An Exhibition of the Down-Knitting Craft

This morning we visited the Nadezhda Krupskaya Orenburg Library to report on the exhibition of the down-knitting craft and the collection of the well-known fashion designer Anna Sovetova presented there.

Anna Sovetova's collection

A library employee agreed to talk to us and told us many interesting things about the exhibition and its exhibits. Of course, she also showed us handmade items from Sovetova's collection: besides many goat-down items, there were wonderful souvenirs, notebooks, photo albums and gift envelopes. All the items are made exclusively by hand – they are decorated with real goat down or made almost entirely of it.

Rare editions

We were also allowed to look at and even photograph several truly exclusive editions. The most interesting of them are a book by the children's art school, "The Orenburg Down Shawl. An Edition for the Visually Impaired", printed both in regular type and in Braille, and, of course, the "Proceedings of the Free Economic Society". This book was published in 1766, is written partly in Old Church Slavonic and is kept in the library's rare books collection. We were allowed to touch history: to hold the copy in our hands and take photographs.