Almost all the icons in the collection of The Link of Times Foundation are objects of personal piety. Icons accompanied Russians throughout their lives: thre were birth icons, saint’s day icons, wedding icons, and so on…. People wore small icons on a chain beneath their clothes, hung them at the head of the bed, placed larger icons on a shelf in the “saint corner” or on their desks. They took along folding altars whose sides closed to protect the images—when they traveled. There are many examples of such “domestic sanctity” in the collection, including some related to the Imperial family. The folding icon Our Lady of Kazan, St. Nicholas, St. Alexandra was commissioned in 1894 on the occasion of the marriage of Nicholas II to Princess Alice Hesse, who converted to Russian Orthodoxy with the name Alexandra. The top of the altar is in the shape of a kokoshnik, an architectural detail named after the traditional women’s headdress.