The “Masters of Sheveleva and karpogorsky clay toys” museum

In Kargopol you can learn about the history of the Shevelev dynasty and a clay toy, that is inseparable from its old history a clay toy.

The Shevelevs came from the village of Tokarevo near the city of Kargopol. It was exactly that place, in the Kargopol land, which is rich in deposits of pottery clay, that the Kargopol toy was born. The shevelevs belong to the dynasty of potters and toymakers, which have at least five generations of masters, who revived the fading trade in the second half of the XX century, in which only the grinev craftswoman Ulyana Ivanovna Babkina worked in the early 1960s.

The Museum was opened in 2003 on the initiative of the sons of Dmitry Vasilyevich and Claudia Petrovna Shevelev-Valentin, Vladimir and Vitaly. It is located in a wooden house, where Dmitry and Claudia Shevelev lived from 1946 to 2000, a monument of history and culture.

The Museum of the Shevelev family hosts exhibitions of folk art, international seminars on ceramics, and summer classes for students. Regular master classes are held in the workshop: both adults and children can create a clay toy themselves.

It contains materials about the history of the family-photos and family heirlooms. Guests can see clay toys, dishes made on a hand-made Potter’s wheel, things that are made of birch bark, wood, forged metal. The samples of fabric of a special type of weaving-textile are stored in the museum. The pattern was created on them with the help of special boards of Bronnitsy. The paintings by the brothers Valentin and Vitaly Shevelev have become a decoration of this exhibition.