One copy can get you 150,000 rubles
It's time to install a Christmas tree in the house and get an old suitcase from the mezzanine. The same one where Christmas tree decorations, covered with cotton wool and newspapers, live for most of the year. Here is a balloon that was bought last year, here is a garland from the eighties, and at the bottom of the box are the oldest toys, still grandmother's. We take them, hang them on the tree - and do not suspect that collectors are killed for these balls, bunnies, bears and other flashlights. And we are ready to pay more than one thousand rubles for them.
"MK" figured out which of the toys can be valuable not only for the soul, but also from a financial point of view.
What could be in a family Christmas tree suitcase? Toys made of plastic, glass, cardboard, foam, cotton wool, wood. Factory-made and home-made. On strings and on special pegs-stands, forcing the toy to stand and not hang on a branch. Cotton or rubber Santa Clauses and Snow Maiden. Finally, accessories: tinsel, rain, garlands - from flags or electric ...
Least of all questions - to plastic toys. They appeared in our everyday life in the 1990s, so, most likely, you yourself remember how and when they appeared in the collection. To become a rarity, these toys will have to wait for about half a century. The main thing is not to rush to throw it out if they don't like it: maybe the children and grandchildren will like it.
Further - everyone's favorite glass toys: balls and figures. They have been produced from the earliest times to this day. Each glass toy is handmade: the technology of how to stamp thin-walled glass has not yet been developed. Both the blowing and the painting are individual, although the toy was made at the factory. It is not easy to determine the age and rarity of a toy here - you need to leaf through catalogs (they are also available on the Internet).
Some hunt for certain series of toys, - collector Inna Ovsienko told MK. - For example, "Peoples of the USSR", "Tales of Pushkin". This last series, by the way, was a jubilee - timed to coincide with the centenary of the poet's death, launched in 1937. It became one of the first Soviet series of glass Christmas tree decorations in general.
The axial date for domestic Christmas tree decorations is 1936. It was then that the celebration of the New Year with a traditional Christmas tree again began to be welcomed by the state. Throughout the 20s and early 30s, the tree (as an attribute of the old Christmas tradition) was uprooted and destroyed. Pioneers were ashamed for decorating a Christmas tree in their house; neighbors looked askance at those who brought out the Christmas tree in January, so they had to do it secretly, at night ... But suddenly they were allowed, and all the Christmas tree rituals were restored. Only, of course, without angels and crosses on the branches and crown. New time - new symbols.
Propaganda toys were blown out of glass, says Ovsienko - These are stratospheric balloons made of bugles, and blown airships, and red bugle stars on top of a Christmas tree ... If you have such a toy, it is enough to find out when this or that campaign was going on (for example, the airship is 1937), and the date of manufacture toys are roughly understandable.
Post-war toys are brighter and more diverse, as well as more "childish" - without politics. Bears with and without accordions, geese and swans, fish and vegetables. The balls are simple and the "lanterns" are those in which the lights of the garland should be reflected. Santa Claus and Snow Maiden - in stock. But bugles - toys made of stringed beads and glass cylinders - have been fading away since the mid-1950s. Difficult, low-tech, old-fashioned and dangerous: children love to taste toys ...
The next material is cardboard, covered with a layer of colored foil. These toys are very old, pre-war. These were produced by various artels back in the twenties, almost clandestinely: Christmas trees, albeit secretly, were installed, which means there was a demand for toys. Take care of them - this is already a rarity! Although they do not fight, it will be a shame to give this to children or animals. Moreover, collectors sometimes pay tens of thousands of rubles for cardboard toys (as well as for pre-war glass ones).
Wartime toys are a special story, ”says collector Inna Ovsienko. - At the Moscow plant "Caliber" then set up the release of toys from production waste - substandard bulbs and so on. Quite a lot of them were made, but more than 70 years have passed, so now such toys are a rarity and value.
Well, the oldest toys - wadded and wooden - may well be of pre-revolutionary origin. By the way, then most of the toys were homemade - so if you still have jewelry from those years in your family, it is quite possible that your great-grandfather and great-grandmother made them with their own hands.
A separate song - wadded Santa Claus and Snow Maiden. Until the 1950s, their faces were molded from clay by hand; later, polymer substitutes were used. This "chapter" of the Christmas tree is the characters that you can look into the eyes and soak up the holiday atmosphere.
