Malachite Chronicle?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Magazine "Around the World"

What I'm going to talk about now resembles a sci-fi detective story. But, I warn you, everything said here is true from beginning to end. At any time, to anyone who wants, I can present a completely unusual document that has fallen into my hands.

This happens only once in life. The purest case put me on the trail of a completely unexpected discovery.

Judge for yourself: today I have in my hands more than two hundred portraits of people who lived two hundred years ago! I am the owner of invaluable paintings and panels depicting the events of the era of the reign of Catherine II. I have in my hands, apparently, portraits of many participants in the peasant uprisings of the 18th century, including, possibly, associates of Pugachev.

Sometimes it seems to me that I have penetrated into the past with a camera and made a photo report about the events that took place in the Urals in the sixties and seventies of the 18th century!

This "camera" was a nondescript-looking malachite tile, which once served as the lid of a small malachite box. The size of the cover is 13.5 by 19.7 centimeters. The Ural chronicler applied all these drawings and panels to the polished surface of the tile in completely unusual ways.

The first thing that catches your eye when looking at the tile is the fancy stone flower in its central part. It is somewhat reminiscent of a rose growing in a magical garden. But this is not the main thing in the drawing. The tile is like a mysterious picture: it must be turned in the hands, peering into the patterns of lines and spots, skillfully assembled by the chronicler artist, in order to see the hidden image.

We are used to thinking that the Ural masters knew how to create pictures from glued pieces of patterned green stone. We are accustomed to the appearance of circles, ellipses, intricate variations of stripes assembled from malachite buds cut into thin slices.

Here, too, is a malachite mosaic. But the pieces were glued on, on which the artist DRAWED portraits of people and pictures of the events of his era. I did not make a reservation: I DRAWED it!

Unfortunately, the secret of the production of such paintings has been lost. None of the modern specialists in processing malachite have heard of this method. How did he do it? Perhaps he rubbed malachite dust with glue with a spatula. Apparently, the process took place at an elevated temperature. I think that the technology for making such paintings can be restored.

But that's not all.

Where it was necessary to depict secret portraits, the artist used an even more unusual method. He sculpted figures of "secret" characters from malachite chips, dust and glue. The sculpting was also unusual. The portraits he made can only be seen with a microscope or high magnification photographs from a tile. It was MICRO PAINTING!

The micro-images created by an unknown artist, with their amazing "portraiture", were placed sparingly in a space calculated in tenths and hundredths of a millimeter. One of the "classified" portrait sets, housed in a pinhead-sized space, contains over THIRTY portraits.

I showed all these portraits and panels to many of my friends. They reacted differently to what they saw. The overwhelming majority immediately perceived the artist's drawings. Some drew attention to essential details that I had not noticed.

A small group of my friends, who belonged to the category of doubters, usually asked me dozens of "tricky" questions. These are the questions and my answers to them.

- Isn't it all a figment of the imagination? After all, there are landscape stones on which nature depicted fortifications, seas, mountains, and even people. You can see landscapes in thunderclouds and in a puddle of water. Have we met here with landscape malachite?

- Yes, there are landscape stones. I myself have written a lot about drawings on jaspers. I came across landscape rhodonite, on which the edge of the forest, the house and the road to it were clearly visible. In the beginning, I tried to explain what I saw on the malachite tiles by the natural "landscape". But these "landscapes" turned out to be too unusual. No, here we encountered another phenomenon that had never been noted by anyone before. Hundreds of drawings of people and animals were matched into certain groups, mutually connected with each other. But the most important thing is that they turned out to be SIGNED! Hundreds of words emerged on the malachite tile, skillfully woven into a pattern similar to the natural one - malachite. I can assure you that inscriptions have never been found anywhere on any landscape stone.

- Well, how can you prove that the image is drawn, and not picked up in a mosaic of special varieties of malachite? - did not appease the doubters.

Here I usually tell that I myself, trying to confirm what I saw, went to the criminologists. I asked them to look at and photograph the tiles in infrared and ultraviolet rays. The pictures taken in ultraviolet light turned out to be striking. The prints revealed a completely different picture (and the inscriptions to it), having nothing in common with the image on the surface layer. Below I will go into detail about the composition of an image visible only in ultraviolet rays. Now I will only note that ultraviolet rays allow you to see what is located a little deeper than the visible surface. The top image has been superimposed on an earlier image!

The photographs taken with an electron microscope showed that the microstructure of the tile surface has nothing to do with the structure of malachite. This means that the malachite base of the tile is covered from the surface with something like varnish or enamel, on which the painting was carried out.

Not being able to give at least a short description of the find within the framework of a small article, I will focus only on some of its fragments.

But before starting the story, I will say a few words about how this tile came to me.

About fifteen years ago I asked one of the Ural malachite workers to find me a malachite scrap for an ink set. Soon I received this "scrap", which accidentally survived from one of the former owners of an antique shop in St. Petersburg. During the Great Patriotic War, this owner (who handed over her store to the state in the 1920s) was evacuated to Sverdlovsk. It was here that she sold the malachite lid.

