"Silver treasury" of Bashkortostan is exhibited in the National Museum

"Only silver is better than gold" is the name of the exhibition which was opened on February 9 in the National Museum of Bashkortostan. The exposition is devoted to the Republic Year and represents the museum collection of ornaments of the 19th - early 20th centuries. It is the first exhibition that enables us to peep in the "silver treasury" of the National Museum.

The exposition made by Elvira Khamidullina, the worker of the Museum's ethnographic department, includes the whole set of ornaments making a festive attire of a Bashkir woman - the headdress named 'kashmau', fingerings, bracelets, necklaces, collar clasps with pendants, belts. Ant the most colourful attribute of the Bashkir national costume is probably breast ornament, which has no analogues even in the culture of kindred nations.

The best part of the exhibits is made of silver together with semi-precious stones: rock crystal, amethyst, garnet, turquoise, cornelian and also corals, glass and gilding. Each of these stones and even metals has their own magic meaning for Bashkirs. For example, our ancestors associated silver with purity of intentions.

"Each of these ornaments has not only historic but also cultural value," the author of the exhibition Elvira Khamidullina says. "Using them we can study the way of life of Bashkir people, their intellectual culture and even such kind of workmanship as blacksmithing as many ornaments were made with the use of different methods of metal working: chasing, engraving, smithery, etc."