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Rescued by the Romanovs, a Fabergé Treasure Comes to Market
168 Plays2 years ago
The Romanov dynasty was wiped out in 1918 . . . but what happened to all their stuff? Well, some of it ended up at Heritage Auctions, whose Imperial Fabergé and Russian Works of Art auction on May 17 hopes to move a treasure trove of ikons, furniture pieces, diaries, and gold-encrusted baubles. To discuss the sale—and in particular a Fabergé bonbonnière given to the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna—Ben Miller welcomes guest Nicholas Nicholson, specialist in Russian works of art at Heritage.
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Transcript
Introduction and Partnership Announcement
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
00:00:13
Speaker
I'm Ben Miller.
00:00:14
Speaker
This is the podcast about art, decorative arts and antiques, the stories behind them and what they can reveal to us about ourselves and the people who came before us.
Imperial Fabergé and Romanov Art
00:00:23
Speaker
And today I am so pleased to be bringing an episode to you in partnership with Heritage Auctions.
00:00:30
Speaker
They have a banger of a sale coming up on May 17th.
00:00:33
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It's called Imperial Fabergé and Russian Works of Art.
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And if that title doesn't get your pulse racing a little, you might want to talk to your doctor because we're not just talking about some of the finest works of art from Tsarist Russia.
00:00:46
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We're talking about objects that were literally made for the Tsars themselves and their closest family members, pieces of the highest level of luxury craftsmanship, arguably anywhere in the world in the late 19th and early 20th century.
00:01:02
Speaker
The Romanovs ruled Russia for 300 years, and there was really no sense of modesty.
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I mean, the word czar itself comes from Caesar, and the Romanov czars were absolute monarchs.
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And that meant, among many other things, they had access to all of the vast riches of Russia, including the greatest works of art and decorative arts, jewelry, paintings, gold and silver, the finest furniture and textiles, and on and on and on.
00:01:31
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And we could talk for days about the intrigue and tragedies and triumphs of the Romanovs.
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But today's story really starts with their decline and fall.
Guest Introduction: Nick Nicholson
00:01:42
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And most importantly, with the escape of a lucky few imperial family members and the unlikely journey that they and their prized possessions took.
00:01:52
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And here to share this extraordinary story with us is Nick Nicholson.
00:01:56
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He has specialized for 30 years in Russian works of art, and he is the connoisseurial force behind this fantastic sale at Heritage.
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Nice to talk with you, Nick.
00:02:07
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It's nice to be here, Ben.
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Thanks for having me.
00:02:09
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So first off, are you ready for some rapid fire questions?
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Let's do it.
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Speaker
What is your favorite Fabergé egg?
00:02:16
Speaker
Oh, the winter egg, 1913.
00:02:19
Speaker
You really were quick on the draw with that one.
00:02:21
Speaker
What do you like so much about the literature?
00:02:23
Speaker
You said rapid fire.
00:02:26
Speaker
It's a number of things.
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One, it was designed by Alma Fiel, who was one of the female designers working in the house.
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And she was responsible for a lot of innovations, both in jewelry techniques and in design for Fabergé.
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She was the daughter of one of their workmasters.
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And it is the only one of two eggs, actually, I should say, that was likely designed by a woman.
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So that draws me to it, first of all.
Nick's Recommendations and Favorite Museums
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Secondly, it's an extraordinary combination of both gem setting and hardstone carving, which just always blows my mind.
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And finally, it is the first imperial egg that I handled.
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So it's got a soft spot for me.
00:03:09
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I love that personal connection.
00:03:11
Speaker
I do want to ask you to recommend a book that you would recommend for listeners to read about Russian art.
00:03:19
Speaker
I think for an informal and casual look, I think Suzanne Massey's Land of the Firebird is a fantastic intro to the world of Russian art and culture.
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I think for people who like something a little more robust, I think John Bolt's book about the arts in St.
00:03:40
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Petersburg is just a knockout.
00:03:44
Speaker
What's your favorite museum to visit?
00:03:46
Speaker
Oh, that's like asking to choose between children.
00:03:51
Speaker
I'm a native New Yorker, so the Frick looms large in my heart.
00:03:57
Speaker
But I also have to say that my favorite museum in New York is the Merchant's House Museum, which is on which I happily serve as board chair and which is a wonderful, small, amazing piece of the city.
00:04:10
Speaker
Terrific.
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Speaker
Yeah, that has come up on Curious Objects in the past.
00:04:14
Speaker
It's full of them.
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Speaker
That's why.
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Indeed.
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What's a misconception that you'd like to address about Russian art and objects?
Nick's Personal Russian Art Experiences
00:04:26
Speaker
Oh, that they're vulgar.
00:04:28
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I think everybody, people are constantly saying over the top, lavish, opulent.
00:04:33
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There's a lot of very restrained and very beautiful Russian work.
00:04:39
Speaker
And I'm real tired of people denigrating the Romanovs' taste because they had really extraordinary collections and they were nothing to sneeze at.
00:04:50
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And he said unbiasedly.
00:04:54
Speaker
Speaking of, what was the very first Russian work of art that really knocked you off your feet?
00:05:00
Speaker
I think...
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I would have to say, and this is sort of an unusual thing, my father was a children's book publisher, and he worked for many years at Viking Press.
