The Soviet tradition of making toys with their own hands has become an elite one

In recent years, more and more often you can see publications on the Internet with nostalgic captions like “5 signs of the New Year in the USSR that we have lost”, and inside there is a predictable set: a big company, Olivier salad, paper garlands … The latter has really turned into in short supply: more and more people choose modern decor for their apartment. However, the traditions of previous years have not sunk into oblivion. On the eve of the holiday, MK talked to those who carefully preserve the ideas of hand-made decor and found out who, at the end of 2022, needs handmade cards and home-made toys.

Lovers of nostalgia remember: they say that families used to gather before the New Year and together create a “decor” (although they didn’t know such a word then!) For an apartment – without regard to any fashion trends. This can be done today, but such entertainment has already turned into leisure for individual connoisseurs – what was once the most popular entertainment has turned into a niche product.

As Ekaterina Barinova, a teacher of calligraphy and a member of the Moscow Union of Artists, told MK, one of the best examples is postcards: if earlier a holiday could not be imagined without a mountain of bright cardboard rectangles, now they have become a toy for connoisseurs.

– Now there is a return to manual labor, but this is already an elite art – for a few. At a minimum, the tradition of handwritten postcards still exists among designers. However, we rarely make postcards for sale – this is rather a chamber phenomenon that is pleasant to us. I have been making cards for the New Year for a long time, as well as for Christmas, to please my friends. I know for sure: no one will throw away a handmade postcard. They are unique, one is not like the other. True, now we give these postcards personally, we put them under the Christmas tree. Only if the grandmother is in another town – then, of course, we will send it by mail, but more often the postcard serves as an addition to the gift. A paper card is warmth, just human warmth. Now there are a lot of postcards for every taste, for any price, some are touching, some with stupid inscriptions, but still they are not remembered.

The expert added that postcards using historical fonts look the most impressive, but they require a lot of work: you can’t make a postcard just like that, quickly and effortlessly if you have never drawn or written with a pen.

– At first, it is better to use blanks. For example, on the basis of the old Russian inscription – there you can turn around with imagination. But I have not seen such postcards being replicated – this is not a mass story. I make, for example, 20 postcards, added Barinova.

The next question is the festive decoration of the apartment, as well as Christmas decorations. Among the items most often sighed by those who miss the USSR are huge paper chain garlands that can be easily and quickly glued together by the whole family. Now, when video tutorials are gaining popularity, handmade connoisseurs come up with new formats – for example, voluminous snowflakes can be made from paper bags if you stack them and glue them with a pencil, and then cut out the pattern.

As Andrei Volkov, a member of the Union of Architects of Russia and an interior design specialist, told MK, interest in handmade New Year decorations never ended: another thing is that competent marketing often leads to the fact that most people prefer, without hesitation, to buy fairly typical commercial things – for example, each year choose a single color for New Year’s decor.

“It seems to me that it is superficial, and it may soon disappear. Our Russian tradition is handmade toys. Even in pre-revolutionary Russia, there was a tradition of making new toys for everyone before Christmas, for example, from cotton wool. Many of us still have Soviet glass toys at home – yes, they were factory-made, but made by hand. Therefore, those who want to preserve family traditions and the old way will always return to this style. Whatever one may say, the New Year is the main family holiday, we have no analogues. Therefore, there can be no fashion trends here – it has always been.

Another thing is that for some of the youth this is a discovery – they are faced with this for the first time, for them it is “craft”, “handmade” and a fashion fad. But let them come into contact with it at least this way!

The expert added that, if necessary, the idea of ​​making toys with one’s own hands can be “tied” to both economic and environmental awareness – and indeed turn the process into a good useful trend, avoiding “naphthalene” associations. After all, if people can’t afford the toy they want, they can make it themselves.

– Besides, if we are talking about children, then this is very important from the point of view of education – a child should learn about family traditions from childhood, know the history of the family. The question is not whether to buy or not to buy a paper garland – the question is what is behind it. What exactly to do is also not so important. A few years ago, everyone was making Scandinavian wooden houses, before that there was decoupage… I think it’s useless to chase trends. You need to do what works well and what you like. We create these trends ourselves. If you have a child, and the child has cardboard and a glue stick, everything will be ready without regard to trends. This process itself denies any pathos, – Andrey Volkov added.