The Pakha Tere Marvelous Embroidery Museum

The idea of creating a museum came to Natalia Ivanovna Posynkina, the general director of Pakha Tere Artistic Crafts Company LLC. With the grant financial resources from the Ministry of Economic Development, Industry and Trade of the Chuvash Republic, in 2009 the Pakha Tere Marvelous Embroidery Museum was opened.

Chuvash embroidery is the national pride of the Chuvash people. Many historians believe that some kind of writing is also incased in the patterns of the ancient Chuvashs. The drawings find parallels with the Volga and Danube Bulgaria runic letters, in the Siberian peoples writing, ancient Hungarian characters, and the writing monuments of Central Asia and the North Caucasus.

Chuvash embroidery patterns reflect the history of the Chuvash people. Since 1923, the national Chuvash brand, the Pakha Tere factory, has been leading its history. Today it keeps traditions and develops Chuvash embroidery on an industrial level. Having its own Pakha Tere Marvelous Embroidery museum, it does a lot of work to popularize and promote the Chuvash national embroidery.

Visiting any museum is a form of time travel. In this sense, the Pakha Tere Marvelous Embroidery Museum, dedicated to embroidered ornaments, is designed to preserve the historical memory of the craft of the Chuvash people, artists, and craftsmen. The museum houses items with embroidered Chuvash ornaments from the beginning of the 20th century, as well as unique documents and photographs about the glorious path of the Pakha Tere world famous brand.

The “Chuvashia. Creators and Keepers” traveling exhibition is composed of products with Chuvash embroidery from the Pakha Tere Marvelous Embroidery Museum collections, works of the Honored Artist of the Chuvash Republic, sculptor Peter Pupin, and hats and jewelry of the Honored Worker of Culture of the Chuvash Republic Zinaida Voronova. The exhibition has visited Tyumen, Yekaterinburg, the Kamensk-Ural Sverdlovsk Region, Nefteyugansk, Nizhnevartovsk, Irkutsk, Penza, St. Petersburg, the village of Aksubaevo, the Republic of Tatarstan, etc. during this time.

The museum participates in contests and festivals, worthily representing the Chuvash embroidery, a priceless national treasure. In July 2018, at the X Ethnopodium at the Lake Baikal International Festival, the Chuvash national costume from the museum’s funds became a first-degree winner in the “Ethnostyle in a modern costume” nomination.

The Pakha Tere ACC LLC is a member of the Folk-Art Crafts of Russia association and annually exhibits artifacts of its museum in exhibitions and competitions held by the association. In 2018, a modern stylized costume from the museum fund became a first-degree diploma winner in the All-Russian Young Talent Competition.

In conjunction with the Bichurin and the Modernity Museum, the Cheboksary district holds a children’s contest, The World of the Chuvash Embroidery, which introduces the traditions of the national Chuvash embroidery to the schoolchildren. Children participate in it from not only Chuvashia, but also neighboring republics. The winners’ works the take the place of pride in the museums’ showcases at the Pakha Tere Marvelous Embroidery Museum and the Bichurin and the Modernity Museum.

The museum holds open door days, Live lessons, and workshops on Chuvash embroidery.