#samovar

Nicolai Fechin in Taos

Is a birch tree kin to an aspen? Or the desert’s gold expanse like the backdrop of an icon? I want to know in what sense you were positively stricken by its resemblance to Siberia ....

For what isn’t, now, a souvenir in the life of a permanent guest, or the courtesies of the displaced? Doors are functionally two-faced, so you carved them; when they cleft man and wife, and you left this handmade house at her request, you took one thing: the samovar.

Ange Mlinko

First published in The Sonneteer (April 2026).

Image: Samovar at Nicolai Fechin House, Ange Mlinko.

Note (from Wikipedia) : The Nicolai Fechin House in Taos, New Mexico, is the historic home of the Russian artist Nicolai Fechin, his wife Alexandra and daughter Eya.  The Taos mountains reminded him of the beauty he had seen in Siberia and he soon painted with fervor.  After purchasing the house in 1927, he spent several years enlarging and modifying the two-story adobe structure, for instance, enlarging the porch and adding and widening windows to take advantage of the views. He carved 51 intricate doors according to Russian style, created triptych windows, and carved furniture for use in the house, which reflects a combination of modernist, Russian and Native American sensibility.