This exhibition presents a variety of Western European and Russian pieces of jewellery produced in the sixteenth to twentieth centuries, among them rings, medallions, watches, inkstands, canes, cups and snuffboxes.

They are all united by a sort of a secret such as a hiding compartment, an unobvious function or a double meaning. The secret features of the items on display are not only intended to conceal something, but also represent surprises, which are meant to be discovered and cause amazement and admiration due to their ingenious inventions and craftsmanship.

Around 170 exhibits from the collections of the State Hermitage Museum’s Department of Western European Applied Arts, Department of the History of Russian Culture and Oriental Department are on display, including a sixteenth-century poison ring; a seventeenth-century cup in the form of a ship; an eighteenth-century cane with a watch and a musical mechanism; an eighteenth-century snuffbox with a secret compartment in the lid; an eighteenth-century writing set in the form of a settee; an eighteenth-century Kulibin watch; a mirror with a hiding compartment from the seventeenth – eighteenth century; and a nineteenth-century bug-shaped watch.