People say: “The owner will tie it up with a stripe, and then for future use.” Indeed, practical Russians are able to find a use for what, it would seem, by definition, is only suitable for discarding, for example, the entrails of animals and fish.
Glass
Window glass became available to peasants only at the beginning of the 19th century, and until that moment, windows were “glazed” with specially treated insides. As ethnographer and museologist Evgenia Blomkvist writes, a bull or fish bladder, or less often the peritoneum, was stretched onto a wooden frame.
Such “glass” was not only affordable, but also prevented heat from escaping from the hut, although it let in much less sunlight. It is clear that it was impossible to see what was happening on the street through the window with the bull bubble.
Bowstring
Our ancestors made bow strings from whatever they used. Most often made from hemp or rawhide from bulls or elk. And for dry and warm weather, a bowstring made from the intestines of large ungulates was suitable. The gut string was strong and accessible, but stretched greatly when wet.
Tendons were also used in making bows. Deer, bull or elk reinforced the shoulders of the bow, bending them in the opposite direction after removing the bowstring.
Toys and musical instruments
Every self-respecting buffoon must have had a rattle made from a bull's bladder. And to make it sound louder and more perky, dried peas were poured into it, fortunately there was no shortage of them.
The bull's bladder was also used to make buffoon bagpipes. Zoya Vlasova, a researcher of buffoon folklore, historian and philologist, refers to an epic of the 16th century and writes that “a big, good bull’s bladder was “oh so expensive” (up to 7 rubles).”
What was not used for food was useful in peasant families for making children's toys. Rattles were made from bull bladders or bird beaks for the little ones. The bull's bladder is also quite elastic, and if you carefully inflate it and then fill it with straw, you get an excellent ball for older children.
Sole
Russian peasants wore bast shoes until the 30s of the last century. Every now and then everyone could make themselves a new pair, which would last for a maximum of a week. Bast shoes that had become unusable could be thrown away or picked out, that is, hemmed.
The sole was often reinforced with hemp rope, less often with rawhide or a bull's bladder. The leather sole was valued more than the bast shoe itself; it was not for nothing that people said about such shoes: “A bast shoe is not worth a rip.”
Wig
Moscow actors of the century before last imitated baldness using a bull's bladder. The famous writer of everyday life in Moscow, Vladimir Gilyarovsky, talks about such an episode. In 1879, a certain entrepreneur Dalmatov, famous for his attractive appearance and thick hair, appeared before the public during the benefit performance of “Notes of a Madman” with a “completely bare skull.”
It turned out that the “bald wig” was made for him by a boy, a student of hairdresser Shishkov. Although the actor screamed and waved while “putting on his well-groomed hairstyle” the wet bull bladder, after completing the work he “beamed with pleasure.” The new image turned out to be too spectacular.
Threads
It is known that the ancestors of the Indigir people, who today live in the lower reaches of the Kolyma and are engaged in hunting and fishing, used reindeer skins for sewing clothes. And deer tendons became strong and reliable threads for sewing clothes and shoes.
Delicacies
The stereotype that Russians did not eat the entrails of animals and fish for food is easily refuted by ethnographic observations of the life of Russians in the Arctic.
And today, tendons and bone fat from deer shin bones are considered delicacies by the guards of the north, and goose tormentors (cleaned stomachs) acquire special value after they have become slightly rancid.
Fortune telling
Russians observed the tradition of eating pork tripe on Anisin's Day. At the height of Christmastide, on January 12, on Anisya-Zheludochnitsa they not only prepared pig entrails, stuffing kendyukhi (stomachs) with brisket and onions, but also told fortunes.
Before eating the spleen, it was carefully examined. If the inside turned out to be smooth and even, then they were preparing for a harsh winter. The stomach was also studied. When they found nothing in it, they were sure that the severe cold would be prolonged.
CONSPIRACY
In the arsenal of sorcerers and healers, entrails occupied no less an honorable place than herbs. Mikhail Zabelin talks about one of the recipes for a successful hunt in his book “Russian Life”.
It was recommended to do the following: mix the left eye of the eagle with the blood and bile of a cow, “dry it and tie it in a clean blue scarf.” Such a bait of luck, tied to nets, traps or traps, guaranteed a rich catch.
