The Study of Traditional Crafts of Kazakhstan in the Imperial Period: Sources and Museum Collections

The article analyses the role and contribution of Russian adventurers and researchers to the study of Kazakh traditional crafts in the imperial period, which was particularly active and productive at the turn of the 18th-20th centuries. The researchers collected and described a huge factual material consisting of written and visual sources, as well as samples of handicrafts exhibited in the leading academic museums of the Russian Federation, specifically in the Russian Museum of Ethnography (REM) and Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (MAE RAS).Today, the documents and artefacts analysed in the given article represent not only the richest source material for the study of the development and genesis of traditional Kazakh crafts, but also for the reconstruction of some lost authentic technologies of manufacturing various craft products. It is necessary to state the fact that today many types of Kazakh crafts and handicraft technologies that qualified by specialists as the most important element of intangible cultural heritage (ICH), and threatened with extinction.The study mainly relies on historical-comparative and historical-descriptive methods, as well as onsite study of the holdings of the Kazakh collections of the REM and MAE RAS in 2018 and 2021.The results of the research are the conclusion of the authors of this study that the analysed sources carry important information that allows us to assess the state of Kazakh handicrafts in the pre-revolutionary period, the level of their development and trace their genesis and typology. As of the current date, the scientific description of some authentic technologies of handicrafts production are the most relevant and in high-demand, for their renaissance in modern practice as one of the efficient measures for safeguarding the intangible cultural heritage of the country, obliging Kazakhstan to undertake them since the ratification of the Convention for the Safeguarding of ICH (2003 Convention) in 2011.