Vernissage

Queen Elizabeth II often wears a diamond tiara. She also wears a collar of pearls and diamonds. Another favourite of hers is the brooch with a cabochon-cut sapphire and a drop-shaped pearl pendant, which she wore during a state visit to Russia in 1994. From Maria Feodorovna she has also a brooch with a huge sapphire and large diamonds. One of Elisabeth II’s daughter Princess Anne’s favorite necklaces is a choker with a huge sapphire, also from Maria Feodorovna.

What is the job of the Special Forces? Quickly and, most importantly, to effectively carry out operations ”with little blood on foreign territory”. Palladium is capable of such a blow to the gold. It is as simple as that. Only two percent of this light platinum is enough to make the ginger, stainless equivalent of human greed lose its color forever; and turn into white gold instead. And, oddly enough, this ability of element 46 of the Mendeleev Table is encoded in its name.

Amongst St. Petersburg Mining Museum exhibits, there is a unique 18th-century box. Its history is intertwined with both the Italian Medici family and the royal dynasty of the Russian Empire.

Having silverware at home was at all times regarded as a sign of prosperity and luxuriousness. Kitchen utensils made of precious metal symbolised that their owner was of blue blood, which is somewhat surprisingly not a figurative expression. Often people who had expensive silver services turned blue literally.

A hundred years ago or so, people risked their lives to get their hands on pearls. Not only it was dangerous to dive without gear, but some giant molluscs could grow that big they could actually kill. As is known, pearls are formed inside the shell of certain molluscs as a defence mechanism against a potentially threatening irritant. Their colour, shape and size vary, depending on what material acted as stimuli. Most pearls are only a few millimetres in diameter; those reaching tens of centimetres are much rarer to find.

Two hundred years ago, the gold fever took Russia by storm. Hereditary nobility, merchant adventurers, ordinary people — everyone was leaving their settlements, abandoning their routine life, and heading straight to Siberia. These events followed the Senate edict allowing to freely look for and mine precious metals.

Some 500 years ago, Spanish conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro captured the last Incan emperor Atahualpa. Although a ransom for Atahualpa’s release was paid with gold, the emperor was still executed. Soon the conquest of Peru was completed; the indigenous people kept fighting off for a few more decades, but the Spanish had firearms in their hands. This drew a final line under the invasion of the country.

Few people know why d’Artagnan duelled Athos and Aramis, whilst everyone knows the story of Porthos. The Gascon found himself entangled in Porthos’ cloak and thereby learnt that a sumptuous dressing embroidered with gold was made of buffalo leather. Of course, the term ’ostentation’ does not originate in Alexandre Dumas’ novel, but the baldric of a plump musketeer is often used as a synonym of the word.

The unresolved mysteries of evolution are still there to solve them. Many evolution stages have not been fully understood yet, and humankind seeks to find answers to what animals that lived on our planet millions of years ago looked like.

The term ’coat of arms’ can be traced back to the 12th century, with the start of heraldic tradition arising from the Crusades. The crusaders were dealing with the self-identification issues at the time - they needed to know who was the one who accomplished the ’feat’ and who was who on a level resembling modern ’friend-or-foe’ systems.