And for making love potions, the hearts of all kinds of birds were in particular demand. It was believed that drinking an infusion based on a sparrow's heart could awaken a woman's love for her husband, and to expose a roaming spouse, it was enough to apply a cloth scarf with an owl's heart wrapped in it to his left side.
Medicine
Many ointments and decoctions based on animal entrails, which were widely used in Rus', are still used in traditional medicine today. For example, beaver stream is a dried prostate gland.
Nevsky’s warriors healed wounds with its tincture, Peter the Great got rid of hangovers, and Pushkin treated sore joints in Pyatigorsk. Beaver stream is also called “Russian Viagra,” although it is believed that it also helps with severe pneumonia, tuberculosis, hepatitis, leukemia and a hundred other diseases.
T. V. Knyazhitskaya
Magazine “Museum World”, July 2011.
Windows perform two main tasks: they protect the room from adverse environmental conditions and let in light. The shape of window openings and the material used to fill them are determined by the climatic conditions of a particular region and the natural resources available there. The peoples of Europe and Asia used various materials to fill windows and decorate them. Ornamental lattices made of alabaster in the countries of the East, translucent stone plates in Romanesque Europe, colored glass in the Middle Ages... In Ancient Rus', holes cut in the log walls of houses were covered with bull and fish bladders, canvas, paper, rawhide, in the northern regions - with ice plates that did not melt for most of the year, and mica (1). Mica is a natural mineral that, due to its layered structure, easily splits into thin translucent plates. Mica mining was one of the important Russian crafts; it was expensive, from 15 to 150 rubles per pood, depending on the type (2), and only rich people “glazed” their windows with it. Only in those places where deposits of this mineral came to the surface - along the banks of the Angara and Lena rivers - did peasants have the opportunity to use it (3). Mica was one of the export items: it was exported both to the East by “Persian merchants” and to the West by “Frankish and Greek merchants and anyone who comes here, because this stone is only available here” (4). Russian mica was considered the best in the world and was known in Western Europe under the name “muscovite” (5). There was an exclusive royal right to large layers of mica: “Everything that is more than one arshin in length and width belongs to the royal monopoly and cannot be openly sold to any private individuals” (6). Windows from buildings of the nobility and royal palaces even in the 16th-17th centuries. were covered with mica (7). In Rus' at that time it was called “crystal”, “Moscow glass”.
Small pieces of mica were sewn together (mica windows “thread-sewn”) or attached with small nails to tin strips, under which the edges of the plates were placed overlapping (8). By combining many pieces of mica of different sizes, the craftsmen gave the window the appearance of an ordered geometric grid or ornament, sometimes with an image in the center. There is information dating back to the 17th century that mica windows were painted with paints depicting flowers and herbs, animals and birds. Thus, in 1667, the painter Ivan Saltanov was ordered to paint the mica window in the mansion of the young Tsarevich Peter Alekseevich - the future Emperor Peter I - “in the circle of the eagle, in the corners of the grass, and paint it so that you could see through it from the mansion, and from the courtyard into mansions, so that it is not visible” (9). In 1692, in the mansions of Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich - the son of Peter I - mica windows were painted so as not to “see through them.” Various images of people, animals and birds covered the mica windows in the Pereslavl Palace of Peter I. Some of them have survived. The painted mica windows resembled Western European stained glass windows in their appearance and probably “deceived” foreigners. Thus, in the engraving “Reception of the Swedish Ambassador Count Oxenstern on March 30, 1674 in the Golden Chamber of the Kremlin Palace (from the diary of Eric Palmquist)” half-length images of people are clearly readable in the large windows. This window design is a cabinet type of stained glass, widespread in Europe in secular buildings. Probably, foreigners perceived Russian mica windows as decorative glazing, equivalent to European stained glass windows. That is why the artist “conjectured” the missing image of a person on the window plane.
There is a lot in common between European stained glass windows and ancient Russian mica windows: the typesetting principle of window filling, the presence of a dark linear outline made of metal, and in some cases, painting. Only the materials and methods of joining the elements into a single whole differed: in Russian windows there were mica plates sewn or fastened with nails with strips of “white iron” covering the seams, in Europe there were pieces of flat glass connected with lead profiled wire with soldering at the joints of the structure. Mica windows had a utilitarian purpose and played a decorative role in the interior thanks to the ordered pattern of geometric elements in the frame, unlike most Western European stained glass windows, which in most cases also carried a certain content in the plot, be it coats of arms, gallant or biblical scenes, portraits . Mica windows can be recognized as the Russian analogue of Western European stained glass. Paper and fabric linings introduced color into the translucent ornamental composition.
