15.06.2021

Thematic photo album for the World Wind Day "Mills from the museum Collection repository”

The European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) and the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) initiated the celebration. The purpose of the holiday is to attract the attention of the public to the huge potential capacity of wind energy. According to the experts’ opinion wind energy devices have the major prospective. The mature economics are already aware of these facts. Despite the doubts of skeptics, who consider "taming the wind" futile, wind power plants (WPPs) are now successfully operating in almost 80 countries, and many thousands people are involved in the production of wind energy.

Since ancient times, people learned not only observe, but yoke the forces of nature. Wind power is utilized in mills supported people in many countries and continents, allowing a large number of operations to be carried out. Windmills were rather complex engines technically. Usually they were built about one third taller than the highest house in the village. The mill was built from wood or stone, near village, on the elevation. Not to mention church and chapel, it occupied the esteemed place in the Christian European settlements. For a long time, windmills, along with watermills, were the only machines widely used by people. Moreover, the role of these mechanisms was multifarious: as a flourmill, for processing wood (sawmill) and as a pump or water-lifting station. They were widely used in the European windy northern regions, in the territory of France, Holland, the Lower Lands (there were 10,000 windmills in the coastal regions), Great Britain, Poland, the Baltic States, Northern Russia and Scandinavia. In the countries of the Southern Europe (Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, the Balkans, Greece), typical mill-towers were built, with smooth conical roof and, as a rule, fixed positioning.

Metaphoric expression from “Don Quixote” by Miguel de Cervantes is known throughout the world - "to fight with windmills", which means to fight with a straw man or fight with one’s own shadow. Fighting with mills symbolizes battle with one’s own fears, which distort reality and prevent a person from living his own life. Salvador Dalí, while depicting a mill in one of his paintings, said that mills-giants were the objectification of the downsides and weaknesses, of personal negative qualities that should be defeated. Argentinian philosopher Jorge Ángel Livraga Rizzi wrote that Cervantes, in his “Don Quixote”, symbolically gave wonderful advice on how to get through it, "Giants, when you dare to attack them, always turn into common windmills". A mill is one of the most beautiful manufactured mechanisms. A symbol of wind and air familiar from childhood, harvesting and hard work, an image of historical heritage and the continuity of generations. The mill began to appear in the visual arts at the same time with the immortal work of Cervantes. Dutch artists, not excluding the prominent Van Gogh, created most of the paintings featuring mills. Many images of mills are depicted in landscapes and in decorative and interior works. The image of mill is widely and in many ways used in modern design – beginning from l landscape gardening, kitchen utensils decoration and children's toys - to fine art and jewelry.

To mark the World Wind Day we have prepared a thematic photo album "Mills from the museum Collection exposition”.