The Stone House-Museum

In 1995, in the village of Fershampenoise in the Nagaybak district , on the basis of Alexander Maksimovich Matora’s private collection, the Stone House-Museum was created. As an energetic mining engineer seriously carried away by collecting and studying minerals and stones, he formed one of the richest collections not only in the region, but also in Russia. Matora’s collection contains minerals from the Urals and Transbaikalia, Chukotka and Yakutia, the Kolsky Peninsula and Kazakhstan, and the Crimea and the Northern Caucasus. The museum storerooms are constantly replenished.

At Alexander Matora’s exhibition, viewers will see part of a unique, enchanting collection with a fantastic variety of colors and shapes. There are jasper, geode and amethyst and agate brushes, rock crystal druses, malachite, citrine and much, much more. Thousands of exhibits are located in the building’s courtyard and there are tons of colored stones outside. This is hardly a hundredth of the treasures collected on his long trips around the former USSR.

Alexander Matora has held exhibitions for more than 50 years in many different cities. He is a poet and philosopher of the stone by vocation. He considers the outstanding Ural writer, Pavel Bazhov, to be his great-grandfather, if not by blood, then in spirit. He sees the world through the eyes of the Malachite Box author and generously reveals the beauty and soul of the stone to those around him.