Real collectors of Christmas tree decorations do not measure their value in money, - smiles Ovsienko. - Much more valuable is spiritual, perhaps, the importance for the family. I always discourage people from selling family toys - after all, it is with them that family history comes to life on the New Year tree every year. If you lose it, then no money can buy it.
REFERENCE "MK"
How much are collectible Christmas tree toys made in Russia / USSR:
Thumbelina on a swallow (cotton wool, papier-mache, early 20th century): 32,500 rubles.
Set "15 republics of the USSR" in a box (cotton wool, 1962) - 65,000 rubles.
Border guard Karatsupa with the dog Ingus (cardboard, 1936) - 150,000 rubles.
Little negro (cotton wool, 1936) - 14,000 rubles.
Set "Doctor Aibolit" (glass, 1950s) - 150,000 rubles.
Misgir from the "Snow Maiden" set (glass, 1950s) - 20,000 rubles.
Pioneer (glass, 1938) - 47,000 rubles.
For several years now, he has been collecting a collection of special Christmas tree decorations: old ones, brought from travels or just those that you want to keep for many years. In this article, she will tell about the history of the appearance of toys in Russia, how she herself selects jewelry, where to buy them, how much they cost and how to create her own unique collection.
In the world of things that surround us every day, Christmas tree decorations have a special place. The New Year's holidays are ending, the tree is dismantled, the toys are packed in boxes and sent for storage until next December. From a practical point of view, a Christmas tree toy is a completely useless thing, it is designed to serve a different purpose: to evoke nostalgia, revive memories and the brightest images from childhood.
The hero of Stephen King's novel "The Dead Zone" (1979) John Smith very rightly said: "That's how funny it is with these Christmas tree decorations. When a person grows up, little remains of the things that surrounded him in childhood. Everything in the world is transient. Little can serve both children and adults. You will exchange your red stroller and bicycle for adult toys - a car, a tennis racket, a fashionable console for playing hockey on TV. Little is preserved from childhood. Only toys for the Christmas tree in the parents' house. The Lord God is just a joker. A big joker, he did not create the world, but some kind of comic opera, in which the glass ball lives longer than you. "
Each historical era created its own Christmas tree decorations. Pre-revolutionary Christmas tree decorations, for example, were fundamentally different from Soviet ones. The Russian Christmas tree was a product of German culture, because Germany is considered the first European country where they began to decorate a Christmas tree - this was in the 16th century. In the second half of the 19th century, spruce became a common German tradition. A description of the decorated classic German Christmas tree of the 19th century can be found in Hoffmann's fairy tale "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" (1816): "A large tree in the middle of the room was hung with golden and silver apples, and on all branches, like flowers or buds, sugared nuts, variegated sweets and all kinds of sweets. " In Russia, the tree appeared after the decree of Peter I of December 20, 1699, but the tradition spread everywhere only at the beginning of the 19th century. In tsarist Russia, the tree was an attribute of a privileged noble culture and decorated the houses of merchants, doctors, lawyers, professors and civil servants. The presence of a Christmas tree in the house testified to the involvement in European culture, which greatly raised the social status. From the second half of the 19th century, the Christmas tree appeared in the provinces, especially in those county towns where the German diaspora was strong.
The Christmas tree decorations that went on sale were only imported and were very expensive. Therefore, it was not easy for an ordinary city dweller, even an intellectual, to decorate a Christmas tree. Due to the lack and high cost of Christmas tree decorations, and then due to tradition, even in aristocratic families, toys were made at home. True, there were public charity trees that allowed children from low-income families to attend the holiday.
Christmas tree decorations in tsarist Russia contained religious symbols: the top of the tree was crowned with the star of Bethlehem, angels and birds soared here and there, apples and grapes hung - symbols of "heavenly" food, garlands, beads and wreaths - symbols of the suffering and holiness of Christ. In the late 19th - early 20th centuries, the Christmas tree was decorated with toys made of papier-mâché, cotton wool, wax, cardboard, paper, foil and metal. Glass decorations were still imported, so the main place on the tree was occupied by “homemade” toys and edible decorations. It was they who endowed the tree with that festive scent that remains in the memory for a lifetime.
The absence of its own toy production in tsarist Russia made the Russian Christmas tree absolutely apolitical and devoid of any national flavor. Russian toys during the reign of Nicholas II were manually carved from wood, blown out of glass and painted in a few handicraft industries. Now these toys are kept in museums and private collections of successful collectors. After the October Revolution, after 20 years of oblivion and prohibitions, the tree will be revived as a symbol of the new Soviet era and will become one of the main instruments of the new ideology and education of patriotism.
