During the period 10-16 April 2006, the sessions of the 15th Colloquium on Jewelry and Material Culture were held in the State Hermitage.

In an introductory article to the collection of abstracts summarizing reports of colloquium participants, the research director of the seminar and head of the Treasure Rooms-2, Natalia Zakharova writes:

"From April 10th to 16th, the 15th Colloquium on Jewelry and Material Culture took place in the State Hermitage and it was a landmark historical event. Without drawing conclusions, one would like to direct attention to the fact that not all the predictions of skeptics have come true: interest in the seminar and its topics has not diminished and the circle of participants continues to grow all the time, while the research reports, theses and articles are becoming more and more profound and interesting in terms of content and in terms of their improved style…During these years, our colleagues have defended their dissertations, written and published monographs which were the culmination of the research the authors reported at the scientific sessions of the seminar. Fourteen collections of abstracts and two scientific works by colleagues participating in the colloquiums have seen the light of day.

"On the basis of discussions of issues surrounding the jeweler's art which took place in the sessions and in the side meetings, and in particular discussions on the development and state of the art in the 20th century, two art exhibitions were organized in St Petersburg: Russian Jewelry at the end of the 20th Century (Russian Ethnographic Museum, 2000) and The Call of the Sea (Museum of the History of the City, 2004).

"The present colloquium was 'experimental' in a way: a number of sessions and individual reports dealt with the creative work of the outstanding researcher Gali Fedorovna Korzukhina in this year marking the 100th anniversary of her birth. A scientific conference organized at the same time as our seminar by the Institute of History of Material Culture was dedicated to Korzukhina and was called Slavic-Russian Jewelry and its Sources. We will be pleased in the future to see specialists in the history and culture of ancient and medieval Russia among the permanent participants of the seminar."

In conclusion Natalia Zakharova thanked the participants of the seminar for their unfailing interest in the Jewelry and Material Culture colloquiums and for fruitful collaboration. She also expressed her appreciation to the Hermitage and to the Golden Treasure Room for help in organizing the series of colloquiums. She congratulated everyone on this 10th anniversary.

At the Colloquium

Natalia Zakharova, Research director of the seminar and Head of the Treasure Rooms-2