00:05:10
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And one of the editors there was Jacqueline Onassis.
00:05:14
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And she was doing some work with the New York Public Library, and she discovered that they had one of the original illustrated manuscripts to the Russian Skazky, or fairy tales, illustrated by an artist called Boris Zvarikin.
00:05:29
Speaker
And
00:05:30
Speaker
And my father and Mrs. Onassis decided to republish this at Viking.
00:05:34
Speaker
And so I think my first introduction to Russian art was through the pages of those fairy tales and the work of Zvorykin, who was one of the great illustrators of Russia's Silver Age, which is the age of Nicholas II.
00:05:48
Speaker
What's the most expensive piece you've
Impact of Global Events on Russian Art Market
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Speaker
ever sold?
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Speaker
Let's stick with Russian.
00:05:51
Speaker
I think that I was involved many, many years ago with the sale of the 25th anniversary clock of Alexander III and Empress Maria Fyodorovna.
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And that at the time set a record for not only silver, but for Russian works of art.
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Speaker
It has since been outstripped many, many times over.
00:06:14
Speaker
And you'll forgive me if I don't actually remember the price that it sold for in 1996.
00:06:19
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But it is now sitting in the Hermitage Museum.
00:06:22
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It was a gift by President Putin.
00:06:26
Speaker
Wow.
00:06:27
Speaker
Okay.
00:06:27
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All right.
00:06:28
Speaker
Well, we're going to avoid wading too deep into geopolitics.
00:06:32
Speaker
Sure.
00:06:32
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:06:33
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Yeah.
00:06:34
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But I do have one question that's slightly less rapid fire for you, which is how has the invasion of Ukraine affected your field?
00:06:45
Speaker
Wow.
00:06:45
Speaker
Okay.
00:06:46
Speaker
So that is a big and actually very complicated multi-layer field.
00:06:52
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The completely...
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understandable response to the invasion and the crisis in Ukraine has been the sanctions placed on the Russian nation and on Russian individuals.
00:07:07
Speaker
And those had an immediate effect on the market because a large and robust section of the buying public was really no longer able to participate in such sales.
00:07:19
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the secondary level of sort of xenophobia and anti-Russian-ness rose up, of course.
00:07:26
Speaker
And the convergence of all of these factors led the larger auction houses sort of to tone back on Russian sales and say they weren't going to participate in them for the time being.
00:07:36
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That said, over the past couple of years, Russian objects have come up in a variety of different sales at houses all over the world, and they continue to do extremely well.
00:07:48
Speaker
So our sale with 177 extremely high quality Russian objects is $1.
00:07:54
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one of the largest and one of the most high level sales that has happened since the conflict began.
00:08:01
Speaker
And I think we'll see how it does.
00:08:04
Speaker
Our estimates for much of the material are extremely reasonable with the understanding that we don't have the extensive market that once reached for this material.
Details of Upcoming Heritage Auction
00:08:14
Speaker
But I am very comforted by the fact that the Russian art market, to a large extent, was developed in the United States between the 1930s and the 1970s.
00:08:25
Speaker
And there was a large and important market of buyers and sellers here until the 1990s when Russian buyers took over the market.
00:08:34
Speaker
And I am hearing from a lot of collectors and institutions who frankly are thrilled that they won't have the competition and are looking forward to getting back in the game.
00:08:44
Speaker
So I think we're going to see new types of prices and many new buyers because there are a lot of people who are drawn to this material.
00:08:51
Speaker
Interesting.
00:08:52
Speaker
So this sale could actually be a kind of marker of a renaissance in the field of collecting Russian art.
00:08:58
Speaker
I think it's definitely going to be a very specific moment in that for sure.
00:09:04
Speaker
Fascinating.
00:09:05
Speaker
Okay, well, I can't wait to see how it goes.
00:09:07
Speaker
And we'll be right back with Nick Nicholson to hear about these Romanoff treasures.
00:09:13
Speaker
As always, you can see images at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast, or of course, on Heritage Auctions website, which is very easy to remember, ha.com.
00:09:25
Speaker
The sale is on May 17th, so I highly recommend that you take a look and see these pieces for yourself.
00:09:32
Speaker
and connect the story that you're going to hear from us today with these lots in the sale, 177 pieces.
00:09:40
Speaker
If you'd like to support Curious Objects, and I hope that you would, a great way for you to do that would be to leave us a rating.
00:09:49
Speaker
Five glorious stars on Apple Podcasts or on whatever app you're using to listen right now.
00:09:57
Speaker
And if you'd like to go a little further, you could even take a moment to write a little review to help other listeners understand what it is that you find so interesting about listening to Curious Objects.
00:10:09
Speaker
This really helps people to find the podcast and connect with us.
Historical Context: Romanovs and Russian Revolution
00:10:12
Speaker
And in the long run, that helps me to entice guests with wonderful specialized knowledge and deep insight into their fields to come and share that wisdom with us.
00:10:30
Speaker
As we are doing right now, once again with Nick Nicholson.
00:10:34
Speaker
And Nick, I have to ask just to give us a little historic context here.
00:10:42
Speaker
What happened to the Romanov family in 1917?
00:10:44
Speaker
I think there's a lot of cultural knowledge around this, which may or may not be accurate as to the details of what actually went on.
