Museum of Glass Factory Red May Vyshny Volochek. Red May

Parts were the city and the region. Now let's look at the two museums of Vyshny Volochok. This is a local history museum, introducing the past of the city, its unique canals and iconic people, and a real Glass Fairy Tale or Colored Dream - a glass museum of the former Red May plant, several times even producing ruby glass for the stars of the Kremlin towers on government orders.

1. Glass production near Vyshny Volochok appeared in the second half of the 19th century, when a local merchant bought a chemical plant and based it on the production of tableware, lampshades and kerosene lamps

2. A little later, the production of colored glass appeared, when an experienced glassmaker who knew the secret of the technology came to the plant

3. The plant’s products received high awards at pre-revolutionary exhibitions

8. And the little animals, ahah, look what they are!

11. After the revolution, the plant was nationalized, renamed "Red May", expanded and modernized production. Lamp glass, window glass, dishes, lamps for the subway - all this was made here. High-quality color products, which, as in tsarist times, occupied high places at international exhibitions, were nicknamed the “Russian miracle”

12. In the 1940s and 1970s, the plant carried out probably the most important task in its history - a government order for the production of ruby glass for the Kremlin stars. Here are his pieces

Having visited this museum, I was already dreaming of how I would get to the production site and make a report, but fate did not. In 2001, the Red May glass factory was closed. Let’s face it, a huge era has passed and a whole page has been torn out of the book on the history of our country, but the memory remains. Just for the sake of this museum, to visit here again, I would return to Vyshny in the summer on a Mosturflot cruise or in the winter as part of bus tours, the so-called “winter cruises” of this company.
It would seem that there has been no plant for almost 17 years, but a residue from this fact still remains inside.

13. And this is the Vyshny Volochok Museum of Local Lore. To be honest, I don’t really like these, but I didn’t regret visiting Vyshnevolotsky. It is already more than 80 years old, but the exhibitions do not smell like a layer of museum dust and you don’t need to bring a pillow with you to sleep out of boredom. Not so long ago everything here was also reconstructed.

Local guides are true professionals in their field, enthusiasts, ready to talk for hours about every detail, about every exhibit as if it were about a person dear to them personally and an old friend. No memorized phrases from guidebooks, no “tell me and finish quickly.” So I highly recommend the museum to everyone!

14. In the Petrovsky Hall you can not only learn about the activities of the Tsar, who made the Vyshnevolotsk waterway truly navigable (thus connecting the Baltic and the Caspian Sea and opening up many new opportunities for the development of Russia with the help of Vyshnevolotsk), but also see cannons raised from the bottom of the canals , cannonballs, hooks - witnesses of that era

17. The Dutch, who built canals for Peter in Vyshny Volochyok, messed up. They were used to working with the sea and did not take into account the peculiarities of our area. In the summer, lakes and rivers became shallow, canals became dehydrated, traffic along the canals stopped and famine set in in the cities.

The Novgorod merchant M.I. Serdyukov undertook to correct the situation and improve the waterway. He, a self-taught hydraulic engineer, devoted a third of a century to the water system of Vyshny Volochok. Locks, beyslots, the Tsninsky Canal, the reservoir - all these are the results of his labors

18. Model of the Tsninsky lock, built by Serdyukov

19. Plan of hydraulic structures in Vyshny Volochyok, presented by Serdyukov to Emperor Peter

20. And a modern map.
After visiting the museum, I wanted to visit all the buildings in the summer, including those almost destroyed by time and man, to see everything in person and get to know in more detail the water artery that was once very important for Russia

21. Model of Vyshny Volochok from the time of Peter the Great. Now, if museums have models, that’s very cool)

22. Look how handsome he is!
Frigate "Pallada". Its first captain was Nakhimov. Subsequently, the frigate visited many voyages, including Japan. With the outbreak of the Crimean War, due to fear of capture by the British, it was sunk.
Over the years, Vyshnevolotsk and Tver nobles served on it.

