We continue the cycle "Museum Stories" and suggest viewing our sequent video clip "Lapidary Art. Russian typecasts" - the story about small figures of people, which conditionally can be designated as "Russian typecasts". They are a balalaika player, carpenter, coachman, gypsy, peasant, miner and Cossack... The Lapidary art artisan Paul Dreyer, the member the famous family of jewellers from Idar-Oberstein, Germany, created them.
We have to unravel the tangled story of why the German jeweller created the Russian characters.

Similar figurines are presented in the museum collection section “Lapidary and ivory works of art”. These items are rather small, varying in height from 10 to 20 cm. Their colour scheme is bright, consisting of standing-along spots of contrasting colours, hence the general decorative effect of the characters. The stone natural pattern is taken into account when the item is created, which is clearly manifested in the shawl on the shoulders of the gypsy girl* - it is carved from speckled jasper and resembles the pattern of a motley shawl.

*On the cover: The Gypsy Woman. Germany, Idar-Oberstein. 20th century. Paul Dreyer

The figurines from the museum collection clearly demonstrate the main peculiarities of the "Russian typecasts" by CarlFabergé, since art works by Paul Dreyer pretty exactly duplicate those of the Russian jewellery firm.