Florian Giles, who was head of the Imperial Foreign-Language Hermitage Library, intended that the manuscript hall would become a reading-room in which visitors could "copy passages, inquire about books and compare texts." A large round table was to stand in the centre of the hall with chairs for those granted access to the museum's bibliographic treasures. But Emperor Nicholas I decided otherwise and gave orders for an immense bowl of Taganai aventurine that had been produced from a drawing by the architect Hallberg to be placed in the middle of the hall. Urals craftsmen worked for seven years (1835-42) to produce this bowl.