My collection of Christmas tree decorations is not an object of worship for a fragile material thing. Each of them personifies memories, emotions, unfulfilled hopes and dreams that still have a chance to come true someday. As an adult, I looked at the ballet dancers with enthusiasm, admired their grace and grace. In my collection lives a weightless crystal dancer from Vienna and an old glass ballerina with singed velvet legs, which I found on the eve of Christmas at Le Pus in Paris. Over the past few years, I have assembled a Russian ballet troupe from cotton wool - all these ballerinas come from pre-revolutionary and Soviet Russia. "Wadded" toys in our country appeared much earlier than glass ones, because the production of Christmas tree decorations from glass was incomparably more expensive than the production of papier-mâché, cotton wool and shreds. Now the situation has changed dramatically: a glass ball of the late 1930s can be bought for 300–500 rubles, but the price of cotton figurines from this period starts at 3,000 rubles.
In my collection there is a clown from the “Circus” series (colored batting, painting, mica; 1936) and a reindeer herder (stearin, colored batting, painting, mica; 1930). By the way, circus performers appeared on the Soviet Christmas tree thanks to Stalin, who liked the film "Circus" with Lyubov Orlova in the title role. After the film was released in 1936, the tree was rapidly decorated with acrobats and circus performers. The development of the North Pole also did not pass without a trace for the tree: deer, polar bears, Eskimos and skiers - all this was embodied in cotton wool, glass and cardboard. Soviet Christmas tree decorations reflected the events taking place in the country: red stars burned on the Christmas tree, cosmonauts and rockets took off in the sky in the footsteps of Gagarin, agricultural products grew, and especially the queen of the fields - Khrushchev's corn. The heroes of fairy tales celebrated in 1937 the centenary of the death of A.S. Pushkin - now the Old Man with a seine, Tsar Dadon, the Shahamanskaya queen, Alyonushka, Chernomor with heroes and other fairytale heroes are coveted trophies of collectors around the world. In 1948, Christmas decorations on clothespins appeared, and in 1957 in the USSR they released sets of mini-toys that made it possible to decorate a Christmas tree even in a small space of a Khrushchev apartment with low ceilings. Since the second half of the 60s, the production of Christmas tree toys in the USSR has been put on stream: with the development of factory production, Christmas tree decorations have become as standardized as possible and have practically lost their artistic and stylistic originality. By the decision of the International Organization of Collectors of Christmas Tree Decorations Golden Glow, toys made before 1966 are recognized as vintage.
I advise you to look for the most interesting papier-mâché toys of the Soviet period at flea markets (for example, on Tishinka in December) and from sellers on the websites "Molotok.ru" and "Avito.ru". The price of toys varies from 2,000 to 15,000 rubles, depending on the rarity and degree of preservation.
However, I do not pursue the goal of making my Christmas tree vintage, I want it to be unique and reflect the history of my family. And this story is happening right now! Now we can safely talk about a true revival of the production of Christmas tree decorations in our country: there has been a return from the use of glass blowing machines to a unique manual method of blowing toys, filling them with a special content and meaning, using the best traditions of domestic folk craft. And I am very glad that today fewer and fewer people are decorating the Christmas tree with monochromatic faceless balls. The tendency to replace a speckled and multi-colored Christmas tree with a pretentious "adult" designer Christmas tree seems blasphemous to me! A laconic and discreet Christmas tree, which forms a sense of stylish luxury, can hardly impress someone, leaving memories in their souls for many years. In my opinion, the bright diversity of Christmas tree decorations never seemed to people either annoying or vulgar: it is at the sight of a multi-colored and shining Christmas tree that I feel that special Christmas smell, which consists of the smells of a pine forest, wax candles, baked goods and painted toys.
My childhood was spent with my grandmother in the village, so I have a special weakness for Christmas tree decorations with rustic motives. Handmade Christmas tree decorations made by Russian glassblowers and artists look wonderful, but still a rare exception among the Chinese abundance: unique figurines from Pavlova and Shepelev's majolica workshop, hand-painted balls and figurines from Ariel. Unique balls from the series "Russian Traditions" of the SoiTa company are painted in the technique of miniature painting by the artists of Palekh, Fedoskino, Mstera and Kholuy. Each of these balls is unique, made by hand (craftsmen spend from two to four weeks to make) and can rightfully be called a work of art! In my collection there is a ball "By the pike's command", which can be viewed endlessly! The majolica workshop of Pavlova and Shepelev is located in the city of Yaroslavl, you can order Christmas tree decorations on the website mastermajolica.ru (prices from 1,000 to 6,000 rubles); the plant for the production of Christmas tree decorations "Ariel" is located in Nizhny Novgorod, in Moscow their toys are widely represented in the book house "Moscow" (prices from 500 to 2500 rubles); New Year's toys from SoiTa can be purchased at soita.ru (prices range from 6,000 to 40,000 rubles).
