The collection of the Sheltozero Veps Ethnographic Museum named after Rurik Petrovich Lonin features an important household item — a brush for processing flax and hemp, donated to the museum by a resident of the village of Sheltozero Alexander Pavlovich Maximov (1931–1996).
The processing of flax from harvesting to the finished fiber consisted of the following stages: soaking, spreading, drying in a barn, crumpling, scutching and brushing. All these types of work were performed by women. Flax was soaked to make the fibers easier to separate from the woody parts of the stem. They preferred to wet flax in natural reservoirs — lakes and rivers. As a rule, a quiet, peaceful place was chosen (a pool, a backwater, a bay) without a fast current, so that the flax would not get covered with silt and sand. The choice of location mostly depended on the properties of the water, which affected the quality and color of the flax.
Flax soaked in lakes always turned white. Flax soaked in rivers could acquire a different color. Frozen flax was soaked in rivers with dark water to hide the redness of the frozen stems. The color of flax also changed in water on red sand or red clay. In hard water, flax did not obtain the desired properties. With late soaking, even in good water, flax could turn blue. In early frosts, flax had to be soaked longer until it got warmer, and long soaking reduced the strength of the fabric.
By the time the flax was ready, the soaked stems began to emanate a putrid smell. The flax became slippery and acquired an unpleasant greenish-yellow color. Then it was rinsed out, manually wrung out and put in small shocks with the tops down so that the water ran down and the flax warmed up. Drying of flax after soaking usually occurred on the last days of August and September. In the wind and under the sun, the flax dried and bleached.
