Exposition “Russian Amber Coast”

Exhibition of works made of Kaliningrad amber was opened on 23 November in the North of Italy in Merano (South Tirol). Exposition “Russian Amber Coast” was composed by art experts of regional Amber Museum, who decided in favour of 257 items of the museum collection. There were caskets, goblets, vases made by artists in different manner using various ways of amber treatment.

After coming back director of regional Amber Museum Tatiana Suvorova told that majors of cities Merano and Naturns, representatives of business community, artists and collectioners participated in the opening ceremony. “They expressed their admiration with amber showpieces and were interested in its use in jewellery, mentioned symbolism of our exhibition, which is holding in the Year of Russian culture and Russian language in Italy and Year of Italian culture and Italian language in Russia”, – noticed T. Suvorova.

Kaliningrad guides meet 12-15 groups every day in Kurhaus of Merano, where the partners from Nadezhda Borodina Center of development of relations between Autonomous Province of Bolzano and Russia had helped to organize the exhibition. Guests are invited to listen to an excursion or to watch the film about Kaliningrad amber in Italian. Museum employees will work in such rhythm till the very closing of the exposition, which will be on 16 December.

Regional Ministry of Culture helped Kaliningrad Amber Museum to accomplish the Italian project by giving financial support within the programme «Development of Kaliningrad region culture (2007-2013)».

Reference. More than 90 percent of developed world amber reserves are concentrated on the territory of Kaliningrad region. The only in the country Combine that extracts and treats “sun stone” industrially, is situated in Yantarny, a town on the Baltic coast.

History of partners relations between Kaliningrad Amber Museum and Italian partners began in 2009, Russian-Italian art and educational project «Russian Amber Coast» appeared soon (realization time of the project is 5 years). It united Kaliningrad Amber Museum, Gallery-workshop Posthaus (director – Konrad Laimer), Nadezhda Borodina Center of development of relations between Autonomous Province of Bolzano and Russia in Merano (director – Andrey Pruss), Kaliningrad Amber Combine (a.i. general director Yury Mukhin) and Kaliningrad Art and Industrial College (director Svetlana Petropavlovskaya). .

The project provides competitions and exhibitions, apprenticeship of students, creation of a new educational system in jewellers, designers and specialists of artistic amber treatment training, holding of conferences and publication of booklets. Most of the conceived project has been already managed to realize. For instance apprenticeship of Kaliningrad and Italian students, who went through the real competitive selection. Four Kaliningraders were in the Apennines and under the influence of Italian art created some new works that were shown in the specially organized exhibition in Kaliningrad Amber Museum.

Sunstone inspired Italian masters to create some new works, these artists took part in the Biennial of Amber Artworks “Alatyr 2009” and 2011 in Kaliningrad, also in international forum “Baltic Amber” this spring. All the facts show interaction of two cultures, which was inchoated by famous Italian architects, sculptors and musicians in Russia and Russian painters, poets and writers, who created inspired in the Apennines. Kaliningrad project “Russian Amber Coast” is a contemporary continuation of regional Russian-Italian relations in sphere of culture. It is intended to take to a new level works of Kaliningrad sunstone, to help its world amber market expansion.

Ministry of Culture of Kaliningrad Region,

PressOffice, L.Viktorova