WHAT TO BUY?

Amber and Semi-Precious Stones
The large amount of lapidary work carried out in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the craftsmen worked on the decoration of the many mansions of the aristocracy,  led to the development of a whole school of stone-working.  Its traditions were preserved in the city’s unique restoration work-shops, which has turned St Petersburg into one of the world’s centres for decorative stone-working. 
One can find a lot of Baltic amber jewellery in St Petersburg. It makes very attractive and reasonable gifts. Besides amber, which is collected on the shores of the Baltic Sea, there are other gemstones that originate in Russia: emeralds, rubies, sapphires and alexandrites. Alexandrites are rarer than diamonds and can be just as expensive. The first stone of that kind was found in the 19th century and was named in honour of a Russian czar. It changes colour from chrome green to ruby red depending on the light. It is best to buy items made from natural stone in specialist shops or the workshops attached to museums.

Easter Eggs
Traditionally Easter eggs have been made in Russia from a wide variety of materials- wood, glass, porcelain, metal, stone, ivory and papier-mâché.  Especially famous are the eggs once produced by the House of Fabergé, using silver, gold and precious stones.  Today also in all the jewellery shops in St Petersburg you can buy eggs in the Fabergé style in sizes from 1cm in diameter to very large ones.  They can easily be recognised by their  guilloched (engraved) surfaces covered with different shades of transparent material.

Fedoskino
In 1798, the village of Fedoskino near Moscow was established the first enterprise in Russia manufacturing papier-mâché articles, such as caskets and cases.  Traditionally Fedoskino miniatures are copies of paintings, sentimental landscapes and genre scenes.  They are painted in oils on a surface primed with powdered bronze or aluminium, occasionally on mother of pearl.  After painting the item is lacquered and polished.

Birch-bark articles
Items made of birch-bark have been known since the Stone Age, when they were in common use across northern Europe and Siberia  Today craftsmen continue the traditions of the craft, gathering examples of old ornaments and reproducing them on modern articles.

Lemonosov Porcelain
In 1744 Empress Elizabeth founded in St Petersburg, the works that later became famous as the Imperial Porcelain Factory and now bears the name of Lomonosov.  The factory produced its first articles in the early 1750s, using a recipe devised by the chemist Dmitry Vinogradov.  By the end of the century, the St Petersburg factory had become the biggest supplier of porcelain in Russia, quickly taking over from its rivals, Sevres and Meissen on the domestic market.

Palekh, Mstiora and Kholul
In the 1920s and 1930s, three famous icon painting centres, not far from St Petersburg, Palekh, Mstiora and Kholul turned from their forbidden earlier trade and began painting in tempera on papier-mâché articles made using the Fedoskino technique.  The style of painting is based on the Russian icon-painting school of the late 17th century, which in turn had roots in Venetian 14th century art.

Khokloma
An old craft for the making of wooden utensils.  The decorative painting is applied on a black or gold background covered with lacquer.  A characteristic easily recognised motif is large red berries amid bright yellow autumnal folige.

Matrioshka
The most famous of Russian souvenirs are the stacking dolls.  The classic matrioshka is a wooden stylised shape of a female figure dressed in bright, rural clothing .The name is a diminutive form of the female name, Matriona, that was popular among the common people of the Volga basin.