People live in the world of stones, not paying attention to them and not showing interest. Only specialists know what this “inanimate" form of matter is, which has its own history of birth, development, and death.
Until now, scientists can’t draw a clear line between living and nonliving nature, but for the organizer of the Museum of stones in the Chelyabinsk region the answer is unequivocal: living stones.
Museum Creation
The world keeps and develops on enthusiasts. Alexander Matora is one of them. The love of stones, their study and gathering became the calling of his life. It was he who prompted him to search again and again for new places with unknown deposits of stones.
Thus, Alexander Maksimovich went from Nizhny Tagil to Orsk, his stones come from the Magadan region and Kazakhstan, Bashkiria and the Kola Peninsula, Krasnoyarsk Territory and Moscow Region. The stone museum in Ferschampenoise, opened thanks to its enthusiasm and collection of stones, has become a real attraction of the whole region.
The museum is divided into compositions, some of which are located in the open air in the courtyard of a two-story building, while others are located in the building itself. These are not only stones, but also crafts from them, all exhibits have their own history, and the founder of the museum gladly tells their curious tourists.
Every resident of the Chelyabinsk region knows where the Museum of stone is, and is proud of it. To visit the museum, you can apply to a travel agency or contact Alexander Maksimovich and agree on the day and time of the visit.
Museum exhibits. Malachite and Lapis Lazuli
Among the exhibits that the open-air stone museum presents are precious, semiprecious and fossil stones. Most of the collection is made up of instances found by the museum organizer personally in his expeditions.
In the courtyard of the museum it seems that the stones are laid out in the exhibition randomly. In fact, they are all arranged so that, moving from one "stone" hill to another, you can find out not only the history of the development of stones on our planet, but also how old they are, where their "house" used to be.
In the museum there are exhibits of the greatest value in the collection, as well as handicrafts made of stones. For example, malachite. It was mined in ancient Egypt, the priests of which prepared powders for various potions and charms for children.
Today, malachite is considered one of the most beautiful semiprecious stones, since the variety of its texture does not cease to amaze the craftsmen who make beads, caskets, amulets and animal figures from it.
Another representative of the stones that the Stone Museum in Ferschampenoise is proud of is lapis lazuli, a mineral that has absorbed, it would seem, all shades of blue. In ancient India, where it began to be extracted as early as 7000 years ago, the mineral was called a heavenly stone capable of cleansing a person’s aura.
From time immemorial, lapis lazuli was recommended to be taken as a talisman for those who began their life from the beginning, changing it radically from scratch. Malachite and lapis lazuli presented in the museum were brought from Bashkiria.
Grenades
Thanks to its exhibits, this place is included in the category of “gemstone museums”. For example, among museum objects there is a blood-red garnet, a stone beloved and revered by all jewelers in the world.
It got its name by resemblance to a Phoenician apple - pomegranate. This mineral is known and revered from ancient times, and it was credited with properties to attract love and passion. For warriors, he was a symbol of valor and a defender on the battlefield.
It was believed that pomegranate does not like greedy and traitors, so the people who wore it were considered honest people and loyal friends. If the pomegranate literally “burned” red, then they said that its owner had a passionate nature or he was in love. The Stone Museum in Ferschampenoise presents these blood-red minerals from the Kola Peninsula.
Another representative from this class is black grenades. In ancient times, people believed that with their help you can communicate with the souls of the dead, so they were often worn by priests and mediums. Black grenades arrived at the museum from Primorye.
Turquoise
The stone museum in Ferschampenoise proudly presents the semi-precious stone turquoise. Unfortunately, it is this mineral that is most often faked, as indicated by Georgius Agricola (the great chemist known as Georg Bauer) back in 1546.
Turquoise was considered a stone of luck both in love and in wealth. Merchants wore rings with turquoise to discourage failure in business, and women of the East sewed it into the clothes of a man whose attention they wanted to attract. Turquoise was also used in jewelry of the bride from Asia and the Caucasus.
In ancient times, it was customary to attribute to turquoise the property to change its shade if a person became ill. It was used as a kind of diagnosis of the state of the body.
This mineral has the property to change its color under the influence of sunlight, the ingress of fats on it, but people believed that this is because love is dying.
Turquoise, presented in the museum, hails from Turkmenistan.
Icelandic Spar
Another amazing mineral presented at the Stone Museum is Icelandic spar. It has the amazing property of refracting a sunbeam and splitting it into two light waves. Due to this property, translucent stone was used by the Vikings in antiquity to navigate the sun in cloudy weather.
Nowadays, it is used to create optical devices, and he got to the museum from Tours, a village in the Krasnoyarsk Territory.
Rock music
This is not all representatives of an unusual museum. Its organizer believes that stones are frozen music and each of them has its own melody. To "hear" it, just visit the Stone Museum (address: Stroiteley St., 7, the village of Ferschampenois). Alexander Matora tells the story of each exhibit in such a way that it seems as if a beautiful symphony of nature sounds.