Exhibition of unique New Year’s decorations of early XX century is organized in Bashkortostan

An exhibition of New Year’s decorations popular in the last century is organized at Aksakovsky Historical and Cultural Centre in Nadezhdino village of Belebeevsky region. The exhibition consists of New Year’s decorations presented by Nadezhdino villagers. Over 60 now unique items from glass, wool and cardboard, festive New Year’s posters and masques will be available for visitors until the 13th of January.

In the mid-1920s, the celebration of Christmas and New Year was banned in the Soviet Union. Consequently, it was forbidden to decorate the New Year Tree. Return to the New Year traditions occurred in the second half of the 1930s.

Since 1936, the era of the Soviet New Year-tree decorations starts.

Especially popular were cotton decorations because of their low cost and ease of manufacture.

Decorations made of cardboard were usually covered with silver or colored foil. Cardboard decorations, which were cheap, accessible, and most importantly - unbreakable, decorated New Year-trees at children’s parties in schools and kindergartens.

Glass decorations in the form of human figures and animals, fruits and vegetables, household items (kettles, samovars, table lamps), were blown by means of special molds, and then were painted.

Since the mid -1960s an artisanal production of New Year’s decorations in the Soviet Union stopped and machine production started. Experts say that this led to uniformity, and the Soviet New Year’s decorations - as a unique phenomenon in terms of content and form - ceased to exist.