Exhibition "Selenite Room"

About exhibition

The Selenite Room is unique not only in Russia but in the world. The exhibition is designed as an artificial grotto, the walls of which are decorated with decorative panels and stained-glass works made of selenite in 20 different shades — landscapes, landmarks and recognizable places of the Perm region. Selenite, a fibrous variety of gypsum, has a rich color range. Colored selenites — golden, honey-yellow, pinkish and reddish — are found only in the Perm region, in deposits along the Iren River south of the town of Kungur. Deposits of this mineral elsewhere in the world — in Australia, the USA, Canada, Germany, France and Egypt — are of a pale whitish color. The author of the panels and the initiator of the Selenite Room exhibition is the artist Anatoly Ivanov. The panels are executed in the artist's own mosaic technique based on the principles of Florentine mosaic. The mosaic is assembled from end cuts of selenite, which provides a wide palette of material. In addition to selenite slabs, selenite grit is also used. The mosaic image is ground, polished and treated with hot paraffin, creating a transparent protective layer on the surface of the soft stone. The exhibition also presents the museum collection of stone-carving art of the Prikamye (Kama) region. The works are made not only of selenite but also of other soft ornamental stones: white and colored gypsum and talcochlorite. These are works by such well-known masters as F. P. Ovchinnikova, A. M. Ovchinnikov, A. V. Ovchinnikov, T. G. Ovchinnikova, S. O. Nechaev, S. S. Krivoshchekov, A. I. Shadrin and G. M. Kovalev.