Permanent exhibition "Kholmogory Carved Bone"

About exhibition

The exhibition presents the finest examples of contemporary bone carving — an artistic craft that has been alive in the Russian North for more than four hundred years. These include caskets and jewelry boxes, goblets and vases, combs, knives, chess sets, jewelry, decorative screens, as well as items of church art: carved crosses, icons, icon stands, small devotional icons and other cult objects. Kholmogory craftsmen work with mammoth and walrus tusk, sperm whale tooth and ordinary tubular cow bone (zevka). They have mastered many technical methods: turning, three-dimensional (sculptural) carving, relief and openwork carving, engraving, and dyeing bone in various colors.