OREANDA-NEWS. November 9, 2012. The Ladya Exhibition of Russian Arts and Crafts was launched within the Basel Autumn Fair (Switzerland). The organizers of the first foreign edition of Ladya are Expocentre and the Russian Handicraft and Art Association, which have been holding this event at Expocentre Fairgrounds for over 10 years.

The Russian exposition in Basel was officially opened by Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Russian Federation in Switzerland Alexander Golovin, Expocentre General Director Sergey Bednov and Chairman of Board of the Russian Handicraft and Art Association Gennady Drozhzhin.

“There have been no examples of such exhibitions of Russian arts and crafts abroad”, stressed Sergey Bednov, the General Director of Expocentre. “One of our main targets is to support the folk crafts and keep them from falling into oblivion. This event is very interesting for us, as it shows the traditions of our country to European visitors.”

The participants of exposition put on display a great variety of Russian arts and crafts. The visitors to the Basel Fair have an opportunity to see unique porcelain and faience wares, veiny carpet weaving and delicate embroidery, elegant forging and the thinnest engraving on steel, works of bone-carvers, potters and many other works of Russian folk crafts. Twenty-four folk craft companies from 21 regions of Russia take part in the exposition.

In addition to the display of finished goods, Ladya includes The City of Masters. Anyone can take part in crafting or just watch workshops by leading experts of folk arts and crafts, demonstrations of traditional techniques and technologies of arts and crafts: the Khokhloma and Gorodetsky paintings on wood, lacework, sculpted clay toys, pottery, batik, wood carving, painting of clay toys, the Zhostovo painting, and the Torzhok gold embroidery.