Information about painted mica windows dates back only to the 17th century. Judging by the surviving samples, the drawings on them go back to Western European engravings of the late Renaissance (10). Birds that look like parrots, eagles, a musician with a violin, horse warriors, tulip flowers - this is a list of images on one of the surviving windows in Pereslavl-Zalessky. 
Probably, the painting on the windows appeared as an imitation of picturesque European stained glass, which by that time was known not only from engravings and personal impressions of Russian travelers abroad, but also from specific samples brought from Europe and located in the royal palaces and houses of the court nobility. There were stained glass windows in the windows of the house of princes Vasily and Alexei Golitsyn, “which is in the White City, between Tverskaya and Dmitrovka streets” (11). The windows in the upper large dining room of Prince Vasily Golitsyn, the main room of the house, were especially impressively decorated. Here, two rows of windows were glazed (unprecedented luxury at that time): “there are 46 windows in two zones with glass windows, in places there is glass from the face,” in addition, “on the two upper windows” there was an image, apparently, of two angels: “ two persons are painted; they have hair and wings; they are wearing a dress: one has the lower one of ore-yellow taffeta, and the upper one of white fur; on the other, the lower atlas is celiac, and the upper is white.” Even Patriarch Filaret succumbed to the secular hobby: “in 1633, in the Cross Painted Tent ... “ornate glass windows with herbs and birds” were bought from the German Davyd Mikulaev for 5 rubles. 14 alt. 4 money" (12). Another example: in January 1675, the foreigner Jan made “nine large glass colored endings” (13) in the chambers of boyar Kirill Naryshkin. The glass was inserted into lead frames that looked like a geometric grid: such windows were called checkered and lattice windows. They were assembled from imported materials (both glass and lead were imported), often by foreign craftsmen. Such stained glass 
made of multi-colored glass or slightly colored mica plates assembled into a pattern complemented the colorful decor of the palace interiors of the 17th century. The daylight coming through the colored windows created a special, joyful mood and made the interior cozy. Mica was a common material in the windows of merchant and boyar houses, churches, executive chambers, and huts of wealthy peasants. Its mass displacement by glass began only in the 18th century and first affected the houses of wealthy people, in whose windows mica and glass coexisted for a long time (14), and in some regions of the country mica windows were preserved until the beginning of the 20th century (15). 
The seventeenth century remained the time of greatest prosperity in the history of mica windows. From that period, wonderful mica pots created by Russian artisans have come down to us. Today, these aged wooden frames with cobweb patterns are perceived as perfect works of decorative and applied art, not inferior in their effectiveness to ornamental European stained glass windows.
Old Russian window frames suffered the same fate as many other items of bygone everyday life. Most of them disappeared into time irrevocably; a small part was preserved by museums. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the famous historian of Russian art Igor Grabar wrote: “The culture of life inexorably banished this picturesque and primitive protection from the cold and wind and replaced it with prosaic glass. This change took place not so long ago, and in some places the ancient windows, stacked in the attics and storerooms of wooden and even stone churches, are still intact” (16).
If back in the 19th and even at the beginning of the 20th century, here and there in the outback one could find mica windows, today they are preserved only in museums as signs of the forever-gone way of life of our ancestors. Many museums have mica-filled window frames in their collections. Better or worse preserved, sometimes assembled from several frames with mica filling, almost all of them have similar preservation problems, including loss of the canvas, delamination of mica plates, crumbling paint layer. The main enemies of mica are time and humidity, which mercilessly exfoliate once dense thin plates and turn them into a shiny scree. Only a few examples are presented at exhibitions and expositions. Most are hidden in museum storage rooms. Collections of mica windows are located in the museums of the Moscow Kremlin, the State Historical Museum, the Kolomenskoye Museum-Reserve, the State Hermitage, and the Pereslavl-Zalessky Museum-Reserve. I would like to say especially about the latter. More than 50 17th-century windows come from the palace of Peter I on the shore of Lake Pleshcheevo. Back in 1803, a museum was founded here, where the memory of the Great Russian Tsar-Reformer was carefully preserved. Most of the windows from the collection of this museum date back to the end of the 17th century; they probably come from the same production center, as evidenced by the pattern of applied tin elements - burrs, the same sizes of metal elements, and the color of the mica plates. There are several unique painted specimens here. Judging by the inventory, there were two such windows. Unique monuments of decorative and applied art of the 17th century are in need of restoration.
