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22:50
How did Attica Miniatures get started?

One of my first childhood memories is me playing my toy soldiers and talking to my father. It’s quite a common situation for a four-year-old boy. Almost all boys love to play mock battles at this age, but how many do manage to take them to an adult life, keeping such entertainment pacific oriented? And how many people are lucky enough to turn an interest to history into a lifetime project? It seems that I’m a lucky man twice.

Those days have given rise to my deep interest to historical miniature which combines my main passions – history of civilizations, mindbending beauty and bloodcurdling evils of battle scenes, and creation of art which has been enchanting me since the early childhood. While I’ve been positioning my soldiers for another fight, my father has been telling me how the major battles have changed the history of the world and has been making his miniatures.

My father is a glasswork artist who followed in the footsteps of his father and adopted his secrets of tiny glass miniatures creation – good fairy-tale creatures and flowers. My grandfather who lives in a small and peaceful town near the Belarus’ capital, has been creating glass miniatures for half a century. He was an artists’ union member in USSR and his works were exhibited in many cities of the large country.

When my grandfather was staying in Saint Petersburg we were visiting numerous museums and I was entering into the atmosphere of various eras. There are kept in my home city in the Russian Museum such masterpieces of pictural art as The Last Day of Pompeii by Karl Bryullov and Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire by Ilya Repin (have you seen a beautiful diorama by Irbis Miniatures based on this painting?). Looking at the heroes of battles on the brushworks of the famous artists I’ve been imagining myself in their places. When I grew up I gave off romanticizing war, but I saved my love to its history for a lifetime.

As for my favorite epoch in history, it is the Russian Civil War which resulted in irrevocable loss of the entire cultural layer and ideals of the imperial Russia. I am also keen on the Ancient Rome evolvement from Republic to Empire.

What is your favorite historical period?

Sincerely yours,
Ivan Novik