00:10:56
Speaker
We don't need to get too deeply into the weeds, but give us the Cliff Notes version of what was actually going on in 1917.
00:11:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:11:07
Speaker
I will do my best, but many far greater people than I have tried and failed to do this kind of summary.
00:11:16
Speaker
I think the shortest and clearest version that I can give you is that in 1913, the Romanov dynasty celebrated its 300th anniversary of rule in Russia.
00:11:28
Speaker
And so from 1905 until the beginning of the First World War, Russia was getting used to a new governmental system.
00:11:36
Speaker
And there were to be expected the normal hiccups and difficulties and politics that come with that.
00:11:43
Speaker
What also came with that was the beginnings and rumblings of the First World War, which began, as we all know, in the summer of 1914.
00:11:51
Speaker
So as Russia entered the First World War in alliance with the British and the French against the Germans, they had an untried, very new political system.
00:12:02
Speaker
And they were also dealing with the fact that the sudden and rapid modernization of Russia between the mid-19th century and the 20th century had pushed them into the 20th century.
00:12:15
Speaker
And so there were just...
00:12:17
Speaker
there were so many layers and levels of problems and difficulties that it's kind of hard to fathom and challenges.
00:12:25
Speaker
It was also a remarkable period of cultural expression and growth.
00:12:30
Speaker
And it starts with Tolstoy and moves towards Chekhov and it's Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky and the opera and the ballet and Fabergé, right?
00:12:40
Speaker
So the First World War gets very serious and very difficult.
00:12:44
Speaker
And the Romanovs are
00:12:47
Speaker
spread out over the country.
00:12:49
Speaker
There are very few members who are still in St.
00:12:51
Speaker
Petersburg.
00:12:52
Speaker
The emperor's wife, the empress, and his children are at Tsarskoye Selo, which is the sort of summer palace complex outside of the city where they preferred to live.
00:13:02
Speaker
The emperor is at Stavka, which is the military headquarters located sort of on the Belarusian border.
00:13:09
Speaker
And the various grand dukes were serving with various parts of the military all over the country and along the Western Front.
00:13:17
Speaker
And in February of 1917, there was a general strike broke out in St.
00:13:21
Speaker
Petersburg, and it coupled with...
00:13:31
Speaker
a series of very difficult political moves by members of the Duma and members of the Communist Party.
00:13:41
Speaker
And there was such unrest that in the space of about 15 days, the entire imperial government collapsed and ended with the abdication of Nicholas II on behalf of himself and on behalf of his son, the Tsarevich Alexei, who had hemophilia, as many people know.
00:14:02
Speaker
At this moment, this juncture where suddenly there is no emperor, the various members of the family had a number of different things happen to them.
00:14:11
Speaker
The emperor's sisters, two of them, one, Grand Duchess Olga, was at the front in Ukraine where she had recently married.
00:14:18
Speaker
Her mother, the Dowager Empress, was also in Kiev at the time.
00:14:22
Speaker
His sister, Grand Duchess Ksenia, was in
00:14:25
Speaker
had just returned from the Crimea, which was then part of Russia, and where she had celebrated Christmas and New Year's.
00:14:32
Speaker
And she had returned to the capital just in time for all of the difficulties.
00:14:37
Speaker
What ended up happening is the government began issuing arrest orders for the members of the family.
00:14:43
Speaker
They wanted them to stay in place while they tried to figure out what to do with the new government.
00:14:49
Speaker
And as a result, many members of the family chose to leave.
00:14:54
Speaker
So the Dowager Empress and Grand Duchess Xenia made their way to their estates in Crimea.
00:15:00
Speaker
They were joined by Grand Duchess Olga and her family, and Prince and Princess Yusupov joined them as well with their young daughter.
00:15:09
Speaker
And ultimately, they ended up stuck in Crimea with the war raging between them and Russia until George V was able to send a boat called the HMS Marlboro to rescue his dear aunt Minnie and his
Significance of Fabergé to the Romanovs
00:15:25
Speaker
relatives who were there.
00:15:26
Speaker
The dowager empress and her family refused to leave Crimea unless all of their family members and attendants were able to get on board.
00:15:33
Speaker
So about, I'm going to get the number wrong, I think it was about 80 people got onto the boat and fled, fled the country.
00:15:43
Speaker
They left in 1919 and many of the objects in our sail were on that boat with them.
00:15:50
Speaker
Yeah, so this is, you're queuing this up perfectly because my next question is about what happened to all their stuff.
00:15:59
Speaker
So this group has successfully sort of holed up in Crimea, but now they're being rescued and embarking on this journey.
00:16:12
Speaker
Of course, their palaces were full of just an incredible wealth and volume of
00:16:20
Speaker
wildly valuable stuff, right?
00:16:22
Speaker
So presumably what they have with them is, is a tiny, tiny little slice of that pie, right?
00:16:29
Speaker
Correct.
00:16:30
Speaker
Um, none of the Romanovs were given really sufficient, uh, warning, um,
00:16:37
Speaker
about how long they would be gone.
00:16:39
Speaker
Many of them didn't understand that when they left St.
00:16:41
Speaker
Petersburg, it was going to be the last time.
00:16:44
Speaker
So, for example, the Dowager Empress, who had gone to Kiev, had brought with her all the things that she would need for an indefinite stay.
