The boxes the Doukhobors brought from Russia at the end of the nineteenth century, probably as dower chests and ready-made traveling trunks, were frequently embellished with painted geometric motifs, particularly pinwheels and circles. As symbols, circle related motifs have long been associated with mythologies of the sun and predate the religious icons of Christianity as they are usually understood. On Russian boxes, where they appeared often, these motifs are well-developed, opulent, and generally fill all of the space available. On Doukhobor boxes made in Canada, however, decorative elements were less insistently used, and were more restrained; they contained fewer colors; and generally consist of fewer motifs, both floral and geometric, which are disposed singly or in simple symmetrical and bilateral arrangements against a single color ground. This is the geometry of the pagan mythologies of the natural world and the vocabulary of the world of folk, rather than the symbolic language of Christian iconography that prevailed in Russia at that time.

The physical properties and the structure of boxes made in North America and Russia are analogous: both use similar woods, mortise-and-tenon construction, and dovetailed corners. As on cupboards, the structural components, such as moldings around the lid or at the foot, function as both protective and decorative devices in both countries, but on Doukhobor boxes a dark color normally contrasts with the field color, adding a further decorative element to the piece.

Gennadi Blinov, in a book about Russian folk style figurines, identifies red, red-orange, and variants as the essential field colors of the Russian decorative palette and describes their perceptual qualities in psychological terms: "Red is an extremely active colour strongly affecting human emotions and endowed with highly decorative properties." (10) By emphasizing the emotional content of color and its decorative force, Blinov unexpectedly touched on the essentials of most Doukhobor painted furniture, which bypasses the emblematic use of color.

The final form we wish to discuss are tables. As objects around which domestic and social interactions are repeated day after day, tables played a basic role in the aesthetics of everyday existence in both Russia and Canada during this period. Russian tables are solid and blocklike. It is no accident that they are almost exclusively plain or painted simply with several colors, reflecting through color and the control of the planimetric structure an unconscious preference for a two-dimensional iconic focus and a disinterest in the decorative potential of edges, curvilinear profiles, and the three-dimensional irregularities of the natural world. Doukhobor tables, on the other hand, often have carved and cutout skirts that emphasize three-dimensional effects and their sculptural nature, with positive and negative spaces creating a dynamic tension. Despite these differences, both Russian tables and Doukhobor ones have turned legs that suggest their common origin. Alexander and Barbara Pronin point out that the furniture made by carpenters in Russia mirrors architectural forms and observe that the rounded legs of tables resemble in miniature the pillars on the porches of some dwellings. (11) The same can be said for the correspondence between Canadian Doukhobor table legs and pillars on some Doukhobor houses in British Columbia.
The distinction between carved and cutout, as opposed to painted decoration is, we think, related to certain perceptual values and beliefs. The long and widespread tradition of icons in Russia depends essentially on painted decoration on a flat surface, and is thus an aesthetic based on symbolic representation. As iconoclasts, the Doukhobors, perhaps unconsciously, distanced themselves from this technique by translating the pictorial tradition into carved three-dimensional decoration and by transforming the widespread presence of icons in Russian culture into the sculpted vegetable forms of the natural world, coincident with their own beliefs and the vegetarianism that many of them practiced. In the representation of the animate world of humans, animals, and vegetables, stylized forms predominate on Russian pieces, while in Canadian-made Doukhobor furniture the three-dimensionality of carved decoration and of cutout profiles and pierced and cutaway surfaces creates patterns of depth and overlap in a dynamic spatial exchange. The minimal use of geometric motifs and the emphasis on vegetable imagery in the North American context accounts, at least in part, for the evacuation of the symbolic meaning and religious implication that was inherent in the iconlike painted and framed flower forms and geometric shapes of traditional Russian objects. In other words, the decoration of Russian pieces is associated with a strong pictorial tradition of iconographic and emblematic origin, while Canadian Doukhobor furniture associates ornamentation with structural elements--such as cutout, sculpted, or pierced aprons or the carved elements found on cupboard cornices--enhanced through patterns of contrasting color and a minimal use of motifs. Incidentally, the infrequent use of representational motifs by the Doukhobors may also be related to their long exile in the Caucasuses, where Islamic custom eschewed figural decoration.

