Mammoth, furniture and icons

The Gomel Palace and Park Ensemble has been replenished with about 700 items during
the year

The Museum Item exhibition is a traditional project for the Gomel Palace and Park Ensemble. For almost 15 years now, it has been a kind of report for visitors about the novelties received by the museum collection. It turns out to be a rather motley set, featuring exhibits from archaeology to modern painting. In fact, there is an offbeat story behind each item, and restorers had to work magic to revive many of them.

The Rumyantsev-Paskevich Palace.  Tata Kaverina

Millstone from the grave

The organisers combined all the items into one interior — it turned out to be either a museum laboratory of the 19th century, or a private collection of a manor of the nobility. The exhibition supervisor and head of the scientific and repository department, Tatiana Zygmantovich, suggested starting the tour with the most mysterious item of the collection, “This is a gravestone-millstone with preserved fragments of an inscription in Hebrew. It was brought to us by a resident of the village of Pokolyubichi near Gomel. This millstone was used for grinding grain, but now it is difficult to say when it began to perform such a household function. It is known for sure that first the stone had been a gravestone on a Jewish grave of the late 19th – early 20th centuries. With the help of Gomel translator Oleg Lisovsky, we managed to restore a fragmentary inscription, ‘A woman of integrity is buried here’. It means the one without sins or bad qualities.   

The Museum Item exhibition     TATA KAVERINA

Local residents also brought other unexpected finds — for example, a mammoth’s tooth found in construction sand. A regional organisation, the OSVOD lifesaving society, handed over the bones of the bison’s forearm from Lake Otolovo to us. And a local collector gave us a mammoth’s femur once discovered in a construction pit intended for a house in Gomel.” 
We are certainly interested in the fate of another new arrival. In summer, a mammoth’s skull was fished out of the Besed River near the village of Svetilovichi, Vetkovsky District! Professional divers of Belarus’ Ministry of Emergencies found it during the scheduled work on bottom cleaning. This is just the third case like that in the last 126 years. Yet, it is impossible to see the valuable find at the exhibition now. Tatiana Zygmantovich explained why, “The mammoth’s skull is being prepared for display. When the skull was taken out of the water, it got into a different environment. In order for it not to collapse, it was necessary to urgently preserve it. Therefore, it is treated with a special solution now. I will reveal a secret — specialised equipment is being purchased for its display. By the way, it is already known that the skull belonged to a young male mammoth; it was 54-55 years old when it died.” 

How to restore the history

The restorers had to work hard to restore the mahogany furniture set, which dates back to the 19th century and was once kept in a family in Gomel.
“When working with such items, it is important to apply the same technologies that were used to create the furniture, as well as the same materials, preferably seasoned ones,” clarified Nikolai Fei, Head of Restoration Department. “That is why we retain a collection of materials, the same pieces of mahogany that may one day be needed during restoration.”
The restorers’ task is not to update the item but to keep everything as authentic as possible. Thus, they put the original seagrass inside the seats, which was used for softness before the ‘foam’ era. As for the upholstery, they had to look for a modern fabric — tapestry silk. The canvas was chosen to match the preserved fragments, taking into account the weaving quality. 
Restorer Evgenia Fei worked on other exposition exhibits — paired paintings that were once kept in the family of Gomel Old Believers, “This is a very rare technique of doing oil painting on wood. The paintings have been preserved surprisingly well; we only had to remove dust and dirt from their surface. We applied in-depth cleaning, using a special composition, which included purified linseed oil.” 
It took much longer to restore the four-part icon. The wood fixed on two dowels dried out, deformed, bent and cracked in the course of time. The restorers actually got two separate boards. The Fei family, through joint efforts, exquisitely glued and cleaned the icon, and managed to repair some wear and tear.   

Selfless gifts

“If we talk about how new exhibits appear, in most cases they are brought to us as a gift,” noted Tatiana Shoda, Chief Repository Keeper. “These include a variety of items. As they say, some of them need to ‘lie for a while’ and over time they will have real historical value.” 
The complex of works by artist Veniamin Siper was handed over to the museum by his relatives. Modern paintings were acquired by the museum. In addition, Gomel customs officers seized medals from the Great Patriotic War at the border. The handicraft by craftswoman Tatiana Titova was brought by the museum staff from an expedition to Buda-Koshelevo District. A fairly rare Soviet porcelain statuette The Mistress of the Copper Mountain was presented by a resident of Gomel last year. Minsk collector Andrei Fedosov, an old friend of the palace, shared a copy of the Stolitsa i usadba [Capital and Manor] magazine. The issue contains an article by art historian Georgi Loukomski, who visited Gomel on the eve of the First World War and was delighted with the Rumyantsev-Paskevich Palace. 
“A black-and-white copy of this article was once kept in our repository,” mentioned Tatiana Shoda. “I especially like the author’s idea that the new owner of the Gomel manor should preserve this beauty and grandeur. This is exactly the task that our museum performs today.”

TATA KAVERINA

The Mistress of the Copper Mountain statuette      TATA KAVERINA

TATA KAVERINA

By Olga Valchenko