CLINTON, MA – The Russian History Museum loaned 15 artifacts to the Icon Museum and Research Center for a special exhibition titled Printing Icons: Modern Process, Medieval Image.

The exhibition, which opened on October 17, explores the way print and icon painting interacted from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. Printing Icons brings together over sixty works from six institutions and private collections to explore the methods used to create iconic prints. It showcases works from across the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and Russia to highlight how traditional techniques, such as printing icons from traced panels, shaped perceptions of woodblocks and engravings, and how Western methods transformed icon painting.

Among the objects loaned by the Russian History Museum are the following examples of printing from Russia and Eastern Europe:

• A Book of Gospels printed in Moscow in 1754
• A 1702 Liturgicon (book of services used by clergy) printed in Lviv 
• The 1869 edition of the Stroganoff Icon Pattern Book
• A silk antimension (corporal) consecrated by Metropolitan Filaret (Amfiteatrov) in 1856
• Two printing matrices, one of Archangel Michael, the other of St. Nicholas of Myra

A particularly rare piece highlighted in the exhibition is a book of printing clichés from the Holy Dormition Pochaev Lavra (present-day Pochayiv, Ukraine) dated 1912. It was used to catalog and mark the locations of printing plates used to illustrate publications produced by the Lavra’s print shop.

Michael Perekrestov, the Russian History Museum’s Executive Director, attended the exhibition opening on Thursday, October 17. Opening remarks by Simon Morsink, Director of the Icon Museum, were followed by a brief presentation by the museum’s curator, Justin Willson, who introduced several key concepts that the exhibition examines. Guests were then invited to view the exhibition and to interact with museum staff.

“I am delighted that the Russian History Museum has resumed collaboration with the Icon Museum after being compelled to pause the lending of objects by the pandemic,” said Michael Perekrestov. “It’s inspiring to see objects from our collection on display in the Icon Museum’s galleries, especially those that are being exhibited for the first time.”

The Russian History Museum has loaned objects to special exhibitions at the Icon Museum since 2018, most recently for the 2020 exhibition Tradition & Opulence: Easter in Imperial Russia.

Printing Icons opens to the public on Friday, October 18, and will run through March 30, 2025.

Exhibition Images