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Gorodets painting (Городецкая роспись in Russian) is one of the folk arts and crafts of Russia, and a phenomenon of the so-called naive art.
Gorodets painting sprang from carved Gorodets distaffs that were manufactured in villages nearby Gorodets town in the Nizhni Novgorod Region.
Initially Gorodets craftsmen used the incrustation technique to ornament the distaffs. The mid 19th century saw the transition from incrustation to painting of Distaff.
Gorodets artists traditionally paint genre scenes (merrymaking, tea drinking, the famous Gorodets horse with a horseman, and folk festivities), decorative images of birds and animals (roosters, horses, lions, leopards, etc.) and flower patterns.
Nowadays Gorodets craftsmen use similar imagery and motifs in their works. These are decorative panels, caskets, boxes, various sets of kitchen stuff, such as hardboards, bread bins, saltcellars, etc., as well as children furniture and toys, including the most popular painted rocking horse.
The factory 'Gorodets Painting' existing from 1965 has got an experimental laboratory, where new genre compositions are devised. Along with preserving the artistic tradition and stylistic, dating to the 19th century, modern Gorodets painting keeps developing.