音频游览 "Ladies’ things" Exhibition

The museum lower floor starts with a small display called «Ladies’ things». It is an improvised boudoir – a lady’s personal room of the late nineteenth -early twentieth century.

A screen divides the space into two parts - «guest» and «intimate». The first presents the visible side of a lady’s everyday life. Here you see a silk wedding-dress from the second half of the nineteenth century. Various articles of a lady’s toilette are placed in the small display case and on the pier-glass table.

Pay attention to the white porcelain ball – it is a perfume vase made in Western Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. A fashion for aromatizers resulted in the appearance of a number of special devices for their storage. At first they were metallic and opened like two halves of an apple, but they began to be made as porcelain balls after the appearance of porcelain in the eighteenth century. Such articles were easily hung in a bedroom or boudoir for aromatizing the air, and also taken into coaches or hotel rooms.

The engraving «Satyr and Nymph» on the wall is reproduced from a picture by Dosso Dossi, an Italian artist from Ferrara of the late fifteenth – early sixteenth century. The original is in the Uffizi gallery in Florence.

The second, intimate part of the exhibition presents the so-called negligee lingerie and «morning dress» of the early twentieth century. It is interesting that the convex design on the dress is made of tightly rolled cotton wool balls.

Nearby you can see a faïence basin with a pitcher for washing made at the famous Kuznetsov factory, and a drain bucket, bidet and other items of personal care.