Museum History

Museum COLLECTION was founded due to the businessperson and patron of arts David Iakobachvili. Over 15 years were invested putting together the museum's invaluable collection of art, its selection, attribution and restoration, the museum building design and construction.

The pivot point of the Museum origination can be considered the acquaintance of David Iakobachvili with the Swedish businessperson Bill Lindvall, keen on collecting antique musical mechanical instruments. Having met in the early 1990s on business matters, they eventually became good friends.

The collection of mechanical music that Lindvall had carefully aggregated for forty years, numbered about 460 items. Sometimes when the weather was fine, Bill used to go out for a walk to the Stockholm central square to turn the crank of a barrel organ, cheering the citizens' hearts with the sounds of the ancient tunes. In 2000, being seriously ill, Bill suggested his friend to buy the collection and establish the museum. Bill Lindvall apprehend that his children would sell away the collection he had so carefully selected, but he wanted to transfer it into the hands of a man who could continue his lifelong project.

After acquisition of the collection, David Iakobachvili found himself continuing to collect exiting pieces of art. Simultaneously with the collection development, David Iakobachvili started forming a team of professional experts and restorers, since the most part of exhibits needed extensive restoration. In the same period, David Iakobachvili started to collect art and craft items, Russian bronze artworks, antique clocks with musical movements, amusing automata and mechanical dolls.

Nowadays the museum COLLECTION repository numbers more than 20,000 exhibits and is considered one of the largest private collections of the world cultural significance.