A collection of charming folk tales and rhymes illustrated by Russian artist Elena Polenova, and designed by Christoph Stolberg Russian folk tales have a timeless, slightly unworldly quality that children, and those who read to them, find particularly appealing. This is Fontanka's second book of folk tales with illustrations by the artist Elena Polenova, with stories that are possibly even more beguiling than those in Why the Bear. The same team that produced the first book is responsible for Sinko-Filipko too: the translator Dr Louise Hardiman, the granddaughter of the artist, Natalia Polenova, and the designer Christoph Stolberg. The book is designed to be a companion to the first, with the same quarter binding, and individually coloured chapters.
Elena Polenova, sister of the landscape artist Vasily Polenov, was a leading figure in the Russian craft revival, which began at the estate of Abramtsevo, just north of Moscow, in the 1890s. She took traditional folk patterns and developed them into fashionable designs for handmade wooden furniture which was produced by rural people and sold in Moscow boutiques. She was also a talented watercolourist, textile designer and illustrator of children¿s fairy-tales. She died in 1898 aged 48 of a brain tumour. Dr Louise Hardiman is an art historian and specialist in Russian art, design and culture, as well as the international Arts and Crafts movement.