I never made an ink set. The tile lay with me along with other stones in my collection.

Once, looking at a tile, one of my friends noticed that at certain turns of the tile, strange contours of people and animals were seen on it.

This is how the study of drawings began.

The details gradually came to light. The artist who created this malachite box was a wonderful psychologist. He has superbly classified the main images. A hundred years later, this principle of classification became firmly established in detective literature. One of Edgar Poe's stories tells how the best detectives ran off their feet in search of a document. And the desired object lay right before our eyes. It never occurred to anyone to check the obvious.

So it is on malachite tiles. The flower drawing is hypnotizing. The eye no longer perceives what is hidden in it. Used a typical technique of mysterious pictures from the series "Where did the hunter's dog hide?" Such drawings are known to all. It is necessary to peer for a long time, examine the image this way and that, until the eye suddenly sees that seemingly chaotic lines form an accurate drawing. And after that it remains only to wonder: where were my eyes before?

An unknown artist worked this technique to such perfection that even an experienced malachite man, who had been engaged in the selection of malachite mosaics all his life, fell for this technique. He saw nothing on the tile except for the central flower.

The artist connected the second principle of classifying objects with visual acuity. The normal eye is known to be able to see two points if they are at an angle of one minute. But there are people with super-sharp eyesight. The most secret was fulfilled with such people in mind. Individual details of the drawing are viewed from the angle of view per second and fractions of a second!

The question about the time of the manufacture of the malachite box became quite natural.

Malachitchik, passing me the tile, noticed that the malachite in it was glued not to metal, but to marble. Caskets were made this way only in the 18th century. This means that the tiles are about two hundred years old!

There was also direct confirmation, but it was preceded by months of decryption. One of the best amateur photographers in Sverdlovsk, a high school teacher Mikhail Filatov, helped me to read the drawing. He managed to photograph the tiles and their fragments in such a way that sometimes a microscope was not needed. The second assistant, student Georgy Melnichuk, sketched what gradually "appeared" when studying the tiles and their photographs.

The search for the date of manufacture of the tile led first to the discovery of a monogram on the chest of one of the main characters - a man in an admiral's uniform. The admiral's figure is mounted in the lower part of the flower and takes up a lot of space. In the monogram image, the letters "E", "K", "T", "P", "H" and the index "II" are clearly visible.

"Catherine II"! - here is the time of action. This means that the artist was an eyewitness to those events that really happened about two hundred years ago! This means that the artist could even be a participant in the peasant uprisings of Pugachev. Indeed, the name of one of Pugachev's closest associates - "YULAEV" is repeated several times on the tile!

In some sections of the tile, the artist depicted detachments of people joining the army, lone partisans disguised in the forests, people who stood in a circular defense.

The artist also depicted opponents. Among them we see grenadiers in shako and cocked hats, officers, nobles and priests of all stripes, including Catholic.

One of the tile fragments depicts a whipping of a serf. The laconicism of the scene of the massacre of the serf is striking. A naked man lying with his back up is punished. The figure of an executioner with a whip has been conditionally resolved. At the feet of the punished officer. Near the head is a bearded man, apparently the headman. On the wall there is an image of three saints. In heaven - the mother of God, turned away from the scene of punishment. From this panel blows the hopelessness of being of those times: there is no truth either on earth or in heaven.

The most difficult encrypted portraits of a group of people walking in a caravan on horses, camels and donkeys. They are led by a guide. Grenadiers are opposed to this group. The head of one of the caravan participants (its size is the size of a pinhead) contains more than thirty encrypted portraits! We managed to see them when the picture was enlarged by 50 times. Identifying many of the portraits with famous portraits of historical figures is a matter of the future. But I think that among them we will find images of both Pugachev and his associates. Truly, I fell into the hands of a genuine "tale of bygone years", a malachite chronicle.

Much of what was hidden came to light when looking at the photomicrographs. In such pictures, it was possible to see what is hidden by greens of different shades of malachite color. The photo averaged the colors. This helped to read the unreadable. In this way, it was possible to read the inscriptions on the tiles. Some of them are written in an elaborate monogram style, some words are difficult to read due to the repeated repetition of letters, many of the inscriptions are microscopic in size. Here are some of the inscriptions I read.

“Ermolai Herod” is written on the general's hat. The word "Scared" is scrawled across his jaw.

One of the drawings shows a monument. "The Author of the Century" - can be read on the monument. It is difficult to see the numbers right there and then. One of them is "1784". On the monument is an energetic profile of a person. There is a book under the monument. On it is the word "Will" … What is it? Monument to Radishchev for his ode "Liberty"? But Radishchev died in 1802. The ode "Liberty" was created by him in 1783. This drawing can be understood as the artist's recognition of Radishchev's merits during his lifetime. In Moscow, in Historical Proezd, opposite the Historical Museum, there is a bas-relief of Radishchev. On the bas-relief, Radishchev is depicted in profile. There is a certain similarity between the pattern on the malachite tile and this bas-relief. It is no coincidence that this figure is encrypted very, very carefully. For the artist, in the event of his exposure, such a portrait threatened with reprisal.