Making stained glass was not a folk craft in Ancient Rus', unlike artistic glassmaking, for example, in the Czech Republic and Germany. Harsh natural and climatic conditions did not allow increasing the window openings in buildings, and the atmosphere of Orthodox worship and the spatial organization of the temple did not provide opportunities for the development of stained glass art in Russia. This happened much later, after industrial production of flat glass was established in the country and conditions for the development of stained glass art had developed in Russian artistic life. It is interesting that at the beginning of the 19th century, when “Gothic glass”, as stained glass was called then, came into fashion, the first design drawings of domestic stained glass windows resembled ancient Russian mica windows. For example, the windows of a poultry house in Rybinsk were decorated with a rhombic pattern of multi-colored glass, traditional for mica windows. When the wave of passion for Gothic subsided, stained glass remained a fashionable detail in interior decoration. Appeal to various periods of world artistic culture gave artists and architects the opportunity to use stained glass in interiors of a wide variety of stylistic orientations: “Renaissance”, “Oriental”, “Ancient” and, of course, “Russian”. Decorated windows, along with wooden carvings, tiled stoves and wall paintings became the most sought-after details when creating the look of “Russian” interiors, which were associated with the rich housing of the Russian Middle Ages.
In the Terem Chambers of the Moscow Kremlin, reconstructed by the architect F. G. Solntsev, multi-colored pieces of glass in the windows, assembled in a rhombic pattern, were direct “heirs” of ancient Russian window frames. Over time, more sophisticated stylizations appeared. Thus, in the Beloselsky-Belozersky Palace in St. Petersburg, not only the stained glass panel in the Oak Living Room, but also the glass itself: layered, uneven, barely tinted, resembles layered, slightly shimmering mica.
The end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century was a time of new understanding of the ancient Russian heritage, the appearance of works in the spirit of national romanticism. In paintings, architectural projects, and sketches by artists of this period, the motif of a window with a figured frame and patterned, sometimes colored filling is often used. Often it is this that gives the image a national flavor. Over time, the very presence of a patterned window in the interior has turned into a kind of stamp, sending the viewer to the era of the Russian Middle Ages.
In terms of strength and light transmittance, mica cannot compete with glass. That is why glass is still used in windows created according to the models of ancient mica glass.
Modern masters of artistic glassmaking focus their work mainly on Western European stained glass art; some works trace connections with Russian art of the late 19th - early 20th centuries, and through it, indirectly, with the culture of Ancient Rus'.
The well-known heritage of Russian medieval everyday culture is mica windows, a material that is still little studied. An article by Igor Kiselev, published in 1981 in the magazine “Decorative Art” (17) and his recommendations on measurements and descriptions of mica windows in the reference book “Architectural details in Russian architecture of the 18th-19th centuries” (18), which summarized his experience as a restorer , remain the most complete studies about this phenomenon of the bygone way of life of our country.
1. Tydman L.V. Palace. House. Izba. Residential interior of Russia from 1700 to 1840s. M., 2000. P.176, 290.
2. Morozov A. A. M. V. Lomonosov. The path to maturity. 1711-1741. M.-L., 1962. P.20.
3. Tydman L.V. Decree. op. P.290-291.
4. Kurts B. G. Kielburger’s essay on Russian trade during the reign of Alexei Mikhailovich. Kyiv, 1915. P.284.
5. Morozov A. A. M. V. Lomonosov. The path to maturity. 1711-1741. M.-L., 1962. P.20.
6. Kurts B. G. Decree. op. P. 104.
7. Tseytlin M. A. Decree. op. P.18.
8. Kiselev I. Mica windows. / “Decorative art of the USSR”. N 4. 1981. P. 18.
9. Zabelin I. E. Ibid. P.142.
10. Artistic and aesthetic culture of Ancient Rus' XI-XVII centuries. M., 1996. P. 428.
11. Painting and valuation of the property of princes Vasily and Alexei Golitsyn... / Investigation cases about Fyodor Shaklovit and his accomplices. Publication of the Archaeographic Commission. T.4. St. Petersburg, 1893. Stlb.3-105.
