Ural Gem Carving

The Urals produced malachite, rhodonite, jasper, marble and gemstones in quantity, and a lapidary works was founded at Yekaterinburg in 1726 to cut them; through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it supplied the imperial court with vases, table tops, columns and floor inlay, including the malachite work in St Isaac's and the Hermitage. The technique for large malachite pieces is Russian mosaic: the stone is too brittle and too thinly banded to carve solid, so it is sliced, and the slices are fitted over a base of cheaper stone with the banding matched across the joins so the object appears to be cut from one piece. The Yekaterinburg museum shows the historical output, tools and modern work. Pavel Bazhov's tales - the Mistress of the Copper Mountain and the stone flower - come out of this trade and the mining villages around it, and are the reason malachite carries the associations it does in Russian culture.

What you actually see

• Russian mosaic - malachite sliced and fitted so the banding runs across the joins.
• The court commissions - vases, tables and inlay cut for imperial buildings.
• The Ural stones - rhodonite, jasper and marble alongside the malachite.
• The Bazhov connection - the tales that grew out of this trade and its villages.

When to go

All year. Two hours. Closed Mondays.

Honest expectations

Labelling is Russian. Ural malachite is largely worked out and most malachite sold now is African; genuine local historic pieces are museum objects, not purchases. Souvenir stalls sell dyed and reconstituted stone. Yekaterinburg's other museums compete for the same afternoon.

Nearby

The Yekaterinburg art museum holds the Kasli cast iron pavilion; the city centre is walkable.