by Olga PROTOPOPOVA, journalist The treasure-house of the All-Russia Museum of Decorative and Applied Arts and Crafts in terms of materials (wood, fabric, metal, ceramics, bone, etc.), types of art (carving, painting, casting, lacemaking, embroidery, furniture design, etc.) and geography of development centers of respective crafts and trades (from Arkhangelsk to Caucasia and from St. Petersburg to Yakutia) is really inexhaustible. Therefore, each section of the exposition is certainly worthy of a detailed description. But we shall focus on the major displayed works, which impressively characterize Russian style extending in the second half of the 19th century to all creative works. The museum we are going to visit is in the area of Moscow, where in the 17th century the country mansions of the boyar Lukyan Streshnev, father of Yevdokiya Lukyanovna, the second wife of Tsar Mikhail Romanov, were situated. In 1783 the estate was inherited by Count Ivan Osterman, and three years later he built there an impressive stone three-storeyed palace linked by covered arcades to two-storeyed outhouses with archways for getting to the backyard. In such state, without major changes, the ensemble designed by an architect presumably from the circle of Matvei Kazakov* is preserved up to the present time. In 1834, the Osterman house, as it is often called even today, suffered heavily from a fire during the Patriotic * Matvei Kazakov--an architect, one of the founders of Russian Classicism, who designed senate houses in the Kremlin, the university and other unique constructions in Moscow. See: N. Frolova, "Treasure-House of Architecture", Science in Russia, No. 5, 2007.--Ed. War of 1812, was sold to the Holy Synod, which opened there the Moscow Theological College. In 1918, the house was occupied by the All-Russia Central Executive Committee of Soviets of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies and in 1945 by the RSFSR Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and the ... Читать далее