00:16:53
Speaker
Clothing, her traveling jewelry, the porcelain that she chose to use while she traveled, clothes for one season, you
00:17:02
Speaker
things that she couldn't live without portraits and paintings of her husband photographs things like that grand duchess xenia who was in the middle of the unrest in saint petersburg thought that things might go on a little longer so she managed to grab many of the things that she used on a daily basis those things were just packed up into trunks
00:17:26
Speaker
And of course, they had a great number of things in the Crimea where they lived in off season.
00:17:31
Speaker
So there were there were objects there as well.
00:17:34
Speaker
But there were there was very little opportunity to grab important things, particularly things like jewelry, because the major pieces of the family and, of course, the imperial crown jewels, which were state property, not personal property, were put in a.
00:17:53
Speaker
The bank, they were hidden away in the Kremlin, so there was no access to them at the beginning of the war.
00:17:58
Speaker
So they found basically that they were with the everyday things that they used and special objects that they wanted with them all the time.
00:18:07
Speaker
Okay, now quite a few of these objects that we're talking about were made by Fabergé.
00:18:13
Speaker
And so I want you to talk to me about Fabergé.
00:18:15
Speaker
We all know about the eggs, but there's a lot more to the company than that.
00:18:20
Speaker
Why were the czars and their family members relying so heavily on this one company?
00:18:27
Speaker
Well, I think the first thing I have to say is people talk about Fabergé and they talk about Peter Carl Fabergé, one of the company's sort of major owners, was that he was one man.
00:18:41
Speaker
And that's not the case.
00:18:42
Speaker
You have to think of Fabergé the same way you think of Cartier or Tiffany.
00:18:46
Speaker
It was a major luxury concern with hundreds of employees all around Russia and in Europe as well.
00:18:52
Speaker
They had...
00:18:54
Speaker
a London shop.
00:18:55
Speaker
They did trunk shows in Paris.
00:18:57
Speaker
They had...
00:19:00
Speaker
Atelier in Moscow, St.
00:19:02
Speaker
Petersburg, Kiev, Odessa, they were a big organization.
00:19:08
Speaker
And all of the work was done in-house in workshops that were each manned by a specific workmaster who was highly skilled in one of the great skills.
00:19:19
Speaker
So many of the greatest enamels came from Fyodor Rukert's workshop in Moscow.
00:19:24
Speaker
and many of the great guilloté pieces came from Wigstrom's workshop in St.
00:19:29
Speaker
Petersburg.
00:19:30
Speaker
And a lot of the gold work and jewelry came from Holmstrom and Holming, who also had atelier in St.
00:19:37
Speaker
Petersburg.
00:19:38
Speaker
So it was an enormous concern with a massive output.
00:19:42
Speaker
And in the same way that brides went to Tiffany when they married and bought things for themselves, the same thing happened at Fabergé because it made different.
00:19:50
Speaker
table silver, it made objects for the house, and it, of course, specialized in these everyday objects done in a very luxurious manner.
00:19:59
Speaker
Their objets de luxe, like bell pushes, cigarette cases, clocks, frames, things for the home, were justly famous around the world.
00:20:09
Speaker
And their objets de fantaisie, their fantasy objects like flower arrangements, hardstone animals, the imperial Easter eggs, these are all the kinds of things that Fabergé was famous for.
00:20:21
Speaker
They became famous internationally because of their participation in the fairs that were so popular at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.
00:20:30
Speaker
And it was, in fact, at one of the great fairs in Moscow that Alexander III and Dowager Empress, who was then just plain old Empress, Maria Fyodorovna, became familiar with their work.
00:20:41
Speaker
Alexander III's brother, Grand Duke Vladimir, who was a famous connoisseur of art and of decorative objects and had a wonderful collection in his own palace, had discovered Fabergé's work and he introduced Alexander III and Maria Fyodorovna to the firm.
00:20:58
Speaker
They started their purchases with a pair of cufflinks and a small brooch, and in a matter of years, Fabergé was an imperial supplier to the court and did a brisk business not only in personal objects ordered by and for the imperial family, but with the imperial cabinet who ordered state gifts and medals and orders and decorations from the firm.
00:21:21
Speaker
So
Journey of Russian Art Post-Revolution
00:21:22
Speaker
there was both a corporate imperial family aspect to the relationship with Fabergé, as well as a personal collecting relationship with the firm.
00:21:32
Speaker
So let's fill in the gaps here.
00:21:34
Speaker
So we have a sense of how some of these pieces left Russia in 1919 and left Crimea.
00:21:44
Speaker
Where did they go from there and how did they make their way ultimately to the sale room and heritage?
00:21:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:21:50
Speaker
Well, when we speak about what happened to the things in general, it's sort of important to think about how pieces come to auction generally.
00:21:59
Speaker
Most people are familiar with the pieces that belong to the imperial family that were confiscated by the Soviet government and then sold abroad in the 1920s and 1930s, often through people like Armand Hammer,
00:22:13
Speaker
who really familiarized in particular the American audience with these Russian works of art.
00:22:19
Speaker
The market for this type of material was really created in the 1930s through Hammer's exhibitions, and that was when the great American collecting began.
00:22:30
Speaker
But then there are objects which were brought by the Romanovs and their relatives and members of the aristocracy with them out of Russia into the West and then sold privately or perhaps at sale.
00:22:45
Speaker
And these objects have been...