12. Zabelin I. E. Decree. op. P. 142.
13. Baklanova N. A. Decree. op. P.44.
14. Tydman L.V. Decree. op. P.177.
15. Arkhangelsk regional newspaper “Pravda Severa”, No. 169, September 15, 2001
16. History of Russian art. T. 2. St. Petersburg, 1910, pp. 176-177.
17. Kiselev I. Mica windows. / “Decorative art of the USSR”. N 4. 1981. P. 18.
18. Kiselev I. Architectural details in Russian architecture of the 18th-19th centuries. Handbook of an architect-restorer. M., 2005.
In the morning, before leaving the house, we are used to assessing the weather by looking out the window. As children, the parents of those who lived in high-rise buildings called them home through him. It’s such a familiar element that we don’t even pay attention anymore - frames, windows, glass. Nothing special. Have you ever wondered when the window appeared? Indeed, in the first human houses, which were caves, yurts, huts, tents, there was not even a hint of windows. The maximum is a hole in the roof to allow smoke from the fire to escape.
It is impossible to say exactly when the first openings in the walls appeared, which became the prototypes of modern windows. In areas where a warm climate reigned, they were covered with thin fabric. In Ancient Rome, rectangular windows with decorations inside were installed. To the north, the openings were covered with fish or bull bladder, making the so-called drag windows. They bore this name due to the sliding shutter with which they were closed - a drag that moved along the grooves. In Rus', such windows were cut down in adjacent logs, up to the middle of each - this made it possible to maintain the strength of the structure. However, almost until the 15th century, most peasants did not even have fiberglass windows in their houses to keep warm during the harsh winter.
The shape of windows was not rectangular everywhere: with the development of glassmaking in Europe and Rus', round windows began to be made. It is not for nothing that their names in some languages have a direct reference to their form and purpose: there is an “eye” everywhere, from which an oval or round “window” was formed. European craftsmen blew a glass ball and flattened it on a copper board, thereby creating a plate. We did it simpler - we simply poured molten glass onto a large metal sheet. After hardening, a rather thick round window with a diameter of about 30 cm was obtained. Mica windows were also made: polished pieces of mica let in more light than thick and cloudy glass. But both glass and mica windows fulfilled their direct purpose: they protected from bad weather, let in light and served as the “eyes” of the home. The name itself appears in writing in documents dating back to around 1090.
The glass discs that craftsmen sculpted in those days have left their mark on history: their descendants can now be seen as round portholes. On land, round windows took root only as a decorative element; they were replaced by more practical rectangles. But on a ship, the round window disrupted the strength of the sides of the ship less, and therefore did not change either its shape or size.
In most houses, windows were located on the facade. The three portico windows have changed slightly over time: from about the 14th century, the central window increased in size. Instead of a small wooden log house, it began to be decorated with a large, red one. But since its size did not have the best effect on the frame, strong jambs were attached to the ends of the cut-out opening. Thanks to this, the window with them began to be called slanted. It was richly decorated with carvings, and usually there was only one in the house - two or more were rare even in the 18th century. Glass for windows was very expensive, so in the villages they made do with bubbles and mica, pieces of which were sewn together using horsehair (“shituhi”), or fastened with metal plates. The largest piece was placed in the center of the frame, and the canvas was, as it were, “extended” around it. Since the 17th century, mica windows have been slightly diversified: the paints with which mica was painted were used. Through such a window, more than just light entered the house: a ray of sunlight painted the whole house, and therefore the window became beautiful, red.
In richer houses, owners installed a certain type of window for each floor. For example, a room could boast two red windows at once, and if a third one was opened in it, it would turn into a small room. A room with a lot of light became a real women's abode, because it was most convenient to do needlework there. Of course, such a room was arranged only in the female half of the house. If there was a third floor, then all its walls were equipped with red windows. As a result, large windows replaced the portico ones, and the latter found their refuge in bathhouses and attics.