23. The canals of Vyshny Volochok were the most important freight routes. Here is a model of a cargo barque, made according to a 19th century drawing. How do you like the fact that the barge lifted up to 130 tons of cargo? I didn't believe it at first)

In Vyshny, in connection with the transition from lifting to rafting, the vessels were re-equipped. The rudders and masts were removed, platforms were set up, on which stood people operating 4 huge oars - potes. A pilot and 10 workers were placed on each barge

24. Remember in the first part there was a chapel on the site of the 18th century Kazan Cathedral, where Catherine’s decree was read, granting Vyshny Volochok the status of a city? This is what this cathedral was like, blown up in the 1930s

You walk into the peeling building of the factory museum, it seems that on the territory of the factory only it and the entrance gate have been more or less intact, and you feel dumbfounded. Culture shock. You squint, trying to imagine how long the queue for such a museum would be in any European country, and then you squint again. It's just you, the museum curator, and the exhibits. It’s not like there’s a queue; you rarely see people around. And there is SUCH a museum. A museum of what we have lost almost irretrievably.

The history of the colored glass factory was 129 years old when the furnace was stopped. For such production, stopping the furnace means stopping the heart - certain death. 1873 - 2002. These are the years of life. R.I.P. RedMay.

the factory entrance, the columns are covered, or rather were covered, with glass tiles, these tiles were made here.

Since 1873, the chemical factory that was here changed owners, and the new owner - merchant of the 2nd guild Andrei Vasilyevich Bolotin - installed the first glass furnace and in the same year the famous glassmaker Vasily Vekshin came to the plant, thanks to him the plant began to work with colored glass and did so successfully until the closing itself. Until the 90s of the 20th century, the history of the plant was a success story. “Absolutely remarkable in its diversity and unexpected grace” - this is how the once famous professor and “glass expert” A.K. assessed the products of the Bolotin plant. Krupsky. Gold and silver medals at the All-Russian art and industrial exhibitions in Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod were received in the 19th century; in the 20th century, the most famous order received by the plant was ruby glass of Kremlin stars, against which the production of gifts for anniversaries of Khrushchev and other significant figures our Soviet past is already like that, nothing for a snuff of tobacco. It’s scary to think - on the site of these ruins there were workshops in which the Kremlin stars were made - a symbol of the country...

Between the lamps lie parts of the Kremlin stars and ruby glass.

We thought we would spend about an hour in the museum, but we were two hours short. Having completed the first lap around the small and only hall of the museum, we were ready to repeat. It always seemed that we didn’t see something, that we missed something. The exposition is very rich.

It is difficult to expect to see a hammer and sickle among such vignettes.

Sulfide glass, crackle, multi-layering, gold, enamel, luster painting, silicate paints, diamond cutting, deep etching... The factory's craftsmen mastered processing techniques no worse than the famous Czechs and Muranos.

golden ruby glass.

“Red May” - this is the name of the plant since 1923 - is the only plant in the whole world where sulfide glass was used to create mass products of the main range.

there are three layers of glass - colored inside, an intermediate layer - transparent and milky on the outside.

Sulfide glass, at different degrees of heating and duration of processing, can produce a wide range of colors and shades from pale blue to almost black, through the coffee-amber range, and this glass can also change the degree of transparency. It was first invented in 1952 by engineers E.A. Ivanova and A.A. Kiryonen at the Leningrad Art Glass Factory. And since 1959, it has already been widely used at Red May.

Here is the color range of sulfide glass.

In 2002, glass melting furnaces were stopped. Even with a planned cold repair of the furnace, draining the glass and starting the furnace next after the repair is a long and expensive process, and so, if you stop without hope for the future, there is almost no chance of the next start. But, apparently, no one was going to restore production. Furnaces with frozen glass were simply broken. Now the entire territory of the plant is partly ruined, partly is slowly deteriorating. Creepy.

But the museum is still alive. It’s a miracle that it hasn’t been stolen or sold since the 90s. Without heating in winter, it’s good to have at least electricity, almost on enthusiasm alone. A low bow to its caretaker for what she does, that the museum is alive on the ruins of the plant, for the funds that were not stolen.

http://vvredmay.ru/index5.htm The plant's website has not been updated since 2004.