In recent years, I travel a lot and always bring old and unusual Christmas tree decorations from my trips. On my last trip to New York, I ended up in a totally incredible store owned by an old lady who is in love with Christmas. From under the More & More antiques counter she pulled out treasures that I have no doubt about: clay figures of animals and mermaids from Chile, Noah's Ark from Mexico, a glass skunk with a silver tail from Italy - I paid $ 148 for a large box of treasures! If you are in New York, stop by after visiting the Museum of National History: the shop is a five-minute walk from the museum.
Now the tree is neither an exquisite luxury for the rich, nor a joy for the elite, nor a fad for the spoiled, and everyone can hang sparkling glass squirrels on their spruce paws on Christmas Eve and New Years.
1. Katya, was your collection born spontaneously?
On the one hand, the decision and desire to collect Christmas tree decorations can be called spontaneous. But if you think about it, everything falls into place! When I moved to Moscow five years ago, all my time was devoted to study and work. I lived in a rented apartment, which was in no way associated with the word "home". So at the beginning of my first December in Moscow, I went to the store "Alye Parusa" and was stunned: it all sparkled and shimmered with the light of New Year's lights and bulbs. There I first saw the incredibly beautiful Christmas tree decorations, they appeared as if from my childhood memories, as a picture appears in a Polaroid photograph. And the most interesting thing, they were exactly what I could dream of - bright, sparkling nutcrackers, crocodiles, squirrels and a clock with neat painting. Previously, I could only see these toys in films or in pictures; in the Soviet and post-Soviet times there were no such toys. I will forever remember that evening, because he confirmed me in my thoughts: “If today I do not have a home and I cannot buy sofas and curtains, then let there be Christmas tree decorations. They symbolize the warmth of family traditions, and it is not so difficult to transport a small box to a new place. " And so it began!
2. How many years have you been collecting Christmas toys?
About 7 years old.
3. How many exhibits are in your collection?
I didn’t count, but I believe there are at least 600 pieces.
4. On what basis do you select new toys for your collection?
Today I am very selective - not like at first! Now I only buy very special toys. From each trip I definitely bring a few pieces, so I definitely check where the antique shops and markets are in the new city. Often, toys can be bought in shops at museums: in Vienna I found the heroes of Hieronymus Bosch's triptych "The Temptation of St. Anthony" - that was a joy! As for shopping in Moscow, I really love the Ariel toy factory - the highest quality hand-painted and very close to everyone stories. In my opinion, this is incomparably better than the Chinese conveyor!
5. What is the oldest exhibit?
The oldest toys are Russian pre-revolutionary figurines made of cotton wool, in my case, ballerinas. There are toys from the late 19th century from Barcelona, \u200b\u200bbut it should be noted that they are still heroes of the puppet theater, ideally sized to hang on a Christmas tree.
6. Do you have any favorites?
Of course, everyone has favorites! And as it happens in life, pets do not always take a justified place in our hearts. The most favorite toys are gifts from my closest people. What I value most is my husband's gifts, such as a cotton acrobat bought on our first Christmas at the Flea Market. Of course, I love gifts from our parents, grandmothers, sisters, friends! Everyone knows about my collection, so it is always replenished by the new year.
I have already said that on trips I buy toys at flea markets and museum shops. Well, if you are traveling during the “season” then you can find something interesting at the Christmas markets. Although I found my most interesting specimens in the off-season, when less Chinese junk catches the eye. In Moscow, there is an excellent opportunity to buy antique jewelry at the traditional "Flea Market" in December, but the prices there are very high, and if you search, you will find more interesting and much cheaper items on Avito or Ebay. If you are looking for a toy as a gift, you can see the Polish factory M. A. Mostowski - Christmas tree decorations are quite expensive, but extremely beautiful and of high quality, grouped in series and packed in holiday boxes.
