The family tradition of collecting was started by Diodor Andreyevitch Burylin, D.G.Burylin’s grandfather, when he began to collect Slavonic and Russian church books of 17th century.
Books came to D.G.Burylin’s collection from Moscow and St.Petersburg booksellers and antique dealers S.Bolshakov, V.Klotchkov, P.Shibanov and from the private libraries of Moscow merchant S.Karetnikov, Shuya merchant I.Popov, Russian bibliophile P.Yefremov and other sources.
A remarkable number of manuscripts was purchased in Florence, Konstantinople and Jerusalem during his voyage to Western Europe, Asia and Africa in 1913-1914.
Among the rarities are the first Russian printed Bible ( the so called Bible of Ostrog, issued in the city of Ostrog in 1581 by Ivan Fyodorov - the pioneer of printing from Moscow. 250 copies of the Bible have been preserved in the entire world, two of them are now in Ivanovo museum.)
The collection contains masterpieces of world literature printed in the 16th century. Among them are