Gzhel is the name of two rural localities in Ramensky District

Ramensky District

Ramensky District is an administrative and a municipal district , one of thirty-eight administrative and thirty-six municipal districts in Moscow Oblast, Russia. Its administrative center is the town of Ramenskoye...

, Moscow Oblast

Moscow Oblast

Moscow Oblast , or Podmoskovye , is a federal subject of Russia . Its area, at , is relatively small compared to other federal subjects, but it is one of the most densely populated regions in the country and, with the 2010 population of 7,092,941, is the second most populous federal subject...

, Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

, 52 kilometres (32.3 mi) southeast from the center of Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

. It gave its name to Gzhel ceramics

Gzhel

Gzhel is a Russian style of ceramics.Gzhel may also refer to:*Gzhel, Moscow Oblast, where the ceramics are produced*Gzhel, Smolensk Oblast, a village in Smolensk Oblast, Russia...

 as well as the Gzhelian

Gzhelian

The Gzhelian is an age in the ICS geologic timescale or a stage in the stratigraphic column. It is the youngest stage of the Pennsylvanian, the youngest subsystem of the Carboniferous. The Gzhelian lasted from 303.9 ± 0.9 to 299.0 ± 0.8 Ma...

 age and stage in the ICS geologic timescale. In a broader sense, the name also refers to a cluster of villages and settlements in the vicinity of Gzhel and Rechitsy. An eponymous railway station on the Moscow–Kazan

Kazan

Kazan is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia. With a population of 1,143,546 , it is the eighth most populous city in Russia. Kazan lies at the confluence of the Volga and Kazanka Rivers in European Russia. In April 2009, the Russian Patent Office granted Kazan the...

 railroad has been operating since 1912.

Gzhel stands on the banks of the Gzhelka River, known from the 1451 charter of Sophia of Lithuania

Sophia of Lithuania

Sophia was the only daughter of Vytautas the Great of Lithuania and his first wife Anna. On January 21, 1391, while her father was engaged in the Lithuanian Civil War, she married Vasili I of Russia. She was the longest serving consort of Russia.After his death in 1425 she became regent for their...

, mother of Vasily II of Moscow, as Kzhelya. The year the village of Gzhel was established remains unknown; it was first reliably documented in the 1784 census. The village prospered in the end of 19th century; the 1871 census recorded 11 retail shops, 15 pubs, 5 inns, and 88 manufacturing shops. Farmland was scarce; most of the population made a living in ceramic trade or worked in Moscow. According to 1878 records, 952 local men and 177 women worked outside of Gzhel, yet the village provided employment to more than 1,200 workers from other places, evenly balancing the equation. Unhealthy work environments promoted mass tuberculosis

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

among locals and guest workers; in 1909, the village built a privately funded free sanatorium for TB patients.