Event duration:
from 17 December 2021 to 27 February 2022
In the winter season facing the New Year holidays, the Amber Museum is opening an exhibition of works from bone showing the culture and daily routine of the native peoples of the North. From 17 December to 27 February, our guests will see miniature sculptures picturing local residents in traditional clothing on sledges, with dogs, bears, reindeers and heroes of fairy-tales plots.
Exhibition project "Delicacy of the Art. Bone Carving in Siberia" features special direction in bone carving art in Russia – Tobolsk School of Bone Carving. Works by carvers made the city famous and were demonstrated in the exhibitions in Paris, New York, Brussels.
The works were distinguished by multifunctionality and were of practical use: paper knives, cigarette cases, hair pins, caffs, combs. As decoration for everyday life, admirers of the beauty were pleasured with miniature sculptures, caskets, boxes, table writing sets. Exceptional quality of the carvers was that they had access not only to the raw material of animal origin, but also to the mammoth bone extracted from the bowels of the Earth. Mammoth tusk became basic for creation of works.
Bones of beef cattle, cachalot tooth, reindeer and alk horn, walrus tusk were also used by quaint masters.
The main distinctive feature of Tobolsk bone carving art is precise, detailed round sculpture with the prevailing genre composition in northern theme. Figures have generalised plasticity, texture of the material is educed, whose surface is left flat, carefully polished. Masters showed culture and everyday life of the native peoples of the North realistically, constantly improved their skills, developed their creative potential, astonishing and delighting by their works.
Currently, Tobolsk Factory of Carved Works from Bone continues traditions of its famous predecessors. It is Russia's only factory-based production of bone carving.
The exhibition "Delicacy of the Art. Bone Carving Artistry in Siberia" presents the plot variety and original style typical of Tobolsk masters of the bone carving art, it includes items from the museum collections of "Tobolsk Historical and Architectural Reserve and Museum", "I.Ia.Slovtsov Museum Complex" (Tumen), "Tobolsk Factory of Artistic Bone Carving Items".
