Restoration of Soviet foil icons and the study of the artifacts

Soviet icons – handmade devotional images decorated with foil – were the most widespread religious artifacts of the USSR era. Those objects are now falling out of use and ceasing to participate in religious practices. Nevertheless, they have attracted considerable interest from scholars who are engaged not only in their study and exhibition but also in their collection, preservation, and restoration. The article focuses on restoration methodology as a necessary stage in the comprehensive study of Soviet icons. Viewing the bricolage artifacts as “containers of memory” that hold information about the material culture and everyday life of their time, the author describes a step-by-step strategy for studying the artifacts during their conservation. Minimal intervention, ensuring the object’s preservation, and the maximal revelation of its original characteristics and hidden “information layers” are proposed as the primary goal of such restoration. The creation of a photo dossier documenting all stages of the work is presented as a crucial component of the methodology. Such an approach allows not only for the preservation of unique items of Soviet religious life but also for the extraction of the historical and cultural information they contain, enabling the reconstruction of an artifact’s “biography”, the identification of traces of later modifications, and the establishment of local traditions of Soviet “foil icons”.

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