Skovi kapps are distinctively painted wooden bowls from Russia. During Tsarist times huge quantities were brought to Scotland and other parts of the British Isles. This book relates the stories of their making, journey, reception and reinvention. It then contextualises these with accounts of a swathe of other forms of Russian crafts and arts that made similar journeys during the same period. The first turn is to the remarkable collections of intricately carved wooden cutlery and painted distaffs acquired by the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art (now National Museum of Scotland), the former telling of the life of St Sergius, the latter spinning yarns of Russian womanhood and country ways.

Against a backdrop of trade ties, empathy and conflict, the tales move to reveal types of ‘sputnik’ (‘travelling companion’) art that reached Scottish audiences, notably ‘acting’ bears, immersive dioramas and bronze Cossacks. They then challenge stereotypical ideas of ‘Russianness’ by uncovering the groundbreaking Scottish appreciation of the craft and culture of the Bashkirs, the nomadic Turkic and mainly Muslim nation of the steppe. Thus we encounter the perspicacious Bashkir representations of painter William Allan, geologist Roderick Murchison and George Carrick, doctor-proponent of kumis (fermented mare’s milk). The tales are rounded off by probing the vitalised displays of identity that comprised the Russian village at the 1901 Glasgow Exhibition and Madame Pogosky’s Russian Peasant Industries Depôt based in Edinburgh.