Emperor Alexander III purchased Princess Vorontsova’s
palace on the Moika River for his daughter Grand Duchess Xenia’s marriage to
Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich in 1894. During the reconstruction by
architects Nikolai Sultanov and Count Nicholas de Rochefort from 1895 to 1897,
Xenia and her family lived on the 1st floor of the Winter Palace.
Photographs (below) of Grand Duchess Xenia’s Palace
After the revolution the Xenia palace was transferred
to the Baltic Naval Committee. The possessions and furnishings of the grand
ducal couple were placed in locked rooms. On March 16th 1918 the committee
demanded the use of the Concert Hall and Billiard Room. The Art Commission
headed by Chairman G. Yatmanov decided to transport the stored objects to their
warehouse in the Winter Palace located in the former apartment of the Marshal
of the Imperial Court Count Paul Benckendorff. A full descriptive inventory was
completed at that time. Commission staff had handed directly to Yatmanov the silver
toilet set that had belonged to Xenia’s great-grandmother Empress Alexandra
Feodorovna.
In July 1918 the Commission was re-organized in the
Novo-Mikhailovsky Palace. From July 15th to October 5th a
total of 1,574 items of ‘non-museum value’
packed in sixty-eight boxes were taken there from the Winter Palace. A new
register of the collection was compiled for the auction sales but they ‘did not record information on the origin of
the items’. Later in 1927 eighteen stone pieces were given to various museums.
Photographs (below) of Grand Duchess Xenia and family
The original inventory completed in 1918 reveals descriptions
of the stone objects that were sold without provenances during the auction
sales of the 1920s:
776 Different
animal figurines from multi-colored stones by Fabergé in wooden boxes
780 Condor bird
figurine of light rock crystal
790 Eight
parrots by Fabergé in wooden box
791 Three
golden cages with birds and a Fabergé calendar with precious stones
925 Desktop
clock trimmed with jasper and silver with a handle by Fabergé
930 Marble
stand for pocket watches by Fabergé
998 Thermometer of Ural green
stone with red enamel and gold in Louis XVI style by Fabergé in a box
1023 Gold
paper knife by Fabergé in a plush case
1147 Jasper
vase signed by Orlando Aristido Roma 1900
Archivist specialists at GARF are preparing for
publication Grand Duchess Xenia’s diaries in forty-nine notebooks from 1884 to
1919.
No comments:
Post a Comment