Bar “Onegin” 150 sq.m. on Strastnoy Boulevard

Olga Sedova and Prokhor Mashukov designed a bar on Strastnoy Boulevard: alchemical symbols, Renaissance paintings and poisonous frog colors were used.

The customer found us through acquaintances, asked us to decorate the restaurant, but did not express any wishes, on the contrary, he wanted to hear as many ideas as possible from the designers. Starting work on a new project, Olga and Prokhor always come up with a legend: who could live in this house, what to do.

The bar is located in the apartment building of Prince Konstantin Alexandrovich Gorchakov, whose father studied with Pushkin, they were very friendly. “We came up with for ourselves that Pushkin could visit this house, go to visit, drink champagne. “Entered: and a cork in the ceiling!” - a quote from "Onega" from A.S. Pushkin.

The institution was named after the main hero of Pushkin, who personifies satiety with life, fatigue from everyday entertainment. There are now neon quotes from the poem on the walls: “He looked in great distraction // Turned away - and yawned” and “I endured ballets for a long time // But I got tired of Didlo too.”

The room is located on the first floor. Everything here was divided into small rooms and sewn up with drywall. After dismantling, the ceiling “grew” by as much as 70 cm, the windows became larger, the original arched shape returned to them, however, the old frames were not preserved. The designers found a part of the stucco cornice, which they left intact (not restored), and added a beautiful new one. When it was made and the workers installed it, Prokhor realized that he was too neat. And we needed another one, old and destroyed, so I fixed it a little with an ax, brushes and paints.

The walls and ceiling were in poor condition, but Olga and Prokhor decided not to restore them to perfection, but to show the history of time: cracks and crumbling plaster are visible in places. And to make it clear that we are in today, we added modern things, for example, bright hallucinogenic sofas. These carved wooden sofas were in another restaurant of our customer, hand-made by Uzbek craftsmen. We thought that good things should not be thrown away, and we painted them in brindle colors.

Pushkin alone was not enough for us, and we began to think of who else could live in this house. This is how the alchemist and the Italian ambassador appeared, and traces of their “stay” also found their place in the interior — wallpaper with Renaissance paintings on the walls, over which alchemical symbols were applied with acid paints.

They also made two unusual tables with their own hands: they took a plaster column as a base, put bottles of champagne on it, put some artificial strawberries and filled everything with transparent plastic. The chairs for these tables, of course, are made in the form of a muselet. And there were already crystal chandeliers, and the customer asked them to be sure to leave them, but the designers could not resist modifying them. They added four hundred champagne glasses to the crystal pendants and again used liquid plastic that hangs in picturesque drops.

The central part of the first hall is occupied by a large bar counter. At first, Olga and Prokhor wanted to decorate it with crooked mirrors, but then they opted for hammered metal, which creates a slightly cosmic effect among antiquity. The bar counter was accompanied by art objects that Prokhor made with his son. These are bright poison frog-colored skulls with mohawks of feathers, mounted on chrome panels.

The customer enthusiastically accepted all the ideas of the designers and was very actively involved in creating the interior, even made thin golden lamps with his own hands - right on the spot, from simple pipes and light bulbs.