In summary, the Doukhobors' rejection in the eighteenth century of both the Russian state and the Orthodox Church marked the beginning of a search for a utopian ideal of simplicity expressed by the phrase "Toil and peaceful life," a motto that continues to circulate widely within the community. (12) The symbolism attached to figures and other imagery from the Russian tradition gradually lost its relevance in the decoration of objects as a result of the Doukhobors' minimization of religious ritual, rejection of iconography, and absence of a sacred book, along with the hardships of their daily lives during the early years in a new land. In Russia, however, the religious traditions of Orthodoxy continued to influence the decorative embellishments of domestic life.

Like most folk cultures transported to North America from earlier European sources, traditional forms persisted at the physical level of everyday existence and the production of domestic objects necessary to support daily activities. At the same time the traditional forms and decoration of household objects, utensils, and tools were usually simplified, motifs more sparingly used, often emptied of iconic and emblematic meaning. Some of this attenuated decorative expression was no doubt also due to the new conditions of life imposed by a strange environment and the influences of an unfamiliar social culture that exerted through commercial channels and differing physical preferences a growing pressure to adapt and conform to new visual models.

1. (1) James Mavor, memorandum, Yorkton, Assiniboia, May 21, 1899, correspondence, box 1, James Mavor Papers, Manuscript Collection, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto.
2. (2) For further information about the Doukhobors, see Koozma J. Tarasoff, Plakun trava: The Doukhobors (Mir Publication Society, Grand Forks, British Columbia, 1982); Carl J. Tracie, "Toil and Peaceful Life": Doukhobor Village Settlement in Saskatchewan, 1899-1918 (Canadian Plains Research Center, University of Regina, Regina, 1996); and George Woodcock and Ivan Avakumovic, The Doukhobors (Oxford University Press, Toronto and New York, 1968).
3. (3) Tarasoff, Plakun trava, p. 3. The date and attribution of the use of the term have been both accepted and questioned. See Victor O. Buyniak, "Skovaroda in Early Doukhobor History--Fact or Myth?" in Spirit Wrestlers: Centennial Papers in Honour of Canada's Doukhobor Heritage, ed. Koozma J. Tarasoff and Robert B. Klymasz, Canadian Centre for Folk Culture Studies, Mercury series, no. 67 (Canadian Museum of Civilization, Hull, Quebec, 1995); and Svetlana A. Inikova, "Spiritual Origins and the Beginnings of the Doukhobor History," in The Doukhobor Centenary in Canada, ed. Andrew Danskov, John Woodsworth, and Chad Gaffield (Slavic Research Group and the Institute of Canadian Studies, University of Ottawa, 2000).
4. (4) Leopold Antonovich Sulerzhitsky, To America with the Doukhobors [first published in Russian in Moscow, 1905], trans. Michael Kalmakoff (Canadian Plains Research Center, University of Regina, Regina, 1982), p. 98. At a time of increasing sectarian conflict in Russia, the Doukhobors' turning away from the Bible as sacred text went far beyond the dogmatic uses of a biblical text as the authority for particular articles of faith of other groups.
5. (5) Ibid., p. 37.
6. (6) Mavor to James Smart, October 19, 1898, correspondence, box 2, Mavor Papers.
7. (7) Olga Kruglova, Traditional Russian Carved and Painted Woodwork (Izobrazitelnoye Iskusstvo Publishers, Moscow, 1981), p. 9.
8. (8) Ibid., p. 14.
9. (9) Alison Hilton, Russian Folk Art (Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1995), p. 75.
10. (10) Gennadi Blinov, Russian Folk-Style Figurines, trans. Natalia Belskava and Tatyana Butkova (Raduga Publishers, Moscow, 1983), p. 133.
11. (11) Alexander and Barbara Pronin, Russian Folk Arts (A. S. Barnes, South Brunswick, New Jersey, 1975), pp. 58-60.
12. (12) For use of the motto, see Tracie, "Toil and Peaceful Life"; Peter S. Faminow, "A View from Within: Tolstoy and His Resurrection," p. 21; and Mae Popoff, "On Doukhobor Singing," in Spirit Wrestlers, pp. 51-52.