Faith · The East · Monarchies · Nature · Ethnography

When a giraffe was presented to Zhu Di (1360-1424), the third emperor of the Ming dynasty, during the voyages of his subject Zheng He around the world, the court was delighted, for everyone took the animal for a qilin or kirin, the mythical beast, one of…

Archive · Faith · Museums · People

At his trial, Patriarch Nikon explained why he wore a black klobuk with a cherub and two panagias

A six-winged seraph on the klobuk of Patriarch Nikon. Collection of the New Jerusalem Museum. When Patriarch Nikon was asked at his trial why he wore a black klobuk with a cherub and two panagias, Nikon replied thus: "Black klobuks are worn by the Greek patriarchs, and I

Engraving in an oval frame: a man in a curled wig, white neckcloth and buttoned coat looks at the viewer, his head slightly turned.

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Oval engraved portrait of a man in a powdered wig, 18th-century style

Books · Education · Society

If it is good to know how to use men as they are, it is far better still to make them what one needs them to be; the most absolute authority is that which penetrates into the inmost being of a man and exerts no less influence…

From Jean-Jacques Rousseau's article “Discourse on Political Economy” in the Encyclopédie

A fire burns in a fireplace shaped like a giant grimacing face with wavy hair. At right, a table with a lace cloth, chairs in white covers, a bouquet and wine bottles.

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Fireplace carved as a monstrous mask with an open mouth in a dining hall

NB! · Architecture · Art

A Fireplace in the Form of a Lion's Maw in a Sixteenth-Century Italian Villa

Black-and-white still: clergy in embroidered vestments walk along a carpet in a frescoed church toward a dais covered with cloth bearing an eagle emblem.

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Procession of clergy in brocade vestments toward a stepped dais in a church

Olive-brown velvet vestment with crosses in circles embroidered in gold and silver thread and three medallions with figures. The piece is displayed in a museum case.

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Velvet liturgical vestment with metal-thread embroidery in a museum display

Almaty · Faith · Cinema · Museums

Authentic 17th-century sakkos from the New Jerusalem Museum in a film shot in Alma-Ata

In Filming "Ivan the Terrible", Sergei Eisenstein Used Authentic Historical Costumes. The film was shot while Mosfilm was evacuated to Alma-Ata. At the same time the city was also sheltering, in evacuation, the collection of church textiles of the New Jerusalem Museum, the foremost assemblage of Russian

NB! · Archive · Mores · Society

The Rules of Honest Trade from the Sixteenth Century: Do Not Sell Dyed Cloth for Taffeta, Verdigris-Green Copper for Gold, or Glass for a Diamond

Cinema · Books · Moscow · Observations

Vladimir Mirzoev on the new screen adaptation of Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”

It is no accident that Dostoevsky tops the IMDb ranking of the "100 Greatest Authors of All Time": he remains not merely one of the most published and most read writers, but also the most adapted for the screen. But why does it matter to go on adapting

Art · Museums

Stenka Razin, a sculpture by Alexei Teneta, late 1920s

New Jerusalem Museum, exhibition "The Formula of Rus 17/20". From the collection of the State Historical Museum. Material: tinted plaster

Alexandr Radayev