Boards for icons

Boards for icons were maid by woodworkers, sometimes by icon painters themselves. Very often icons were painted on wooden boards. Most common wood for Russian icons was lime tree, larch or fir in the north, pine trees in Pskov. The process was slow and difficult: usually the board was cut out from the very middle layer of a log.

On the face of the board was made a shallow hollow limited by the margins of the board's edges. The older the icon (XI-XII century) the deeper the hollow and the wider the margins. Starting from the XIV century icons were painted on flat boards without margins.

Small icons were panted on single boards. Big icons consisted of several joint boards. Sometimes it is very easy to determine the time and the place where the icon board was made by the type of timbering, depth of the hollow and width of the margins.