Glass Factory of Peasants Shapenkovs in the 19th Century, Lower Tobol Region

Abstract

This paper examines the history of the peasants Shapenkovs’ glass factory. It operated in one of the districts of the Lower Tobol region (Western Siberia). The purpose of the research is to study the range, production volume, color of products and sales regions, raw materials and tools, identify and attribute bottle stamps stored in museum collections and discovered by archaeological excavations. These data will help process archaeological collections obtained by excavations of the Modern Times monuments. 19th century archives and prerevolutionary publications give details on the range, production volume, color of products and sales markets. The thesis explains why the sales markets were changed and how it impacted the production volumes. The study traces the origins of raw materials and tools used to manufacture glass products. The authors review the fluctuations in the labor force throughout the entire period of the factory’s operation and their impact on the production volume. Revision lists and parish registers suggest the dates of the factory’s transition from one owner to another. The collected data indicate that between 1804 and the late 1830s the factory was located near the village of Rafaylovsky. In the late 1830s it was moved to another place near the village of Bateni, Rafaylovsky volost, Yalutorovsky district, Tobolsk province. There it functioned until the third quarter of the 19th cen- tury. The collection of P.P. Ershov Ishim Museum Complex revealed 3 bottle stamps of the considered factory. One more stamp was discovered during archaeological excavations in the city of Tobolsk. The archaeological finds allow to establish the sale markets of products absent in the written sources. It is established that the production was running during periods missing any written evidence. The first quarter of the 19th century accounts for a fairly stable production volume. In the early second quarter of the 19th century the factory was idle, and in the 1850s production peaked. In the second half of the 1860s there was a significant decline in output. By the mid-1870s the factory had closed.