Ready for criticism!

Part 1. Say a word about the Kremlin stars
The coming year could be marked by two dates - albeit not jubilees, but significant in their own way: the 157th anniversary of the founding of a chemical plant near Vyshny Volochok and the 87th anniversary of the day when this plant received its last name, under which it is all they know - “Red May”. They knew. Today, instead of a unique enterprise, once famous for its crystal, there are only ruins.

However, there is also a round date - exactly 70 years ago, stars made of glass made at Red May shone over the Moscow Kremlin. Once upon a time the plant was famous throughout the USSR. Still would! “The Kremlin stars, made by the hands of Krasnomaysk craftsmen, shine over the entire country” , - I’m reading a guidebook from 1988. Of course, not entirely: the ruby tops of the tower spiers are a complex engineering structure, on the creation of which dozens of enterprises and research institutes worked. But the laminated glass manufactured at Krasny May is far from the last part of this structure. Therefore, the words of almost thirty years ago, despite the pathos, are close to the truth. What remains of that pride? Destroyed workshops that are unlikely to ever be rebuilt. Yes, a museum that survives on nothing more than a word of honor.

* * *
A few kilometers from Vyshny Volochyok towards St. Petersburg is the village of Krasnomaysky. True, local residents do not call it that; this toponym exists only in official documents. “I’ll go to Red May”, “I live on Red May” - when people say this, they mean the village, not the plant. In the middle of the 19th century, there was the village of Klyuchino, where in 1859 the future flagship of the glass industry arose. First as a chemical. Its first owner, titular councilor Samarin, did not have enough funds for further development of production, and three years later the plant was bought by the merchant of the second guild, Andrei Bolotin, who soon built a glass factory in its place. Later, he founded another plant in the territory of the current Vyshnevolotsky district - Borisovsky (now - OJSC Medsteklo Borisovskoe). The first glass melting furnace at the Klyuchinsky plant was launched by the merchant and founder of the Bolotin dynasty of glassmakers in 1873. Also, at the expense of the plant’s owners, a workers’ settlement, quite comfortable by the standards of that time, was built.

“When you look at the Kremlin stars, it seems as if from time immemorial they have been crowning the pointed towers: so organic is their flame in unity with the beautiful monument of Russian architecture, so natural in our minds is the inseparability of two symbols - the heart of the Motherland and the five-pointed star.”(“Pravda”, 1985). It just so happened that when we say “Red May,” we mean five ruby finials. And vice versa. That’s why I want to start my story from this page. Moreover, the Vyshnevolotsk stars, which now decorate the Spasskaya, Nikolskaya, Borovitskaya, Troitskaya and Vodovzvodnaya towers of the Kremlin, were not the first.

For the first time, five-pointed stars replaced the symbol of autocratic Russia - double-headed eagles - in the fall of 1935. They were made of high-alloy stainless steel and red copper, with a gold-plated hammer and sickle in the center of each star. However, the first stars did not decorate the Kremlin towers for long. Firstly, they quickly faded under the influence of precipitation, and secondly, in the overall composition of the Kremlin they looked rather ridiculous and disturbed the architectural ensemble. Therefore, it was decided to install ruby luminous stars.

New tops appeared on November 2, 1937. Each of them could rotate like a weather vane and had a frame in the form of a multifaceted pyramid. The order for the production of ruby glass was received by the Avtosteklo plant in the city of Konstantinovka in the Donbass. It had to transmit red rays of a certain wavelength, be mechanically strong, resistant to sudden temperature changes, and not discolor or be destroyed by exposure to solar radiation. The glazing of the stars was double: the inner layer consisted of milky (matte, dull white) glass 2 mm thick, thanks to which the light from the lamp was scattered evenly over the entire surface, and the outer layer was made of ruby 6-7 mm. Each star weighed about a ton, with a surface area of 8 to 9 square meters.

