Palashchelye distaff, named after the handicraft center in the Palashchelye village on the Mezen River. A mezenka distaff is distinguished by the fact that its leg, comb, and tall dome-like protrusions at the top are beautifully decorated with carving and painting. The decorative elements can include geometric patterns, such as rhombuses, shading, wavy lines, crosses, or dots, as well as genre scenes depicting horses, people, forest deities, or boats. In this painting, the mezenka is decorated with black and red images of running horses and deer. Such distaffs were usually presented to a young woman by her fiancé, husband, or father.
The painting was created by the artist Yelena Yermolina who established the still life genre in the Komi Republic. She moved to Komi from Leningrad together with her husband Rem Yermolin who was also an artist. In her paintings, Yelena Yermolina referred to the folk culture of the Komi peoples, capturing her impressions of their arts and crafts. The peak of her creative career took place when ethnographers were actively working at the local research center of the Academy of Sciences and the Museum of Local Lore, and the modern Komi arts and crafts were formed.
In many of her works, Yelena Yermolina depicted the world of an elderly woman — the lady of the house, the head of the family, and the guardian of traditions. The artist sought to demonstrate the fate of a person through household objects and the nature of their daily work. Yermolina’s genre painting “Grandmother’s Corner” received great recognition and was displayed at many All-Russian and All-Union exhibitions. The painting was inspired by the artist’s expeditions to Pechora and Ust-Tsilma in the 1960s and 1970s.
