MUSEOS DE LA SEDA / SILK MUSEUMS

The Silk Museum was founded in 1887 and since 1891 it is situated in the main building of the former Caucasian Sericulture Station. As a part of the Station, the museum served as an educational and scientific-research center of silk making in the Caucasus region. The building was built for the museum by Polish architect Aleksander Szymkiewicz and today it is included in cultural heritage monument list of Georgia. The museum building is distinguished with its original architecture. Stylistically, the building represents a fusion of traditions, with its facade and elevations displaying features typical of the so-called Russian style, Classicism, and Gothic and Islamic arts. The interior architectural decoration includes designed elements, such as a frieze, a cor- nice, a pilaster and a capital, all of which display silk related features including a mulberry leave, a silkworm, a silkworm cocoon and a pupa. As the museum originally had an educational function, its main focus is not only on textiles, but it preserves all kinds of objects related to sericulture, including cocoons, silk- worm biology, different collections of silk textiles, laces, mulberry tree related specimens, dye collection with colored threads, etc. The museum nowadays preserves up to 40 000 objects and 20 000 books from 50 different countries. The State Silk Museum is one of the oldest among the world’s silk museums and the only one in the Caucasian region. The museum is one of the oldest museums of Georgia. 128