During the Great Patriotic War, the stars were extinguished and covered up. When they were reopened after the Victory, multiple cracks and traces of shell fragments were discovered on the ruby surface. Restoration was needed. This time, the Vyshnevolotsk plant “Red May” was entrusted with the task of making glass. The local craftsmen made it four layers: transparent crystal at the bottom, then frosted glass, again crystal and, finally, ruby. This is necessary so that the star is the same color both during the day in sunlight and at night, illuminated from the inside. “The ruby stars manufactured at the Konstantinovsky plant did not fulfill the task set by the designers. A double layer of glass - milky and ruby - did not make it possible to preserve the bright color of the stars. Dust accumulated between the layers. And by that time, laminated glass was produced, in my opinion, only at Krasny May.(“Kalininskaya Pravda”, 1987). “I think that readers will be interested to know how prototypes of star glass were made. To make a multilayer ruby for just one star, it took 32 tons of high-quality Lyubertsy sand, 3 tons of zinc muffle white, 1.5 tons of boric acid, 16 tons of soda ash, 3 tons of potash, 1.5 tons of potassium nitrate."(“Youth”, 1981).

The renewed stars began to shine in 1946. And they still shine, despite calls from some public figures to replace them with eagles again. The next reconstruction of the ruby “luminaries” was in 1974, and again Krasnomaysk craftsmen took part in it. Despite the existing experience, the cooking technology had to be created, as they say, from scratch: archival documents from which the “recipe” could be restored have not been preserved.

It must be said that in 2010, a lot was written about the 75th anniversary of the first Kremlin stars in the central media, but the contribution of “Red May” was never mentioned anywhere. Not in 1996, when the plant was still working, at the very least, despite the fact that they began to pay out salaries in vases and wine glasses. Not in 2006 - at least to catch up with the already departed train...

This was once a hall of honor

* * *
“Yesterday, a batch of parts made of colorless and milky glass for lighting fixtures at the Moscow Conservatory named after P. I. Tchaikovsky was sent from the Vyshnevolotsk “Red May” plant. It was not easy for glassmakers to repeat the bizarre shapes of ancient chandeliers and sconces that have been lighting the halls of this musical educational institution for more than a hundred years.”(Kalininskaya Pravda, 1983). “Several years ago, the craftsmen of the Vyshnevolotsk glass factory “Red May”, at the request of Bulgarian friends, made ruby glass for the friendship memorial built on the famous Shipka. And here is a new order from Bulgaria - to make four-layer glass for the star that will crown the Party House in Sofia. The teams of craftsmen N. Ermakov, A. Kuznetsov, N. Nasonov and A. Bobovnikov were entrusted with executing the export order.” (“Pravda”, 1986).

“A beautiful garden village with asphalt roads, comfortable cottage houses, a club, a school and other public buildings, with a factory-garden in the center, from where almost two thousand items of products are sold all over the world”(“Kalininskaya Pravda”, 1959). “Yesterday, a joyful message came from Moscow to GPTU-24 of the Vyshnevolotsk plant “Red May”. By the resolution of the Main Exhibition Committee of VDNKh of the USSR, vocational training masters T. Orlova and T. Shamrina were awarded bronze medals for the development and participation in the production of the “Jubilee” and “Cup” vases presented at the All-Union Review of Artistic Works of Vocational Schools. And students Irina Yarosh and Eduard Vedernikov were awarded the medal “Young Participant of the USSR Exhibition of Economic Achievements”(“Kalininskaya Pravda”, 1983). For comparison. The garden village is an ordinary outlying village, of which there are thousands. It doesn’t seem to be abandoned, but there’s also no hint of being well-groomed. The cottage houses are apparently wooden two-story barracks that still have cesspools. The only thing you can catch your eye on is the small church of the holy martyr Thaddeus, completed just a few years ago.

Such a wonderful story about the Kremlin stars, and the plant at which they were made, their glass part, to be more precise, was written by Mikhail Letuev - nord_traveller . Due to a little confusion and a glitch in LiveJournal, the authorship was initially indicated incorrectly. Now I'm fixing it. Here is a link to the original post - Part 1. Say a word about the Kremlin stars. And there is another continuation, no less interesting - Part 2. Is it too late for us to stop? .