The words read on the tile are still isolated. They add up to no more than two percent of what is written. There is still no coherent picture of everything stated on it, but I have already begun to analyze individual surnames and dates.

Not only portraits of people met on the tiles. A whole "zoo" of animals and fairy-tale characters is depicted on its surface.

The world of the "unclean" is also diverse. Of the fabulous "evil spirits", the first place belongs to the devil. He is depicted several times. With all the attributes relying on the devil: horns, a pig's snout and other abominations. In one of the drawings, the devil is next to a dignitary in the crown.

But what we managed to see in special photographs taken in ultraviolet light. The forensic expert V. V. Patrushev helped me to take these photos.

The first prints did not make me feel any emotion. Only the places where individual tiles were glued were clearly visible on them. It was clear that the main luminescent substance was not the material of the tile (malachite does not luminesce), but the coating, in which one of the constituent parts was a substance that glowed in ultraviolet light in a pale green color. Perhaps it belonged to some kind of organic compound.

Only after receiving prints made on especially contrasting paper did the tiles speak. She spoke about the tragedy that took place in the Urals more than two hundred years ago. First of all, a completely different image emerged from photographic prints, not what is visible in daylight. Likewise, restoration workshops reveal ancient paintings buried under layers of later primers and restorations.

It became quite obvious that both images - the ancient (let's call it that) and the latest - are PAINTED on malachite.

In the ancient drawing, both the time and place of action are given even more clearly.

The scene was easily deciphered. In the lower part of the upper tile, almost in the center of the composition, there is a drawing of a large basement. A massive tower is located above the basement. The tower is tilted - "falls". The only known "falling" tower in the Urals. It is located in Nevyansk. The tower was built by order of Demidov in 1725. At first, she had a sentry assignment. Bad fame spread among the people about this tower. They whispered to each other that Demidov was keeping fugitive people in this tower, minting a counterfeit coin. Gold and silver for coins were taken from ores mined in Siberia.

They say that Catherine II heard about these tricks of Demidov. She sent her faithful man to the Urals - Prince Alexander Alekseevich Vyazemsky, providing him with unlimited powers. But Demidov, in order to hide the traces of the crime, ordered to flood the basements. It was in 1763.

The ancient drawing, obviously, depicts the last act of the tragedy - the flooding and death of people in the basements of the Nevyansk tower.

More than two hundred years have passed since the death of the workers. The Demidov secret remained undisclosed. Is it possible that ultraviolet light has now revealed to us an artistic document of that era, which tells how it was ?!

In the first fragments, we see a dungeon with a burning forge, in which metal was melted. Waiting for swimming trunks. People stand calmly, not foreseeing the impending danger. In the foreground of the picture, there is also no impending catastrophe yet. Machines and steam boilers are visible here. To emphasize what is depicted, the artist signed: "FFK boilers." The huge flywheel shows the date of its manufacture: "1753" But II Polzunov built his first car in 1765! Was it really invented twelve years earlier? Or did the artist confuse the date?

A new fragment of the panel. Water gushes through the open sluices. The faces of the witnesses and participants in the disaster are full of horror. The water caught them while they were working … One of the workers apparently managed to float to the surface of the stream. He threatens the owner, who stands proudly on the bank of the pond.

The date “1763” is repeated several times in the ancient tile pattern. Only the day and month of the event are illegible. They are read ambiguously as 11 / VI and 15 / III.

The outline of words and letters at times resembles the monogram of the 18th century, it is difficult to read. Therefore, there is also a lot of unread in the ancient drawing. Much remains to be painstakingly examined, comparing the read with the archival materials.

The ancient document tenaciously keeps its secrets. Sometimes it seems to me that I found myself in the position of a photographer who filmed many phenomena with a hidden camera, but did not record where and what he was shooting. There is a lot of work to be done to identify the "photographs", to identify real characters - for many specialists.

After all, we are talking about an unknown talent who has created a unique piece of art. Apparently, it is also about reading the artistic chronicle of the exciting events of the late 18th century.

In addition, I flatter myself with the thought that everything stated here will serve as an impetus for further searches. It is known that many malachite items are kept in private collections: caskets, countertops, vases, ink utensils, snuff boxes. Maybe someone will be lucky enough to come across something like this. I warn you: the search sign of the antiquity of the malachite product is very clear: the malachite in them is glued not on a copper or iron frame, but on a stone one made of marble.

The marble skeleton of 18th century items was fragile. Therefore, most of the products of ancient craftsmen were broken and either destroyed or processed into other works.

But, perhaps, other works of the mysterious master of the 18th century - a man of great talent and, apparently, an unusual fate, have been preserved? Who is he? Why did he start his daring and secret work?

The tile that ended up in my hands is silent about it. But is it only about this? After all, the decryption has not yet been completed. What else will the find tell?

A. Malakhov, Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences