Nikolsky Museum of Glass and Crystal is 230 years old

The Persistent Crystal Glass World is 230 years old. The masters of the past maintain the museums of the past quite intricately: all the exhibits lay on a red carpet and are already cleared of the fleeting dust of time. Even if a small piece falls, it will not break. The first product of the Nikolsky factory is a violet vase made of manganese glass. It dates back to 1789. The place and time were set only because the numbers were carved on a vase. The other samples are less fortunate, they have no designations. Therefore, the caretakers do not exclude that in their funds may be earlier work of Nikolsky glass masters. Only until it is possible to confirm it scientifically.

"The plant was founded almost in an empty place in 1764 by local landowner Alexander Ivanovich Bakhmetev. He had only a cheap labor force, serfs and fuel, which is needed a lot when cooking glass. Pugachev troops were passing here, so the plant was completely destroyed and it was necessary to start everything from scratch ", Olga Panyushkina, the museum"s manager, told.

The first private glass-making plant in Russia was a family business. After the Bakhmetievs did not have their closest relatives their last names, the factory switched to Obolensky. On the vase to the 150th anniversary of the Nikolsky glass workshops - an example of the skillful work of the engravers - portraits of the owners are depicted, but Alexei Bakhmetiev is not among them. He remained immortalized neither in glass nor in paints. During life with an extremely energetic and enterprising nobleman, they did not write portraits. Still, in this glass history there were also their fragile moments.

"At the exhibition in Europe, the production of the plant was first introduced in 1900. It attracted 60 companies from all over the world. We brought our liquor machines for beer and glasses. The plant was awarded a large gold medal, that is, it received a grand prize, but the masters and authors of the services were for some reason awarded with bronze, "said the keeper of the museum Natalya Andreeva.

On one of these medals you can see the name of Protasoff. He was the main glasswoman, the author of many works and the great-grandson of Vershinin, the founder of the titled family of peasant masters. There were legends that he had enough to look at the glass to say what was missing in his cooking.

The finest techniques: work with overhead glass, when applied over colorless colored. Diamond engraving with a wheel: hundreds of manual movements that create the tiniest patterns. Everything in 1923 passed to the laboring people. Nikolsky factory became "Red giant". On it, gifts were made, for example, to Gagarin in honor of a successful flight to space and Stalin at the 60th and 70th anniversary. The sketches were developed by Vera Mukhina, the author of the monumental monument "The Worker and the Kolkhoz". Chandeliers at the old metro stations of Moscow and St. Petersburg are also Nikolsky. Now, from the former scale, there are six separate, private industries.

Basically, now the same technologies are used, that more than 200 years ago. The glass figures of the master blow out air from their own lungs: the glass is hotter, the less effort is required. Now enough pressure of ordinary exhalation, the glass is cooked at a temperature of 1450 degrees.

Today in Nikolsk there are also the habitual things of everyday life, and, for example, Easter eggs, and sometimes even at all go to art. Every year there is the International Symposium on Glass. The legendary workshops are occupied by artists. And they complement the implicit goal of centuries-old history of the Nikolsky brand: to reflect the soul of the world in glass.

Museum of Glass and Crystal in the city of Nikolsk

Source: http://www.penza-press.ru