Tver region Vyshny Volochek village Red May, Glass Factory - where the Kremlin stars were made.

The coming year could be marked by two dates - albeit not jubilees, but significant in their own way: the 157th anniversary of the founding of a chemical plant near Vyshny Volochok and the 87th anniversary of the day when this plant received its last name, under which it is all they know - “Red May”. They knew. Today, instead of a unique enterprise, once famous for its crystal, there are only ruins. However, there is also a round date - exactly 70 years ago, stars made of glass made at Red May shone over the Moscow Kremlin. Once upon a time the plant was famous throughout the USSR. Still would! “The Kremlin stars, made by the hands of Krasnomaysk craftsmen, shine over the entire country,” I read from a 1988 guidebook. Of course, not entirely: the ruby tops of the tower spiers are a complex engineering structure, on the creation of which dozens of enterprises and research institutes worked. But the laminated glass manufactured at Krasny May is far from the last part of this structure. Therefore, the words of almost thirty years ago, despite the pathos, are close to the truth. What remains of that pride? Destroyed workshops that are unlikely to ever be rebuilt. Yes, a museum that survives on nothing more than a word of honor. A few kilometers from Vyshny Volochyok towards St. Petersburg is the village of Krasnomaysky. True, local residents do not call it that; this toponym exists only in official documents. “I’ll go to Red May”, “I live on Red May” - when people say this, they mean the village, not the plant. In the middle of the 19th century, there was the village of Klyuchino, where in 1859 the future flagship of the glass industry arose. First as a chemical. Its first owner, titular councilor Samarin, did not have enough funds for further development of production, and three years later the plant was bought by the merchant of the second guild, Andrei Bolotin, who soon built a glass factory in its place. Later, he founded another plant on the territory of the current Vyshnevolotsky district - Borisovsky (now - OJSC Medsteklo Borisovskoe). The first glass melting furnace at the Klyuchinsky plant was launched by the merchant and founder of the Bolotin dynasty of glassmakers in 1873. Also, at the expense of the plant’s owners, a workers’ settlement, quite comfortable by the standards of that time, was built.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the Klyuchinsky plant produced glass pharmaceutical, tableware and confectionery dishes, kerosene lamps, lampshades, fulfilling orders from almost all parts of the empire. Soon the October Revolution broke out, the plant was nationalized and in 1929 received the name “Red May”. A village of 5 thousand inhabitants grew up around the enterprise with a hospital, school, music school, and a vocational school, which trained, in addition to specialist glassmakers, tractor drivers and auto mechanics. Much was written about “Red May” in the regional and central press. Let us remember what newspapers and magazines were talking about then and compare all this with the current remnants of former greatness. “When you look at the Kremlin stars, it seems as if from time immemorial they have been crowning pointed towers: so organic is their flame in unity with the beautiful monument of Russian architecture, so Moreover, the natural inseparability of two symbols in our minds is the heart of the Motherland and the five-pointed star” (“Pravda”, 1985). It just so happened that when we say “Red May,” we mean five ruby finials. And vice versa. That’s why I want to start my story from this page. Moreover, the Vyshnevolotsk stars, which now decorate the Spasskaya, Nikolskaya, Borovitskaya, Trinity and Vodovzvodnaya towers of the Kremlin, were not the first. For the first time, five-pointed stars replaced the symbol of autocratic Russia - double-headed eagles - in the fall of 1935. They were made of high-alloy stainless steel and red copper, with a gold-plated hammer and sickle in the center of each star. However, the first stars did not decorate the Kremlin towers for long. Firstly, they quickly faded under the influence of precipitation, and secondly, in the overall composition of the Kremlin they looked rather ridiculous and disturbed the architectural ensemble. Therefore, it was decided to install ruby luminous stars.