00:22:48
Speaker
on the market for now almost 80 years since the revolution.
00:22:53
Speaker
And so those are objects that we are used to seeing.
00:22:56
Speaker
The final category, and that is the category that we are dealing with largely in this sale, is objects which were purchased by the Romanovs, which were brought with them out of Russia during the revolution, and which then remained with members of the Romanov family for several generations since then.
Romanov Provenance in Current Auctions
00:23:16
Speaker
So we have three separate consignors with three separate groups of objects, all of which have Romanov provenance and have descended in the Romanov family until quite recently.
00:23:30
Speaker
So for each of these objects, it is their first time at auction, and each of them has quite a story to tell on their own.
00:23:39
Speaker
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Thelma Downer Zane's Connection to the Romanovs
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00:24:08
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And there's one particular object from this group that you really wanted to share with me, and I'm super excited to hear about it.
00:24:17
Speaker
Tell me about this wonderful little box.
00:24:21
Speaker
So the piece that I have to sort of preface a little bit by saying that I haven't been with Heritage very long, just about seven months, probably about eight by the time this goes online.
00:24:31
Speaker
Um,
00:24:33
Speaker
And on my first day at work, my colleague, Nick Dawes, who you know, friend of your podcast, he's been on, took me aside and he said, I hear that you do Russian and you'll be doing Russian here at Heritage.
00:24:46
Speaker
And I said, no, that's part of what I'm doing.
00:24:47
Speaker
Yes.
00:24:48
Speaker
He said, I've got something that I just want to show you.
00:24:51
Speaker
These photographs came in from a friend in California.
00:24:53
Speaker
What do you think?
00:24:54
Speaker
And he showed me the pictures.
00:24:56
Speaker
And I said, I think we need to get on a plane.
00:25:00
Speaker
And that's exactly what we did.
00:25:02
Speaker
And we flew out to California and met with this absolutely wonderful family.
00:25:08
Speaker
And they had a story that I just couldn't believe, which I will share with you now, because it explains how the box happened.
00:25:15
Speaker
Yes, please.
00:25:18
Speaker
There was a wonderful woman in California called Thelma Downer Zane.
00:25:22
Speaker
And Thelma Zane came from an old California family.
00:25:25
Speaker
She was old San Francisco and had grown up there in the 20s and early 30s.
00:25:31
Speaker
She was a very young collector of objects.
00:25:33
Speaker
She was sort of known as a connoisseur, very social in San Francisco.
00:25:37
Speaker
And she married.
00:25:39
Speaker
And by the late 30s, the early 40s, she found herself pregnant with her first child, very excited.
00:25:44
Speaker
And she went to the hospital and found that she had this sort of marvelous roommate because in this hospital in...
00:25:53
Speaker
California, all the mothers were sort of in wards together and they were sharing a room.
00:25:59
Speaker
And the two women turned out to both be having children on the same day.
00:26:04
Speaker
They were very excited to see what happened and they became friends.
00:26:07
Speaker
And when their babies were born, Mrs. Zane suddenly realized that her roommate, as lovely as she was, was not really just any other mother on the paternity ward.
00:26:17
Speaker
Because flowers began arriving and telegrams began arriving from all over the world, including from Buckingham Palace and from German royal families and from members of the Russian imperial family.
00:26:28
Speaker
And her roommate admitted to her that she was, in fact, Princess Vasily Romanov and that she had been born a Princess Galitsyn and that she had fled Russia as a young woman and married her husband.
00:26:40
Speaker
and that they had been living in Woodside, California ever since.
00:26:44
Speaker
Why does this never happen to me at the hospital?
00:26:47
Speaker
Right?
00:26:47
Speaker
It doesn't happen to me either.
00:26:49
Speaker
But what ended up happening is they formed this sort of inseparable friendship.
00:26:52
Speaker
And the Zanes and the Romanovs became quite close.
00:26:55
Speaker
And there were letters and telegrams that went back and forth between them.
00:26:59
Speaker
And they became very dear friends.
00:27:02
Speaker
And over time...
00:27:04
Speaker
Prince Vasily let the Zanes become aware of the fact that he had maintained a certain number of family treasures that were in his possession.
00:27:14
Speaker
And he asked them if they would allow him to put these objects into their safe deposit box in San Francisco.
00:27:23
Speaker
And Mrs. Zane said, absolutely, of course, your friend's not a problem.
00:27:26
Speaker
So they began this
00:27:29
Speaker
arrangement where these valuable objects were kept in the safe deposit box in San Francisco.
Exhibition and Fabergé Box Details
00:27:34
Speaker
And these valuable objects included the cross of St.
00:27:37
Speaker
George egg, which was the only egg to leave Russia in the hands of its original owners, a wonderful rhinoceros automaton, which was sold at Christie's not so long ago, and a group of five other sort of magnificent objects.
00:27:54
Speaker
And those are the ones that we had been invited to come see.
00:27:58
Speaker
These objects had been kept by the Zanes and really not shown to people until the amazing Geza von Habsburg managed to find the Zanes and included these objects in the 1996 exhibition Fabergé in America, which is the seminal Fabergé show in the United States.
00:28:18
Speaker
And these objects led the exhibition because they had come out of Russia with the Romanovs and had stayed in Romanov hands all those years.
