The basis of the exposition of the future museum will be a private collection of samovars, which for many years has been collected by a passionate admirer of these items, Mikhail Borshchev. Today, its collection numbers about 500 items, including works of the most famous samovar factories in Russia, as well as English and American bouillottes, trays of various shapes and sizes, rinsers, teapots and original antique appliances designed for boiling eggs and making mulled wine. The collection also has a permanent place of residence - it is exhibited on three floors of the main building of the Grumant park-hotel, located in the Shchekino district of the Tula region near Yasnaya Polyana, and in the coming years a separate building is planned for it on the territory of the hotel.
The competition for the best project of the samovar museum started on October 18, 2011, and from the very beginning it was open to everyone - not only professional architects and designers could take part in the competition, but also designers without special education, as well as “just creative people”. This ensured an unprecedented mass of participants - in total, 227 projects from all over Russia and from the CIS countries were submitted to the competition.
The jury, chaired by Mikhail Borshchev himself, included head of the Department of Design at Tula State University Sergey Vasin, head of the ART4YOU design studio Pavel Nesterov, professor of the Department of Painting at the Moscow Architectural Institute Alexander Soloviev, architect Polina Zhezhoma, architect Maria Malitskaya and sculptures Alexander Provotorov. It took the experts more than a week to consider all the projects submitted for the competition. The works were evaluated according to several criteria - the brightness and innovativeness of the architectural solution, the creativity of the organization of the exposition, the professionalism of the project. The awards of the competition were distributed accordingly: in addition to the project that was awarded the Grand Prix, three concepts were awarded for Creativity, Artistic and Professionalism, and one more received the Audience Award.
So, for "Artistic" the jury awarded the project of Anastasia Parnacheva from Dnepropetrovsk, who proposed to place the collection of samovars in a teahouse with wrought iron bars, round windows, "donuts", "pretzels" on the pediments and a weather vane in the form of a caramel cockerel. The most creative project was recognized by Denis Gavrilov from Moscow, providing for the construction of a building in the form of a four-story gilded samovar, and Dmitry Kondratyev from Voronezh received the Audience Award, who also gave his museum the shape of a samovar, albeit completely glass and more like a modern pressure cooker. In the nomination "Professionalism" the winner was Ksenia Bagriy (Vladikavkaz), who cleverly combined elements of modern and old Russian architecture in her project. Its samovar museum is a rectangular two-story building, the glass parallelepiped is supported by log walls, and the windows are decorated with openwork platbands and images of samovars.
The jury awarded the "Grand Prix" to the project of Arkady Ananyan (Perm), in which the architectural solution of the future samovar museum is also directly dictated by the appearance of its main exhibit. The building with a total area of almost 700 square meters is a giant pot-bellied vessel, the "walls" of which are made of glass and braided with metal rods, and the three "handles" and the "lid" are faced with porcelain stoneware. All vertical communications are located in the "handles", the ground floor is reserved for a public area with an entrance lobby and a tea room, and exhibition halls are located on the upper levels. The area of the museum is designed for 1000 exhibits, that is, according to the architect's plan, over time, the collection of Mikhail Borshchev will double. Perhaps it was this optimistic view of the development of events that won the jury, and perhaps the building that is supposed to be built in the park and filled to capacity with samovars, according to experts, should itself become an exhibit of the collection. The awards ceremony for the winners of the competition will take place at the Grumant Park Hotel in early March - apparently, then the organizers of the competition will justify their choice.
