The Toy Factory Museum
Ryazan Oblast
Contact information
Operating hours
Daily from 10:00 to 19:00;
December – January 9:00 – 21:00
Ticket price
January 15 – November 1: from 450 rubles per person.
November 1 – January 15: from 600 rubles per person.
Founder, owner, director of the museum
Pavel Aleksandrovich Volodchenkov
Founded
2017
We had been unintentionally observing the assortment of Christmas decorations at various outlets for years, and this gave us the idea to create a production of high-quality glass toys for New Year decorations since the products available at stores at the time were neither durable nor especially pretty. The main idea was to produce good quality glass decorations that could please the eye of its owner for many years. To achieve this goal we decided to learn from the experience of our ancestors and to study the production technologies and implementation details of the products from different periods. That’s how we started to collect glass decorations, found mostly in garages, mezzanines, and attics of more than 200 people. We found many things made not only of glass but also of many different materials and with many different techniques. We carefully stored and studied all of them, for general educational purposes, as they say. Six months later our collection had more than 300 New Year toys from all years and materials. Among other things it included some rare decorations, and it would be a crime to store them at home. So we decided to open a museum to show our collection to as many people as possible. With the support of the administration of the Ryazan region, the museum opened in a two-story building right in the center of Ryazan. And the rest is a whole other story…
The collection of The Toy Factory Museum currently consists of 532 glass toys,
126 toys made from cotton, 24 from cardboard, 9 ceramic, 14 straw, 13 fabric, and 12 paper New Year tree toys. The museum also presents samples of Ryazan crafts, as well as production tools and raw materials. Highlights from the collection include the glass New Year tree toy “Samovar” of Soviet handicraft production (1918-1931), the glass toy “Hammer and Sickle” of Soviet factory production (1935), the glass toy “Star” of Soviet factory production (1935), and 92 homemade cotton toys from 1948.
The museum is interactive. In addition to the exhibition area, visitors are welcome to attend glassblowing and art workshops and various classes.
