UNIQUE COLLECTIONS at the BSC Museum
All collections at our Museum have been collected over the years and across the globe by the Museum Founder, Dr. Nadezhda Savova-Grigorova, Cultural Anthropologist (Princeton University) and global researcher and traveller recognized with the National Geographic Award “Traveller with a Mission of the Year 2016”.
The permanent collections include:
Bread stamps collection from around the world
This unique collection spans stamps with various inscriptions and sacred symbols, usually imprinted on ritual and festive breads to express people’s thanksgiving and prayers.
Nativity scenes from around the world
This collection is inspired by the name of the town of Bethlehem, which means “Home/House of Bread” and gave also the name of the Bread Houses Network; the nativity scenes (cresce) come in all sizes and unexpected materials, from matchboxes and seeds to gourds, dried bread loaves, and tree trunks!
Sacred Orthodox Christian breads (prosphora) from around the world
This collection features blessed breads (“prosphora” and “anaphora”) from Orthodox Christian monasteries and churches across 6 continents, gathered over more than a decade and thousands of kilometers of pilgrimage
Photos of breads and related traditions from around the world
This photo exhibit, created by world traveller Dr. Nadezhda Savova-Grigorova, features unforgettable human faces, kneading hands, and stories of extraordinary, life-changing transformations around the making, baking, and breaking of bread across cultures, ages, and abilities!
“Bread recipes for social change” interactive board
This human-sized, hand-painted wall panel of the globe, created as a gift by a Chinese-American artist, presents the Earth’s continents as composed of various imaginative bread and pastry “recipes for happiness”; each visitor is welcome to write or draw his/her own recipe and join these wonderfully peaceful “Dough-nations”: all nations united around the simple, pacifying bread dough!
Hedgehog figures from around the world
This collection is inspired by our mascot, the hedgehog NadEzhko (HedgeHope), who is the symbol of both our social enterprises bakeries NadEzhko, the 1st one open in Sofia, Bulgaria, and it is also the mascot and theme of our educational game “Bakers Without Borders” and the series of children’s book “The Adventures of NadEzhko, the hedgehog Baker Without Borders”.
Bulgarian gaitan woven tapestries
This collection is unique for all of Bulgaria – it presents a series of tapestries made from the special woolen thread called “gaitan”, which is produced in Gabrovo still using the centuries-old technique at the Etara Ethnographic Museum. The items in the collection were made by the greatgrandmother of the Founder of the Museum and the Bread Houses Network, Dr. Nadezhda Savova-Grigorova.
Crafts, clothes, and jewellery from around the world
This collection features unique hand-made artefacts and traditional costumes, accessories, and jewellery collected during various anthropological fieldwork research and projects of Dr. Nadezhda Savova-Grigorova in small ethnic communities across jungles, deserts, mountains, and islands.
LIFE-CHANGING EXPERIENCES
The following unique experiences are unforgettable – participants often defines them as “life-changing” – experiences! They are group events that have to be booked prior to the visit at the Museum.
Theater of Crumbs group baking: 1.5 – 2 hours, 15 BGN per person
The artistic community baking method is perfect for mixed groups of all ages: it includes drawing in flour, making traditional dough with local ingredients, creating bread puppets from the dough and an improvised puppet theater and plot, collectively imagined and played. The method inspires us towards various life values through the metaphors of bread ingredients and bread making processes. The event becomes 2 hours long, instead of 1.5, if the group chooses to bake the bread they make.
Read more about the method here
Kitchen Music group baking: 1.5 – 2 hours, 15 BGN per person
The Kitchen Music is a method based on the Theater of Crumbs initial steps but it culminates with the creation of a collective poem and from it a text of a song with improvised music played with kitchen utensils. It is both amazingly fun and very inspiring towards the creation of a shared vision for a better world through the power of music and bread!
Again, the event becomes 2 hours long, instead of 1.5, if the group chooses to bake the bread they make.
BREAD IN THE DARK: High-touch better than high-tech
These are special, deeply transformational events in 100% darkness with sight-impaired facilitators making bread with sighted people and talking about the things of life. This method makes us realize how much we miss when we first judge people and our environment through the eyes, and how much more we learn to appreciate everything through the other senses, especially the sense of TOUCH!
Reading room
You can sit on cushions on the floor, relax, and enjoy our rich book collection in our romantic rooftop reading room! The Museum houses a unique collection of books in various languages embracing varied topics: bread, culinary arts and traditional foods, herbs, cultural traditions and crafts, sustainable development, and cultural heritage preservation, etc.