Exhibition "Jewelry Box" (traditional jewelry of Eurasian peoples of the XVII-XX centuries)

Jewelry making is a traditional art form of many peoples of Russia.

Each of them contributed to the development of this exquisite form of applied art and enriched it with elements of their own culture. National traditions, peculiarities of everyday life, refracted in the minds of masters, predetermined the originality of figurative structure of jewelry of each nation, diversity and originality of their types, forms and decorating techniques. Jewelry demonstrated the level of metal and gemstone craftsmanship, was a highly artistic work, and, reflecting the influence of different cultures and eras, carried a wealth of historical and cultural information. 

Jewelry is an obligatory part of the traditional costume complex, which has not only aesthetic value, but also is endowed with significant semantic functions: ritual, magical, and sociomarking. They served as signs of gender and age, reflected family and social status, were symbols of power and evidence of material well-being, protected the wearer from the negative influences of the netherworld, and indicated his confessional and ethnic affiliation. Signs typical of folk art in general reached the highest concentration in the jewelry. Everything was important in them: the material, the quantity, the form, the décor. Because of their aesthetic value and considerable symbolic meaning, the decorations were often chosen by representatives of the peoples inhabiting the Russian Empire as offerings to members of the imperial family.

The goal of the exhibition is to show the diversity and originality of national cultures through the example of jewelry craftsmanship. The variability of forms, materials, methods of manufacture and decoration are traced on the example of jewelry made by both professional jewelers-craftsmen and bearers of tradition in the home. The exhibition features about 250 masterpieces describing the jewellery traditions and aesthetic tastes of almost 40 peoples of the Russian Empire. The material is put in accordance with ethno-cultural zoning: Slavic peoples of the European part of Russia (Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians), peoples of Baltic region, Volga region, Caucasus, Kazakhstan and Central Asia, Siberia and Far East. These things are typical of folk culture, which were in use from the late seventeenth to the middle of the twentieth century. The Russian jewelry items, endowed with delicate harmony of color, softness and melodiousness of lines, Siberian items with their stressed monumentality, Central Asian jewelry with its bright polychromy and plasticity, graceful graphics of Caucasian masters and filigree work of Volga jewelers, put together, create a fund of jewellery art of peoples of Russia and form an image of a jewelry box in the treasury of traditional culture. 

The exhibition project is aimed at promoting civil unity, civic consciousness, ethno-cultural development of visitors.

The partner of the project is the Krai Center for Civil Initiatives and Socially Oriented Nonprofit Organizations.

The exhibition is organized with the financial support of the Government of the Khabarovsk region.

Background Information. The Russian Museum of Ethnography is one of the largest ethnographic centers in the world. Its collection contains about 700 thousand items, including material and illustrative monuments, photographic documents, books and archival materials on 158 peoples of Russia and neighboring countries. The value of the museum's collection also lies in the chronological range of its collections from the late seventeenth century to the present. The museum collects, studies and presents multinational traditional culture at exhibitions and in permanent exhibitions, awakening interest in historical roots, promoting the growth of ethnic consciousness and forming a respectful attitude to the way of life, customs and habits of other peoples.

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