In the traditional Tuvan culture, the hearth was a sacred place of the living space of the felt yurt. There was a belief about a good spirit — the master of the hearth — the patron of the family. Therefore, the hearth faced the entrance and was in the center of the yurt, as a family, household and sacral heart of the dwelling. The hearth was placed in a small hole on a round or oval ground, enclosed by poles or stones.

During cold days of the year, fire kept burning or smoldering in the hearth, except during the night. In ancient times, three round stones served as the hearth before the trivet came into use. The hearth was always in a pit, circular in shape with a radius of 6–8 vershoks (a vershoks is 4.4 cm). Different types of trivets and tripods were also used instead of stones for the hearth.

Richer families (and later almost everyone) used one (less often two) iron trivets that stood on the hearth platform. Later, iron stoves with a long chimney leading out through the upper smoke hole in the yurt, began to be used.

The exhibition features a trivet made by Kenin Sat, a Tuvan blacksmith, jeweler, people’s craftsman of the Republic of Tuva.

A trivet is a tripod, a stand for a cauldron over the hearth. Trivets with a rich pattern have long been valued by Tuvan herdsmen. Kenin Sat’s trivet has iron rims and legs, decorated with an embossed belt like those made by craftsmen in the early 20th century. The support rods for mounting the cauldron end with forged ram heads.

This trivet can be called a variation of the one made in the late 1920s in Chaa-Hol, which was described by the ethnographer Sevyan Weinstein. The trivet on display has more of an exhibit purpose than a practical one. The heads of rams are made in a larger, more realistic and decorative style.

Such decorations of cauldron holders in the form of heads of rams on trivets are quite a long- standing tradition in Tuvan decorative and applied art. The images of other animals were not used to decorate trivets. The surface of the ram heads is covered with galvanized brass of light golden color.