00:28:27
Speaker
So they are in the catalog and no one had seen them since 1996 until the photographs showed up at Heritage.
00:28:34
Speaker
So we're honored that the family trusted us to offer these objects and we're really looking forward to it.
00:28:41
Speaker
But of them, the one that I wanted to talk about today because I'm obsessed with it in an almost unhealthy way is a tiny little box.
00:28:52
Speaker
It is...
00:28:55
Speaker
I mean, the catalog description is it's an imperial Fabergé, Féodore Ruecker, Cloisonnet, and enameled gilt silver box.
00:29:03
Speaker
And we don't know what it was originally intended for.
00:29:06
Speaker
It may have been for stamps.
00:29:08
Speaker
It may have been for pastilles, for breath mints.
00:29:11
Speaker
It is described in the Fabergé bill as a bonbonnière.
00:29:16
Speaker
So it could have had any kind of use, really.
00:29:20
Speaker
It's just a small box.
00:29:22
Speaker
How small is it exactly?
00:29:24
Speaker
It is, I would say, two inches wide by one and three quarter inches deep.
00:29:31
Speaker
Quite small.
00:29:32
Speaker
Right.
00:29:32
Speaker
So really miniature.
00:29:33
Speaker
I mean, you're not going to get a whole lot in there.
00:29:36
Speaker
No, you're not.
00:29:37
Speaker
And it's smaller than a snuff box, for example.
00:29:40
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:29:40
Speaker
It might hold pills.
00:29:42
Speaker
It could certainly hold a larger size set of stamps.
00:29:46
Speaker
The family told me that Mrs. Zane used it for stamps.
00:29:50
Speaker
But we don't really know what the Romanovs used it for.
00:29:54
Speaker
But it arrived and it was spectacular.
00:29:57
Speaker
And it was, forgive me for saying so, filthy.
00:29:59
Speaker
So I have an extraordinary conservator that I work with in New York who managed to clean it.
00:30:05
Speaker
And this little box just began to sink.
00:30:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:10
Speaker
So what does it look like?
00:30:11
Speaker
I mean, it's such an evocative piece.
00:30:14
Speaker
And again, I encourage listeners to look at the pictures of this on a heritage website or a magazine antiques website.
00:30:22
Speaker
In many ways, it's a very typical Russian cloisonné box with a sort of central panel on the top that has a larger image and then decorative cloisonné work on the sides.
00:30:35
Speaker
And just tell us what cloisonne is.
00:30:37
Speaker
Sure.
00:30:39
Speaker
Cloisonne is an enameling technique in which wire is twisted and soldered to a metal frame, creating little sections called cloison into which enamel crushed glass is painted and then fired.
00:30:55
Speaker
So what you end up with is sort of like a coloring book, thin golden wires separating areas of color.
00:31:03
Speaker
And
00:31:04
Speaker
In earlier enamels, these cloison are generally filled with solid enamel.
00:31:10
Speaker
They're white, turquoise, cobalt, red, green, yellow, black.
00:31:15
Speaker
These are pink.
00:31:16
Speaker
These are colors that you see very frequently.
00:31:19
Speaker
But in the 19th century, the Russians mastered the art of shaded enamel, which involves painting and combining colors within the cloison to create an even more sumptuous looking exterior.
00:31:31
Speaker
So instead of having...
00:31:33
Speaker
For example, the wing of a bird where every feather is articulated in black, white, gray, black, white, gray, black, white, gray.
00:31:41
Speaker
You're going to see big swaths of painted areas with varying colors and varying shades of enamel.
00:31:49
Speaker
And you get...
00:31:51
Speaker
it's a more painterly surface than typical Cuesnay.
00:31:55
Speaker
And in this period in particular, Fabergé was experimenting in this sort of what the Russians called the Stil Madier, which is the Russian version of Art Nouveau, where a sort of a Slavic design element is coupled with a sort of arts and crafts feel.
00:32:13
Speaker
So it is a 20th century look at a 16th or 17th century aesthetic.
00:32:18
Speaker
And so the sides of the box have a very typical floral pattern, which you see in Russian enamels of the 17th century.
00:32:25
Speaker
But the top has sort of an architectural framework, a sort of double ogival frame with a dropped pendant in the center as if it were a window and an architectural ornament through which you see...
00:32:39
Speaker
a landscape, and this is quite popular.
00:32:41
Speaker
Normally, it's a country landscape, but this is, in fact, a view of St.
00:32:45
Speaker
Petersburg and an exceptionally beautifully painted one showing Senate Square with the famous Falconet sculpture of Peter the Great on horseback.
00:32:55
Speaker
This is sort of unusual because normally these boxes center an extraordinary miniature of a Russian 19th century painting, a work by Makovsky or Ryepin or
00:33:08
Speaker
one of the other painters who were very popular in the period.
00:33:11
Speaker
And these miniatures are often done in quite small scale.
00:33:15
Speaker
They're shrunk down to three inches by four inches or in a big piece, five by seven.
00:33:21
Speaker
But in this, if you're dealing with a box that's only two inches wide, we're talking about an entire landscape being painted on something the size of a stamp.
00:33:31
Speaker
So it's probably three quarters of an inches high by an inch wide, and it's a full view.
00:33:37
Speaker
And if you look at it under a loop or under a microscope, the detail is extraordinary.
