In summer, there was no end to the different berries. At first, strawberries is getting ripe, which, however, ripens in the forest a little later than in the fields, therefore it can be much fleshy and sweet smelling. Before it runs short, there are blueberries, roebuck berries, raspberries, and then cowberry.

Sofya Kovalevskaya

There is no more splendid source of inspiration than the nature around us. Natural beauty, bright colours, and a variety of shapes – nature creates images that are amazing in their beauty.

The beginning of August is the time when wild berries ripen: fragrant, sweet, flavorous. Sculptural berries and fruits made of stone are not only an aesthetically attractive decorative element, but also a symbol of prosperity and well–being.

Wild berries have always inspired paintors and stone carvers who have achieved the highest technique in creating leaves, berries and fruit from a wide variety of stone species.

Let us recall the story of the creative duel between Parrhasius and Zeuxis, which was narrated by the Roman writer and encyclopaedist Pliny the Elder (1st century AD) in his "Natural History", the only encyclopaedia that has come down to us from ancient times. In the painting "Boy with Grapes", Zeuxis painted grapes so realistically that the birds came to peck at them; then he painted a boy with grapes, but the birds began to flock again. Zeuxis became angry, deciding that if he had painted the boy as well as the grapes, the birds would have been afraid of him (Book XXXV, section 36).

Nowadays, when mass production is becoming more common, handmade items created from natural materials are gaining special value.

Fruit baskets, fruit and placers of ripe berries – these symbols of prosperity and flourishing, realistically embodied by stone carvers, can be examined in detail in the collection section "Lapidary Works of Art and Ivories" and in our thematic album "Wild berries".