8. How do you keep your collection?
To date, 4 large boxes have been allocated for my collection, which neatly stand in the closet and take up half of it! I pack each toy in kraft paper. I almost never store original boxes because they take up a lot of space.
9. Does your collection have a practical application? Are there toys that you buy out of your passion for collecting, knowing that you will not use them in your Christmas tree decor?
No, when buying a toy, I always "see" it on the tree. For me, the meaning of the collection is to bring joy, and not satisfy the collector's passion. In an amicable way, I am a collector in the second place, in the first place - a happy adult child. After all, children do not collect, they rejoice at what they hold in their hands.
10. How early do you decorate your house for the new year? How do you select toys?
As a rule, we put the tree a week before the New Year, that is, right on Christmas Eve (December 24). Sometimes a little earlier if we leave for the holidays. We always buy a living tree, so we never have a Christmas tree for a month - I don't want the magic to become boring. As for the toys, I just dress up until the place runs out on the tree!
11. Can you give some tips for aspiring collectors?
It seems to me that the most important thing is not to invest in a collection of material value, but to collect a "family history". Buying not the toys themselves, but remembering the days and moments in which these cats and nutcrackers appeared. There are no fashion and trends here, there is only your heart and your soul, your thoughts and feelings, which will pop up in your memory when you open the next box with your Christmas tree decorations. Only our memory gives value to things .
Over the past 20 years, he has been collecting and restoring old toys for children, having a special love for Christmas tree decorations. His extensive collection contains about three thousand old New Year's toys, which have found their home in a small room in the Palace of Pioneers on Vorobyovy Gory. Among the rare exhibits of Sergei Romanov are toys made from the 1830s to the 1840s until the collapse of the USSR, as well as papier-mâché toys from the 50s. We invite you to plunge into the atmosphere of magic and look at old Christmas tree decorations from the past.
Angel, early XX century
The boat. Late 19th - early 20th century
Christmas grandfather. Glass. Late 19th - early 20th century
Boy skiing, glass balls. Late 19th - early 20th century
Children on sleds. Wadded toys with porcelain faces. Late 19th - early 20th century
Christmas grandfather. Cotton toy, chromolithography. Late 19th - early 20th century
Star. Mounted toy. Glass. Late 19th - early 20th century
Christmas grandfather. Chromolithograph. Late 19th - early 20th century
Ball in honor of the 20th anniversary of the October Revolution. Glass. 1937 year
Letter from Santa Claus. New Year card. Mid XX century
Santa Claus. Wadded toy 1930-1940
Snow Maiden. Cotton toy. 1930-1950 years
Locomotive. Embossed cardboard. 1930-1940 years
Airships. Glass. 1930-1940 years
Clock. Glass. 1950-1960 years
Hare with a drum. Glass. 1950-1970 years
Clown with a pipe. Glass. 1950-1970 years
Glass toys 1960-1980
Lady with a snowball. Porcelain doll. End of XIX - beginning
Christmas tree with wadded toys. Second half of the 1930s
Today a Christmas tree toy is not only a festive decoration, but also a museum exhibit. Nowadays, a Christmas tree toy has become a collector's pride, a tradition has emerged to present unusual and expensive Christmas tree decorations as a New Year's gift.
Both our compatriots and foreigners collect our Christmas tree decorations. At the Vernissage in Izmailovo they buy not only traditional nesting dolls, scarves and painted trays, but also old Soviet Christmas tree decorations. 
One of the largest collections of Christmas tree decorations in the world was collected by the American Kim Balashak, who has been living in Russia since 1995. The collection covers five periods: pre-revolutionary, twenties and thirties, years of the Great Patriotic War, post-war and, finally, the era of "the development of socialist industry and the growth of the people's welfare" up to 1965. The collection contains more than 2.5 thousand copies of Russian and Soviet toys, among which there are unique ones - for example, a series of balloons depicting members of the Politburo. Or, for example, a large Christmas tree ball, which depicts the four main faces of that time: Stalin, Lenin, Marx and Engels. All these balls are very rare: they were produced only during one year, 1937, in Moscow.
Disassembling old boxes with Soviet Christmas tree decorations, I was touched: what they did not do in the scoop: astronauts, cooks, huts on chicken legs, watches, various vegetables and fruits, teapots and samovars, funny flat animal profiles, cotton santa claus and Snow Maidens. And I found all this happiness on the mezzanine in wooden boxes at my grandmother's. Real treasures! Take a look. What magical and solemn energy comes from them, this is not modern shiny plastic from China.
Enjoy.
