Exhibition "Flacon"

About exhibition

Different eras, materials, and decorating techniques allow the perfume bottle to be regarded as a high art form, as an object in which utilitarian purpose and artistic work, the aesthetics of the vessel itself, are combined. The perfume vessel is an embodied testament to human efforts to preserve and prolong the life of a wonderful fragrance and to find a worthy container for it. Bottles entered the museum's collection in various ways — they were acquired together with items from the major collector Viktor Vladimirovich Ashik (Leningrad), came from families in Yaroslavl, and from antique shops in Moscow, Kaliningrad, Saint Petersburg, Astrakhan, and other cities across the country. The first accession to the collection can be dated to 1987, the most recent to 2020. Perfume vessels are not merely containers for aromatic liquid; bottles tell of an era, of people, of times and tastes. They have become for us a kind of guide into history.