The current institution is the heir of the A.L. Stieglitz School of Technical Drawing that was conceived in 1876 when Stieglitz, a merchant, banker, and patron of the arts in the Russian imperial capital, donated one million rubles to found a museum-school on the model of the Victoria and Albert. Stieglitz{u2019}s initiative was part of a movement in the mid and late nineteenth century to renew aesthetic values of the past in an age when more and more items were produced mechanically. The Crystal Palace exhibition and its successors attempted to show the world that new goods produced in factories could aspire to high aesthetic standards. Such standards could be inculcated in craftsmen, designers, and workers by educating them according to models of handmade works of the past. Hence a collection or even a full-fledged museum was an integral part of a school for those who would design and produce every-day articles and works of applied art. This album celebrates 135 years since the founding of the school. It traces the early years, when Alexander II dubbed Stieglitz{u2019}s school "a deed of enlightened philanthropy" and Stieglitz with his agents in Europe built a first-class collection of Western European decorative arts for the school{u2019}s museum. It records the trauma of the 1917 revolution, after which the Soviet regime decided to disperse the school{u2019}s collections, and later close the school, reopening it only after World War II as the Vera Mukhina Higher School of Art and Design. It was reinaugurated in the 1990s, when Stieglitz{u2019}s name and statue were returned to the school. Approximately one third of the book publishes drawings and photos of the architecture and interiors of the school, which was designed to display different historical styles, and works of decorative art from the original collection. The middle section of the book publishes examples of sculpture, mosaics, murals, drawings and paintings by those who were trained at the school. The last section is illustrated with sundry works of decorative art, design, and fashion created by contemporary teachers and students. -- Summary written by John W. Emerich, Bronze Horseman Literary Agency.