A cold winter could easily freeze the room due to the large number and size of the windows, so they were closed with inserts: cloth-covered panels were inserted into the frame from the outside and protected the house from wind and cold. They began to hang them on hinges only later. In the room itself, the inhabitants of the house also sought to “insulate themselves”: shields covered with felt were inserted into the windows from the inside. For beauty, comfort and additional protection, curtains were made of light fabric to cover the window from the side of the room.
But that’s in Russia. Previously, our winters gave a 40-point head start to European ones, and even now the Siberian frosts are nightmares for foreigners accustomed to the warmth. In medieval castles, narrow windows were made, which were later replaced by high arched openings sparkling with multi-colored stained glass. By the 15th century, the Venetian window, consisting of two parts, connected at the top by a common arch and divided in the center by a vertical column, gained popularity.
The next revolution in window fashion was the Baroque style, thanks to which the rectangular openings that had already come into use changed their shape to circles and ellipses. The thinner and more transparent the glass, the more it was valued: stained glass was left only as a decorative element in some buildings. Then the windows began to open, double frames appeared, and the decor improved and absorbed more and more new elements.
In Russia, too, they did not lag behind the Europeans, and in the 18th century, every tenth landowner’s estate sported richly decorated window frames. However, glass was very expensive, and therefore everyone who lived at the average income level and below was content with red or even glass windows.
The Russian word “window” is similar to the word “oko”. Windows are a kind of eyes of the house. But they weren't always like they are today. The evolution of the window has a thousand-year history.
Ancient windows
In ancient times, openings in the walls were covered with skins and mats, and hung with cloth. In fact, curtains served as windows. Later, people invented shutters that closed to retain heat and opened to let in air and light.
Ancient people believed that evil spirits could enter the house through unclosed holes. The buildings of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome, as a rule, did not have windows, but only narrow slits. In Greece, light slits were used only in rooms for feasts, and in the female half of the house they were not installed at all.
Before the advent of glass, people got out of the situation by fastening together small pieces of light-transmitting materials - mica, thin pieces of marble, flattened horn fragments. In China, Korea and Japan, windows were covered with paper. The ancient materials that were used instead of glass left their mark on the names of various types of windows. For example, bull's eye or fish bladder.
In the middle of the 10th century, window art - stained glass - appeared in Europe. In Gothic church architecture, the openings of lancet windows were filled with ornamental or narrative paintings made of colored glass in a lead frame. The rays of the sun, refracting through this splendor, filled the cathedrals with a special light.
Windows in Rus'
In Russia, windows made from pieces of colored glass were found in the mansions of princes already from the 12th century. However, stained glass never took root in Rus'.
Since the 14th century, slanted windows existed in Rus', framed by a deck of four hewn beams-jambs. A window filled with mica, fish bladder, gastric mucosa, and later glass was inserted into them.
There were also port windows in Rus' - small viewing and light openings in the wall of a house. This window was closed from the inside with a board that moved in specially cut grooves. Fiberglass windows were usually installed in cages, closets, and basements; they were used not so much for lighting as for ventilating the room.
Russian glassblowers already in the 13th century learned to make thick-walled, round, cloudy windows up to 30 cm in diameter. But only wealthy people could afford them. “Windows are master’s inventions,” people said.
Since the 17th century, glass began to be used more often. It was colored or painted. Lead bindings were inserted into the glass.
A European novelty - large window openings - came to Russia under Peter I. They became a novelty for the Russian people, and existed in Europe already during the Renaissance. But in a fit of Europeanization, Peter did not take into account the Russian climate and was subsequently forced to ban “French windows” - floors the size of a door. As a result, state reception halls were arranged in fashion with large windows, and people lived on the upper floors of palaces and mansions in small rooms with small windows.
Over time, windows in villages and cities began to be made double for thermal insulation. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, during the Art Nouveau era, windows began to take on unusual, “irregular” forms. Constructivism, which replaced Art Nouveau, again made the windows rectangular.
Today, windows are presented in a wide range on the market - wooden, metal, plastic, soundproofing, energy-saving, etc.
And luxury high-rise buildings, completely covered with double-glazed windows in PVC frames, we don’t even think about the fact that the window has come a long way before evolving to its modern design. And, nevertheless, the history of such windows, which are familiar to us, goes back several thousand years.
