Enigmas of the Krakov Ethnographic Museum Siberian Collection

DOI: 10.33876/2311-0546/2020-52-4/83-102

Abstract

Two objects from the Siberian collection of the Krakow Ethnographic Museum are discussed in the article – a women’s fur coat from deer fur and a hat from wolverine skin. In the course of the study, the name of the donor was found out – Isidor-Alexander Sobansky, a Polish rebel of 1863, exiled to Siberia. A previously unknown to specialists lithography by the Russian artist Vladimir Sverchkov was discovered; it depicts a woman’s hat and a fur coat similar to objects from the Sobansky collection. It is known that hats from wolverine skins were part of everyday clothes of Nenets women throughout the territory of the Nenets settlement. Sometimes they were worn by shamans. The article proves that until the beginning of the 20th century women’s fur coats of the Nenets of the Kaninsky peninsula were also worn in the Urals and in the lower Ob, having been brought there by brides. In addition, the article touches on poorly studied topics of the Polish exile in Western Siberia and the depiction of the Nenets in the works of Russian and foreign artists.

Thanks to the exiles who returned to their homeland from Siberia, the items that formed the basis of the Siberian collection came to Poland. The collection contains more than 350 items, including clothing, footwear, hats, products from birch bark, fur, leather and animal bones. Almost all of them were made in the 19th century by different peoples of the North and Siberia  – Nenets, Selkups, Evenks, Evens, Chukchi, Koryaks, Aleuts.

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