While digging potatoes in our vegetable garden, we found something in the ground. At first we thought it was a stone. But after cleaning it we saw some fragments of words. It looked like a manufacture’s stamp on a brick. The front side of it was white and smooth so we tried to find out information about the tiles produced in Mogilev Province, according to the bottom words of the stamp. So surprised all of us were on watching the picture of a whole tile with all the elements of the print.
The history of this tile goes back to the end of the 19th century when it was fabricated on the factory belonged to the manufacturers Abram Chaimovich Shapiro and Ilya Leibovich Alperovich, from the town of Kopys in Mogilev Province.
According to the surviving information, tiles were supplied throughout the Russian Empire and abroad. The tile produced by Shapiro-Alperovich factory was of excellent quality, otherwise it would not have survived to this day. It was also appreciated at the time of production, as can be seen by its brand. Three medals are visible on the stamp: on the left for participation in the Mogilev exhibition of 1896, on the right for participation in the Kiev exhibition of 1897 and a in Nizhny Novgorod in 1896.
We keep this part of the history of our country with great pride as a heritage. We have a feeling as if we have found a kind of treasure. It is unique for us that this is a piece of quite ancient time which we can touch and feel, thus touching our past.

Photo's author: Svetlana Syncha-Forsova, source: https://fotki.yandex.ru/next/users/synchas/album/559182/view/2037723?page=2 https://fotki.yandex.ru/next/users/syncha-s/album/559182/view/2037725?page=2