Ferchampenoise Stone Museum and its exhibits

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

People live in the world of stones, not paying attention to them and not showing interest. Only experts know what this "inanimate" type of matter is, which has its own history of birth, development and death.

Until now, scientists cannot draw a clear line between animate and inanimate nature, but for the organizer of the Museum of Stones in the Chelyabinsk region, the answer is unequivocal: the stones are alive.

Creating a museum

The world keeps and develops on enthusiasts. Alexander Matora is one of them. Love for stones, their study and gathering became the vocation of his life. It was it that pushed him to look again and again for new places with unknown deposits of stones.

Thus, Alexander Maksimovich went from Nizhny Tagil to Orsk, his stones come from the Magadan region and Kazakhstan, Bashkiria and the Kola Peninsula, the Krasnoyarsk Territory and the Moscow Region. The stone museum in Ferchampenoise, opened thanks to his enthusiasm and collection of stones, has become a reallandmark of the whole region.

The museum is divided into compositions, some of which are located in the open air in the courtyard of a two-story house, and others - in the building itself. These are not only stones, but also crafts made from them, all the exhibits have their own history, and the founder of the museum is happy to tell them to curious tourists.

Every resident of the Chelyabinsk region knows where the Stone Museum is located and is proud of it. To visit the museum, you can apply to a travel agency or contact Alexander Maksimovich and agree on the day and time of the visit.

Museum exhibits. Malachite and lapis lazuli

Among the exhibits presented by the open-air stone museum, there are precious, semi-precious and fossil stones. Most of the collection consists of specimens found by the museum organizer personally during his expeditions.

In the courtyard of the museum, it seems that the stones are laid out randomly in the exposition. In fact, they are all arranged in such a way that, moving from one "stone" slide to another, you can find out not only the history of the development of stones on our planet, but also how old they are, where their "home" used to be.

In the museum there are exhibits of the greatest value in the collection, as well as handicrafts made of stones. For example, malachite. It was mined in ancient Egypt, whose priests prepared powders for various potions and amulets for children.

Today, malachite is considered one of the most beautiful semi-precious stones, as the variety of its texture never ceases to amazecraftsmen who make beads, caskets, amulets and animal figurines from it.

Another representative of the stones that the Museum of Stone in Ferchampenoise is proud of is lapis lazuli, a mineral that has absorbed, it would seem, all shades of blue. In ancient India, where it began to be mined 7,000 years ago, the mineral was called a heavenly stone that could purify the human aura.

For a long time, lapis lazuli has been recommended to be taken as a talisman by those who start their lives over, changing it dramatically from scratch. Malachite and lapis lazuli presented in the museum were brought from Bashkiria.

Grenades

This place belongs to the "Gem Museums" category due to its exhibits. For example, among the museum items there is a blood-red garnet, a stone loved and revered by all jewelers in the world.

It got its name from its resemblance to the Phoenician apple - pomegranate. This mineral has been known and revered since ancient times, and was credited with properties to attract love and passion. For warriors, he was a symbol of valor and a protector on the battlefield.

It was believed that the pomegranate does not like greed and traitors, so the people who wore it were considered honest people and loyal friends. If the pomegranate literally "burned" red, then they said that its owner had a passionate nature or he was in love. The Stone Museum in Ferchampenoise presents these blood-red minerals from the Kola Peninsula.

Another representative of this class is black grenades. In ancient times, people believed thatwith their help, you can communicate with the souls of the dead, so they were often worn by priests and mediums. Black grenades arrived at the museum from Primorye.

Turquoise

The Stone Museum in Ferchampenoise proudly presents the semi-precious stone turquoise. Unfortunately, it is this mineral that is most often counterfeited, as Georgius Agricola (the great chemist known as Georg Bauer) pointed out as early as 1546.

Turquoise was considered a stone of good luck in both love and we alth. Merchants wore rings with turquoise to ward off failures in business, and women of the East sewed it into the clothes of a man whose attention they wanted to attract. Also, turquoise was used in jewelry for brides from Asia and the Caucasus.

In ancient times, it was customary to attribute to turquoise the ability to change its shade if a person fell ill. It was used as a kind of diagnosis of the state of the body.

This mineral tends to change its color when exposed to sunlight, fats on it, but people believed that this happens because love fades away.

The turquoise displayed in the museum comes from Turkmenistan.

Icelandic spar

Another amazing mineral on display at the Stone Museum is Icelandic spar. It has the amazing property of refracting the sun's ray and splitting it into two light waves. Due to this property, the translucent stone was used in ancient times by the Vikings to navigate by the sun in cloudy weather.

Nowadays, it is used to create optical instruments, and it came to the museum from Tura,village in the Krasnoyarsk Territory.

Music of stones

This is not all representatives of the unusual museum. Its organizer believes that the stones are frozen music and each of them has its own melody. To “hear” it, it is enough to visit the Museum of Stones (address: Builders Street, 7, Ferchampenoise village). Alexander Matora will tell the story of each exhibit in such a way that it seems like a beautiful symphony of nature sounds.