People's Museum "Malachite Box"

About museum

The "Malachite Box" Museum was established in 2019. The exhibition features the most famous characters from Pavel Petrovich Bazhov's tales: Danilo the Craftsman and the girl Sinyushka, Darenka and Kokovanya, Her Majesty the Mistress of the Copper Mountain, Ognevushka and others — all of them natives of Polevsky. The museum's collection today includes more than 200 rare exhibits — works by outstanding masters of the 20th century and contemporary times: porcelain artists and metal casters, dollmakers and miniaturists. Collections from long-vanished legendary factories of the former Soviet Union have been assembled. There are also curiosities: the largest and the smallest malachite boxes in the world. A miraculously preserved lump of Polevsky malachite (Gumeshevskoye deposit, 18th century), 24 kg, which was used to decorate the palaces of Versailles and the Hermitage. Full‑scale sculptural figures of Pavel Bazhov and the Mistress of the Copper Mountain. A tsar casket carved with motifs from P. Bazhov's tales, inlaid and decorated with Ural semi-precious stones. Little-known literary works by P. Bazhov, books bearing the author's autograph. Many exhibits are rarities, surviving in a single copy.