Boris Timopheevich Sizov
(1946-2012)
The museum community is shaken at the sudden death of Boris Timopheevich Sizov. He was a restorer, a scientist, a man whose professionalism and advertence to Ferapontovo warmed our hearts. To speak about Boris Timopheevich using the past tense is painful and unfair…
He, an engineer and a physicist, came to work at the construction gang in the Kirillov museum in 1973 and met S.S. Podyapolsky. This meeting determined the further area of his work that was the preservation and restoration of cultural monuments. In 1975 B.T. Sizov became the head of the department which researched the methods of preservation of monuments and elaborated the restoration technologies. Since 1983 he worked at the All-Russian Research Institute of Restoration as the head of the department of monumental sculpture and then as the director of research. In the 1980s Boris Timopheevich finished postgraduate studies of the Institute of Building Physics. In 1999 he became Candidate of Culturology. The service record of Boris Timopheevich includes the Riga Cathedral, the mausoleums of Central Asia, the monuments of the Vologda, Leningrad and Novgorod regions, The Museums of Moscow Kremlin, the white-stone churches of the Vladimir-Suzdalian land.
In the Nativity Cathedral in Ferapontovo he started to work from the beginning of his restoration activity. In 1974 Boris Timopheevich took part in the research of temperature-humidity conditions and of air quality of the monastery monuments and in the elaboration of advice on their normalization. The results of this work were the basis of the part called “Research of temperature-humidity conditions” which is a section of the program of science, research and restoration works of the Nativity Cathedral devised in 1981. From the beginning of the program realization he was affiliated with the committee under the methodological council of the Culture Ministry of USSR on monument preservation. Until 1989 he continued researching the conditions of the monuments in the Ferapontov monastery. In 1995 Boris Timopheevich carried out the preservation works of the white-stone board of the St. Martinian Church dated back to the 17th century. In 2000 he recommenced the research of temperature-humidity conditions and used new methods. His research made it possible to reveal the previously unknown regularities of the forming of temperature-humidity conditions. In view of the results of the observations of last years the new methods of normalization of temperature-humidity conditions in the Nativity Cathedral were introduced and the heated ceramic floor was installed in 2003. In August of 2002 Boris Timopheevich carried out the ultrasound examination of the state of white stone in the northern side of the door of the western portal in order to decide an issue about the return of the wooden door leaves of the 15th century at their original position … Thanks to the efforts of Boris Timopheevich Sizov the science researches were done, the urgent problems of restoration were decided and the work aimed at the preservation of inestimable monuments was at the high.
May his memory life forever…
Administration and staff of
the Kirillo-Belozersky museum-reserve
