Tbilisi State Silk Museum

The State Silk Museum founded by the natural scientist Nikolai Shavrov is one of the oldest among the world’s silk museums. The museum is located in a building, which was specially built for the Caucasian Sericulture Station in 1887 by Polish architect Alexander Shimkevich. The building has a status of a cultural heritage monument at present. The museum displays quite a versatile and multinational exposition. The collection features objects from 63 countries. Unlike other silk museums (mostly displaying only silk collections) the showing offers everything about silk and sericulture:  a unique collection of cocoons (5 000 cocoons of different origins and variations);  silkworm biology; special containers for silkworms and eggs (approximately 200 containers); a collection of textile artisanally produced in the Caucasus  (19thcentury); a collection of laces produced in Germany (approximately 400 patterns); a collection of natural and chemical dyes with colored threads (dyes from 16 countries); a butterfly collection  (314 butterflies of 161 species); a collection connected with a mulberry tree and etc. There is a unique library in the museum, keeping rare books dating back to the 18th-19th centuries, these books about natural sciences are in Russian, English, German, French, Italian, Rumanian, Hungarian, Chinese, Japanese, Persian, Arabian languages. Museum and library furniture made according to sketches of the architect A.Shimkevitch have preserved their authentic image until today.