00:33:43
Speaker
The view is one that everyone in St.
00:33:45
Speaker
Petersburg knows, and it's very well known.
00:33:50
Speaker
And the Bronze Horseman is one of everybody's favorite landmarks in St.
00:33:53
Speaker
Petersburg.
00:33:54
Speaker
But the
00:33:55
Speaker
The original image was probably sourced from an engraving after a work by Andrei Martinov, who was a late 18th, early 19th century Russian painter.
00:34:05
Speaker
But there were so many engravings of this view done as well.
00:34:10
Speaker
It's sort of hard to ascribe it to one artist.
00:34:13
Speaker
But what it is and what makes it sort of stand out is it is a
00:34:18
Speaker
very Russian Moscow enamel box in the middle of which is a St.
00:34:23
Speaker
Petersburg scene.
00:34:24
Speaker
And that's unusual.
00:34:27
Speaker
And it's the kind of thing that might go unnoticed normally, but for me, it's really a tour de force of enameling techniques.
00:34:39
Speaker
So this box was actually returned the first time that it was bought, which is a little detail that I found so intriguing, in part because I wonder what Fabergé's return policy was like.
00:34:52
Speaker
Oh, well...
00:34:54
Speaker
I don't know what the official policy was, but people return things all the time and people send things back for repairs all the time because then as now, people knock things over, break things, get things for Christmas and don't like them.
00:35:09
Speaker
This happened then as well, even with objects.
00:35:12
Speaker
of this value and this prominence.
00:35:16
Speaker
But what we discovered is in the archives in Russia, Valentin Skurlov communicated to me that the piece had originally been acquired by the Imperial Cabinet for gift purposes in
Ownership Journey of the Fabergé Box
00:35:27
Speaker
1909.
00:35:27
Speaker
And the Imperial Cabinet had a real relationship with Fabergé and bought many things because
00:35:33
Speaker
no matter what was true in Russia, what was true is the emperor never went anywhere empty handed.
00:35:39
Speaker
He could not visit a town without leaving a congratulatory silver presentation piece with the mayor.
00:35:47
Speaker
He got onto the train and handed a gold watch to the conductor.
00:35:52
Speaker
It was part of the Russian tradition that these gifts were given on coming and leaving almost anywhere.
00:35:57
Speaker
Boy, that makes travel expensive.
00:36:00
Speaker
It sure does, but they...
00:36:03
Speaker
They could afford it.
00:36:04
Speaker
So this piece was acquired by the Imperial Cabinet for gift purposes in 1909, but it was never dispersed.
00:36:12
Speaker
So it sat with the Imperial Cabinet for several years and it was returned to Fabergé stock in late 1910, beginning of 1911.
00:36:21
Speaker
And they put it back into the cases in their store in St.
00:36:25
Speaker
Petersburg.
00:36:26
Speaker
And almost immediately, Grand Duke George Mikhailovich, who is one of the Russian Grand Dukes, walked into the shop, saw it and bought it.
00:36:35
Speaker
And so we have the sale to Grand Duke George.
00:36:39
Speaker
It's included in under its inventory number and the list of objects that he bought in 1911 at Christmas.
00:36:45
Speaker
And then it appears he gave it as a gift to the Dowager Empress.
00:36:50
Speaker
The box was with her.
00:36:51
Speaker
She may have used it for pills or stamps or pastilles or something like that.
00:36:57
Speaker
But what is clear, because it ended up coming out of Russia with the family, is it was something she took with her when she went to Kiev and had with her when she went from Kiev into exile in Crimea.
00:37:10
Speaker
So the box traveled with her and then it traveled with her on the Marlboro when she left.
00:37:16
Speaker
And at the time of her death in 1928, she had quite a large collection of jewelry and Fabergé.
00:37:25
Speaker
And we've said that they brought very little with them outside of Russia.
00:37:29
Speaker
But what you remember or may not remember is she had a house in Denmark with her sister, Queen Alexandra of Great Britain, where she spent part of every year.
00:37:38
Speaker
And that house was full of Fabergé.
00:37:41
Speaker
So she got back many things that were already abroad and brought these things with her.
00:37:48
Speaker
So in 1928, the objects at Fidura, the house, were divided between her daughters Grand Duchess Xenia and Grand Duchess Olga.
00:37:58
Speaker
And this box we know went to Grand Duchess Xenia because on the bottom of the box,
00:38:05
Speaker
in addition to its hallmarks and its inventory number, is a little scratched phrase, which we only found after it was cleaned, which in Russian says, meaning from mama.
00:38:16
Speaker
And then the date, it's either 1921 or 1928.
00:38:19
Speaker
I can't really read it, but my best guess is that it was a gift.
00:38:25
Speaker
It came to her as an inheritance in 1928 after the death of the Dowager Empress.
00:38:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:38:30
Speaker
So it then went with Granda Chisina when she moved to Great Britain.
00:38:36
Speaker
So by the way, this is a good lesson for collectors out there, which is make a record.
00:38:44
Speaker
A little detail like that little engraved phrase enriches the story of this box so much.
00:38:52
Speaker
You know, imagine if that weren't there, there's a whole generation of its existence that we might not be able to imagine.
00:38:59
Speaker
Right.
00:38:59
Speaker
I mean, we might have thought that it was given directly as a gift to Prince Vasily, but we now know it went from mother to daughter.
