Saturday, January 3, 2015

Siberian Houses


From a volume produced by one of those nineteenth-century Russian expeditions to the far, far east. I love these and I have saved them for months, hoping to find more examples to produce a proper post, but I never have and now I give up.

3 comments:

Shadow said...

I'm thinking Hansel and Gretel.

G. Verloren said...

The various eastern Siberian peoples are something of a fascination for me, one which started originally with studies of the Ainu in the larger context of researching the history of Japan. I'd love to study more deeply, but finding materials in English has proven difficult. It's a problem I tend to run into a lot with Asia in general, but it's so much more pronounced when dealing with the lesser known peoples and cultures of the region.

G. Verloren said...

@Shadow Flutter

Personally I'm reminded of Scandinavian architecture, as well as that of the Pacific Northwest Native Americans / First Nations. But I can see the Black Forest angle as well.

How superficial are such seeming similarities, I wonder? How truly alike or unlike are the traditional buildings of such disparate regions of the globe? Do they have a demonstrable common ancestor or influence? Just how much exchange occured across what are massive distances even by today's standards?