During the Great Patriotic War, the stars were extinguished and covered up. When they were reopened after the Victory, multiple cracks and traces of shell fragments were discovered on the ruby surface. Restoration was needed. This time, the Vyshnevolotsk plant “Red May” was entrusted with the task of making glass. The local craftsmen made it four layers: transparent crystal at the bottom, then frosted glass, again crystal and, finally, ruby. This is necessary so that the star is the same color both during the day in sunlight and at night, illuminated from the inside. “The ruby stars manufactured at the Konstantinovsky plant did not fulfill the task set by the designers. A double layer of glass - milky and ruby - did not make it possible to preserve the bright color of the stars. Dust accumulated between the layers. And by that time, laminated glass was produced, in my opinion, only at Krasny May (Kalininskaya Pravda, 1987). “I think that readers will be interested to know how prototypes of star glass were made. To make a multilayer ruby for just one star, 32 tons of high-quality Lyubertsy sand, 3 tons of zinc muffle white, 1.5 tons of boric acid, 16 tons of soda ash, 3 tons of potash, 1.5 tons of potassium nitrate were required" ("Yunost", 1981). The renewed stars began to shine in 1946. And they still shine, despite calls from some public figures to replace them with eagles again. The next reconstruction of the ruby “luminaries” was in 1974, and again Krasnomaysk craftsmen took part in it. Despite the existing experience, the cooking technology had to be created, as they say, from scratch: archival documents from which the “recipe” could be restored have not been preserved.

“Yesterday, a batch of parts made of colorless and milky glass for lighting fixtures at the Moscow Conservatory named after P. I. Tchaikovsky was sent from the Vyshnevolotsk “Red May” plant. It was not easy for glassmakers to repeat the bizarre shapes of ancient chandeliers and sconces that have been illuminating the halls of this musical educational institution for more than a hundred years” (Kalininskaya Pravda, 1983). “Several years ago, the craftsmen of the Vyshnevolotsk glass factory “Red May”, at the request of Bulgarian friends, made ruby glass for the friendship memorial built on the famous Shipka. And here is a new order from Bulgaria - to make four-layer glass for the star that will crown the Party House in Sofia. The teams of craftsmen N. Ermakov, A. Kuznetsov, N. Nasonov and A. Bobovnikov were entrusted with executing the export order” (“Pravda”, 1986). “A beautiful garden village with asphalt roads, comfortable cottage houses, a club, a school and other public buildings, with a factory-garden in the center, from where almost two thousand items of products are distributed all over the world” (“Kalininskaya Pravda”, 1959) . “Yesterday, a joyful message came from Moscow to GPTU-24 of the Vyshnevolotsk plant “Red May”. By the resolution of the Main Exhibition Committee of VDNKh of the USSR, vocational training masters T. Orlova and T. Shamrina were awarded bronze medals for the development and participation in the production of the “Jubilee” and “Cup” vases presented at the All-Union Review of Artistic Works of Vocational Schools. And students Irina Yarosh and Eduard Vedernikov were awarded the medal “Young Participant of the Exhibition of Economic Achievements of the USSR” (“Kalininskaya Pravda”, 1983). For comparison. The garden village is an ordinary outlying village, of which there are thousands. It doesn’t seem to be abandoned, but there’s also no hint of being well-groomed. The cottage houses are apparently wooden two-story barracks that still have cesspools. The factory-garden now has pipes rising above the ruins of the workshops, a rusty honor board, like a ghost from the past. On the territory itself there is some small business: car repair, warehouses. In the former factory premises there was not even any old furniture left, only heaps of construction waste. The railway line, with the exception of a few sections, has been almost completely dismantled. GPTU also keeps up with the times. Back in the mid-2000s, the specialty of tractor driver, once the most popular among teenagers, was closed there. And not the most hopeless one in life. Is there really no need for tractor drivers anymore? Naturally, there are no blowers or glass grinders either. “A glass is a seemingly simple product, but its manufacture requires great skill. The glassmakers of the Vyshnevolotsk plant “Red May” are fluent in this skill. Two types of glasses produced here in millions of copies have been awarded the State Quality Mark. A vase for berries, a rosette for jam, and an ashtray made of zinc sulfide glass received the same high praise” (“Soviet Russia”, 1975). In the workshops of the plant, by the way, the third largest after similar ones in Gus-Khrustalny and Dyatkovo, not only crystal products and ruby stars were produced.