What strange things the main Soviet puppeteer kept: Unique collections of Sergei Obraztsov

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

He first began performing with dolls at the age of 19, and then they took an increasingly larger place in his profession and life. Sergey Vladimirovich Obraztsov directed the Moscow Central Puppet Theater for more than 60 years, from the very moment of its creation. And the famous director was engaged in collecting all his life, while he himself called his apartment the Cabinet of Curiosities, because it contained the most unusual and sometimes unexpected objects.

Amazing apartment

Today Sergei Obraztsov's apartment has become a museum, in which things are decorously located in the places intended for them, and the caretakers keep order, not allowing, as usual, to touch all this wealth with their hands. But when the granddaughter of the great director Ekaterina Mikhailovna Obraztsova appears in the apartment, the objects come to life.

Sergei Obraztsov collected not only dolls. He talked about the fact that in the life of people there are necessary items, but there are necessary ones. Everything that people use in everyday life: dishes, furniture, textiles, are necessary things. But those objects, when looking at which the soul rejoices, are necessary things.

Sergei Vladimirovich had a lot of necessary things. Each had its place on a shelf or in a closet. But at the same time, completely unique items were never locked with a key. It was always possible to play with rare dolls, wind up music boxes and drink tea at an antique table of the 18th century.

Necessary things

Of course, there were many dolls in Sergei Obraztsov's house. Amazingly emotional and characteristic figures that come to life just by pulling the string. Obraztsov's dolls cannot be confused with others. But at the same time, there are some very special figures in the collection. He diligently searched for extraordinary dolls in the countries he visited, then restored, if necessary, and sent the same charming characters to the company. Ekaterina Mikhailovna especially notes one of the dolls, which she herself called Shokoladnitsa. It was once presented by Sergei Vladimirovich to his daughter. If you start it, it will follow the mistress.

Today, in the memorial apartment of Sergei Obraztsov, you can see many amazing masks. He brought them from Africa and China, endowed them with characters, invented their destinies. And placed in prominent places in the apartment. They delighted his heart and soul, reminded of distant countries and other cultures.

A special place was given to automatic theaters and music boxes. Even at the time of acquiring these things, they were already many years old, but Sergei Obraztsov, acquiring an old thing with a broken mechanism, knew how to find people who would restore the apparatus and make all the wheels and gears move. The toys that the former owners took to the trash heap suddenly acquired a second life and continued to delight the owner and his guests.

Sergei Vladimirovich never hid even rare things. He believed that everything should be used to continue life, and not gather dust in a closet.

Perhaps that is why visitors to the museum-apartment of Sergei Obraztsov note: during the excursion, one gets the feeling that a person has come to visit, however, in an unusual Moscow apartment.

Sergei Vladimirovich especially loved those items that he made with his own hands for loved ones. For example, there is a large collection of beaded wallets. They were embroidered by girls in the 19th century for their suitors.

He generally loved things with history. Or with the ability to come up with the fate of the thing and its owner or mistress. For example, embroidery with a needle left in it. Sergey Obraztsov could ponder for hours over why the girl never made the last stitch and cut the thread. And every time he got a new ending to the story.

The director had a particular weakness for unusual things, made in some kind of extraordinary technique, like pictures cut from paper, according to which it is even impossible to imagine that every detail is just paper.

Or a unique table, once acquired by Obraztsov in a Leningrad commission. The table was covered with brown paint and looked very nondescript. However, it seemed to Sergei Vladimirovich that some kind of drawing shone through the paint. He bought a table and found a restorer. After the top layer was removed, portraits of Napoleon, his marshals and Josephine emerged on the surface. All this was done in the decalcomania technique: something like fundamental decals.

Modern life of things

Such stories about each thing are gladly told to visitors by the guides. But the most interesting storyteller is, of course, Ekaterina Mikhailovna, the granddaughter of Sergei Obrazov and director of the Obraztsov State Academic Central Puppet Theater, the same one that was created in 1931 by her grandfather.

Anyone can come to the amazing museum at 5/7 in Glinischevsky lane in Moscow today. For children, master classes are held here, where they teach how to make dolls. And sometimes they even take out of the cupboards the very dolls that took part in Sergei Obrazov's productions. And then they come to life again and tell new extraordinary stories.

His "Unusual Concert" was listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the most attended. His dolls on stage were very lively, and the performances themselves were bright, perky, touching in places. The leader of this action, Sergei Obraztsov, loved one woman all his life, was married to two, and his strongest marriage was with the puppet theater.