The museum’s collection contains an inkwell storage case and fountain pens that were used by the house owners in the first half of the 20th century. This particular type of storage case was usually used for a cylindrical inkwell to make it easier to travel with.

The lid was tightly fastened on the body of the case to avoid any leaks. Fountain pens were actively used up to the 1960s. The wooden part of the pen is called “penholder”, and a metal nib was inserted into it. Olga Konstantinovna Matyushina (née Gromozova), Mikhail Matyushin’s third wife, wrote her novels and stories by dipping such a pen in the inkwell.

It is noteworthy that Olga Matyushina began writing her first story “A Song of Life” during the Great Patriotic War after she had almost completely lost her eyesight during the bombing of Leningrad. Olga sustained some damage to the center of the retina but retained her peripheral vision — she distinguished spots of color and light.

At first, Olga Matyushina got help with her notes from an artist, Mukhail Matyushin’s student and her friend Maria Vladimirovna Ender (her character in the book was called Mulya). Maria either wrote by hand or to Matyushina’s dictation, but sadly, Mulya died in the spring of 1942, and Matyushina had to learn to write “blindly”.

In her story “A Song of Life”, Olga Matyushina recalled that it was difficult to even dip a pen in an inkwell,

She placed a thin dark strip over each line to keep them from overlapping. This helped the pen to slip down to the right line once it hit the strip. But it was almost impossible to stop the words from overlapping.

Olga Matyushina was not fully aware of all the mistakes in her notes but believed that later someone would help her to decipher her handwriting and rewrite the text. And that is exactly what happened: after the siege was lifted, young pioneers started visiting her and not only helped her with household chores but also retyped her manuscripts.