00:39:07
Speaker
Right.
00:39:08
Speaker
We don't know when the piece was transferred from Ksenia to Vasily, but we do know that Vasily had it by 1949 because it went into the safety deposit box, into the safe deposit with the rest of the Romanov things.
00:39:24
Speaker
So I did some research and I found that Vasily visited Europe before the Second World War twice, once with his fiance.
00:39:33
Speaker
And my guess is that these pieces were given by Grand Duchess Xenia to Vasily during this visit, either as wedding gifts or with the understanding that war might be coming and it would be easier to sell them abroad than in the country in England where she was living.
00:39:52
Speaker
So the objects stayed with Vasily and he sold them in 1949 to the Zane family before the death of Grand Duchess Xenia.
00:40:03
Speaker
So, you know, they knew they were parting with them when it went to the Zanes.
Fyodor Ruckert's Enameling Mastery
00:40:10
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:11
Speaker
So I'd like to understand a little better what it was that made this box so precious to generations of Romanov descendants and then to the Zanes.
00:40:25
Speaker
So tell me a little about, you've mentioned the name Fyodor Ruckert, the enamelor who worked for Fabergé.
00:40:32
Speaker
Who was Ruckert and what made his work so extraordinary?
00:40:36
Speaker
Fyodor Ivanovich Ruckert was actually born Friedrich Moritz Ruckert in Alsace.
00:40:44
Speaker
And he moved to Russia in the probably 1860s or 1870s and began working with Fabergé by 1887.
00:40:48
Speaker
And he specialized in these Moscow enamels, the Cloazenay work and the
00:41:01
Speaker
the en plein painting work where these beautiful renderings of large 19th century historical paintings or genre scenes are painted at a very, very small scale.
00:41:13
Speaker
And he became known for his inventive use of shaded enamel techniques and
00:41:20
Speaker
putting these enamels on new and interesting forms.
00:41:23
Speaker
But Rookert was a master of all of these enameling techniques, and he worked under his own label and had his own shop where he sold things.
00:41:32
Speaker
And he retailed things to Fabergé, who often overstruck his mark with their own, which is the case with this piece.
00:41:40
Speaker
You can actually see a little bit of the original Fyodor Rookert mark peeking out from under the Carl Fabergé mark.
00:41:47
Speaker
And sometimes his mark was obliterated or placed side by side with the Fabergé mark.
00:41:55
Speaker
So your estimate on this piece is $30,000 to $50,000.
00:42:00
Speaker
How would you recommend that a collector think about the value of it and what to bid for it?
00:42:08
Speaker
Well, I think the first thing I can say is when you're dealing with this particular box, first of all, all Ruegert...
00:42:16
Speaker
works are expensive and are sought after by collectors.
00:42:20
Speaker
We have another Rukert box in the sale with a reduction of Makovsky's The Boyard Wedding on the lid, which is at approximately the same estimate, just a little bit bigger because the box is bigger.
00:42:32
Speaker
But with this particular piece, you're paying a premium for the Imperial Association.
00:42:37
Speaker
There are many pieces by Rukert in the sale at entry-level prices.
00:42:42
Speaker
We have some wonderful beakers and salt cellars and
00:42:46
Speaker
and other works that are a few thousand dollars, like two to four, five to seven, that someone could get interested in.
00:42:57
Speaker
Though I have had friends in Europe tell me that these prices are way too low and they should have been estimated higher.
00:43:02
Speaker
We're trying to pay attention to what's going on in the world with some of these estimates.
00:43:07
Speaker
But this piece and the imperial pieces in this sale are phenomenally high quality.
00:43:14
Speaker
They've had very little, if any, restoration, almost none.
00:43:19
Speaker
This box has had nothing except a cleaning.
00:43:22
Speaker
And it has impeccable provenance from the moment it was created by Fabergé through its sale to the imperial cabinet.
00:43:28
Speaker
through its return, through its sale to Georgi Mikhailovich, through its gift giving to Maria Feodorovna, to its descent to Grandrush Ksenia Aleksandrovna, to her son, Prince Vasilia of Russia, and then to the Zanes.
Auction Anticipation and Episode Credits
00:43:41
Speaker
So we have generation upon generation upon generation of provenance and with a perfect piece, which is what you're always looking for when you're serious about buying a work like this.
00:43:51
Speaker
And of course, we're about to have a new owner, a new generation.
00:43:56
Speaker
And I'm very excited for you to find out who that will be.
00:44:01
Speaker
Once again, the sale is Imperial Fabergé and Russian Works of Art on May 17th at Heritage Auctions.
00:44:08
Speaker
Nick, good luck with the sale and thanks for sharing this wonderful story with us.
00:44:12
Speaker
Thanks so much, Ben.
00:44:13
Speaker
I really appreciated the invitation and I look forward to seeing you online at the sale.
00:44:19
Speaker
Very good.
00:44:21
Speaker
Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati with social media and web support from Sarah Bellotta.
00:44:27
Speaker
Sierra Holt is our digital media and editorial associate.
00:44:31
Speaker
Our music is by Trap Rabbit and I'm Ben Miller.
00:44:57
Speaker
As a raider scavenging a derelict world, you settle into an underground settlement.
00:45:03
Speaker
But now you must return to the surface.