No windows
The first dwellings, regardless of the geographical location and level of culture of the nationalities, had no windows at all. The houses had a single opening, which simultaneously served as an entrance and a chimney. Among Chinese characters, there is still a window symbol - a sign of an opening above a chimney. The absence of windows was dictated not by the stupidity of our ancestors, but by necessity, first of all, for security purposes - it is always easier to guard one entrance than several. In the Ancient East, in Egypt and Rome, Greece, nowhere did the walls of houses have window openings.
A little later, chimney openings began to be installed directly in the ceilings. Through such prototypes of window openings, smoke was removed and fresh air and light entered the room. The first windows that began to be installed in walls were found during archaeological excavations in Cyprus. This is where the history of the window begins - 8 thousand years BC.
First windows
Over the next thousand years, windows were primitive openings in walls. In Europe, window openings first began to be made in fortresses and feudal castles. Through them observation was carried out and attacks were repelled during turbulent feudal times. Accordingly, the window had to be small enough to provide security to large enough for the archer to turn around. Hence the shape - a narrow but high opening.
The facades of buildings acquired symmetry during the Renaissance, it was then that window openings and partitions began to alternate symmetrically (the type of structure is palazzo).
During the Gothic era, the windows became significantly longer and began to be glazed with multi-colored stained glass windows with drawings of biblical motifs.
The Renaissance in the 15th century returned classical forms to window openings and transparency to glass. For the first time, they became vaguely similar to the windows that we can see to this day. In Italy at that time, the production of wooden windows with cross-shaped frames began, dividing the window into several parts.
The Renaissance was replaced by the Baroque style. The windows began to lose their strict shapes, oval and round wooden windows began to appear, the frame became more complex, but the window now had hinged sashes and, for the first time, double glazing!
The 17th century is marked by the emergence of technologies for manufacturing flat window glass.
In the 19th century, windows returned to classicism - a wooden frame with a simple frame, geometrically correct shapes, and a hinged sash design. In this form, wooden windows entered the 20th century, until the 60s, when a polyvinyl chloride frame was first made to replace the traditional wooden one.
The further history of windows developed before our eyes. Creaky hinges were replaced by functional fittings; the usual silicate glass installed in a wooden window frame using glazing beads was replaced by a sealed double-glazed window. High-quality seals and sealants allowed us to minimize heat loss and isolate ourselves from street noise. The window has become an ordinary, taken-for-granted architectural element, moderate in price, reliable and functional in use.
On Russian Land
The first windows in Rus' were called fiber windows. An opening was simply cut into the wall of a log house, which was used for ventilation. It was closed from the inside with ordinary boards - “clouded”, hence the name. For the winter, the window was modernized - a fish or bull bladder was stretched over the wooden frame of the window; a little later, molten mica and oiled canvas began to perform the functions of glass.
The first real windows in Russia began to be manufactured under Peter I. Technologies and design were brought from Europe. The first windows decorated the Winter and Summer Palaces. Real glass was inserted into a wooden frame, the production of which began on a large scale in France in the 17th century.
Following the palaces, window openings of simpler houses began to be glazed. However, high-quality glass remained expensive, and cheaper options did not stand up to criticism in terms of quality. The glass was cloudy, with a greenish tint and very thick. Therefore, in most cases in Rus', windows continued to be glazed with mica brought from Western Europe.
The spread of wooden windows with silicate glass began at the beginning of the 18th century, when glass manufacturing technologies gradually ceased to be a secret.
A little about window glass
The history of window glass dates back to the first century AD. The upper floors of Roman houses were glazed with it. Small windows were simply covered with a single sheet of glass, and in larger openings windows were installed on a wooden or bronze frame. But until the 18th century, glass was very expensive, and only the wealthiest people could afford such luxury.
Double-glazed window
The first double-glazed window was patented in 1865, but production on an industrial scale began only in 1934 in Germany, and a little later migrated to the USA. The first double-glazed windows were installed on a lead spacer and did not have seals.
Such double-glazed windows, as we know them now, began to be produced in 1950. It was then that the double glass design evolved to an aluminum hollow frame filled with absorbent and polysulfide sealants. Since 1970, double sealing began to be used. To this day, 90% of all double-glazed windows are produced using this technology.
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