Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
Speaker: I'm Ben Miller.
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.
Speaker: And today I am so pleased to be bringing an episode to you in partnership with Heritage Auctions.
Speaker: They have a banger of a sale coming up on May 17th.
Speaker: It's called Imperial Fabergé and Russian Works of Art.
Speaker: 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.
Speaker: 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.
Speaker: The Romanovs ruled Russia for 300 years, and there was really no sense of modesty.
Speaker: I mean, the word czar itself comes from Caesar, and the Romanov czars were absolute monarchs.
Speaker: 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.
Speaker: And we could talk for days about the intrigue and tragedies and triumphs of the Romanovs.
Speaker: But today's story really starts with their decline and fall.
Speaker: And most importantly, with the escape of a lucky few imperial family members and the unlikely journey that they and their prized possessions took.
Speaker: And here to share this extraordinary story with us is Nick Nicholson.
Speaker: He has specialized for 30 years in Russian works of art, and he is the connoisseurial force behind this fantastic sale at Heritage.
Speaker: Nice to talk with you, Nick.
Speaker: It's nice to be here, Ben.
Speaker: Thanks for having me.
Speaker: So first off, are you ready for some rapid fire questions?
Speaker: Let's do it.
Speaker: What is your favorite Fabergé egg?
Speaker: Oh, the winter egg, 1913.
Speaker: You really were quick on the draw with that one.
Speaker: What do you like so much about the literature?
Speaker: You said rapid fire.
Speaker: It's a number of things.
Speaker: One, it was designed by Alma Fiel, who was one of the female designers working in the house.
Speaker: And she was responsible for a lot of innovations, both in jewelry techniques and in design for Fabergé.
Speaker: She was the daughter of one of their workmasters.
Speaker: And it is the only one of two eggs, actually, I should say, that was likely designed by a woman.
Speaker: So that draws me to it, first of all.
Speaker: Secondly, it's an extraordinary combination of both gem setting and hardstone carving, which just always blows my mind.
Speaker: And finally, it is the first imperial egg that I handled.
Speaker: So it's got a soft spot for me.
Speaker: I love that personal connection.
Speaker: I do want to ask you to recommend a book that you would recommend for listeners to read about Russian art.
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.
Speaker: I think for people who like something a little more robust, I think John Bolt's book about the arts in St.
Speaker: Petersburg is just a knockout.
Speaker: What's your favorite museum to visit?
Speaker: Oh, that's like asking to choose between children.
Speaker: I'm a native New Yorker, so the Frick looms large in my heart.
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.
Speaker: Terrific.
Speaker: Yeah, that has come up on Curious Objects in the past.
Speaker: It's full of them.
Speaker: That's why.
Speaker: Indeed.
Speaker: What's a misconception that you'd like to address about Russian art and objects?
Speaker: Oh, that they're vulgar.
Speaker: I think everybody, people are constantly saying over the top, lavish, opulent.
Speaker: There's a lot of very restrained and very beautiful Russian work.
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.
Speaker: And he said unbiasedly.
Speaker: Speaking of, what was the very first Russian work of art that really knocked you off your feet?
Speaker: I think...
Speaker: 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.
Speaker: And one of the editors there was Jacqueline Onassis.
Speaker: 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.
Speaker: And
Speaker: And my father and Mrs. Onassis decided to republish this at Viking.
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.
Speaker: What's the most expensive piece you've ever sold?
Speaker: Let's stick with Russian.
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.
Speaker: And that at the time set a record for not only silver, but for Russian works of art.
Speaker: It has since been outstripped many, many times over.
Speaker: And you'll forgive me if I don't actually remember the price that it sold for in 1996.
Speaker: But it is now sitting in the Hermitage Museum.
Speaker: It was a gift by President Putin.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, we're going to avoid wading too deep into geopolitics.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: 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?
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So that is a big and actually very complicated multi-layer field.
Speaker: The completely...
Speaker: understandable response to the invasion and the crisis in Ukraine has been the sanctions placed on the Russian nation and on Russian individuals.
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.
Speaker: the secondary level of sort of xenophobia and anti-Russian-ness rose up, of course.
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.
Speaker: 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.
Speaker: So our sale with 177 extremely high quality Russian objects is $1.
Speaker: one of the largest and one of the most high level sales that has happened since the conflict began.
Speaker: And I think we'll see how it does.
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.
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.
Speaker: And there was a large and important market of buyers and sellers here until the 1990s when Russian buyers took over the market.
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.
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.
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: So this sale could actually be a kind of marker of a renaissance in the field of collecting Russian art.
Speaker: I think it's definitely going to be a very specific moment in that for sure.
Speaker: Fascinating.
Speaker: Okay, well, I can't wait to see how it goes.
Speaker: And we'll be right back with Nick Nicholson to hear about these Romanoff treasures.
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.
Speaker: The sale is on May 17th, so I highly recommend that you take a look and see these pieces for yourself.
Speaker: and connect the story that you're going to hear from us today with these lots in the sale, 177 pieces.
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.
Speaker: Five glorious stars on Apple Podcasts or on whatever app you're using to listen right now.
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.
Speaker: This really helps people to find the podcast and connect with us.
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.
Speaker: As we are doing right now, once again with Nick Nicholson.
Speaker: And Nick, I have to ask just to give us a little historic context here.
Speaker: What happened to the Romanov family in 1917?
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.
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.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I will do my best, but many far greater people than I have tried and failed to do this kind of summary.
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.
Speaker: And so from 1905 until the beginning of the First World War, Russia was getting used to a new governmental system.
Speaker: And there were to be expected the normal hiccups and difficulties and politics that come with that.
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.
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.
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.
Speaker: And so there were just...
Speaker: there were so many layers and levels of problems and difficulties that it's kind of hard to fathom and challenges.
Speaker: It was also a remarkable period of cultural expression and growth.
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?
Speaker: So the First World War gets very serious and very difficult.
Speaker: And the Romanovs are
Speaker: spread out over the country.
Speaker: There are very few members who are still in St.
Speaker: Petersburg.
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.
Speaker: The emperor is at Stavka, which is the military headquarters located sort of on the Belarusian border.
Speaker: And the various grand dukes were serving with various parts of the military all over the country and along the Western Front.
Speaker: And in February of 1917, there w as a general strike broke out in St.
Speaker: Petersburg, and it coupled with...
Speaker: a series of very difficult political moves by members of the Duma and members of the Communist Party.
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.
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.
Speaker: The emperor's sisters, two of them, one, Grand Duchess Olga, was at the front in Ukraine where she had recently married.
Speaker: Her mother, the Dowager Empress, was also in Kiev at the time.
Speaker: His sister, Grand Duchess Ksenia, was in
Speaker: had just returned from the Crimea, which was then part of Russia, and where she had celebrated Christmas and New Year's.
Speaker: And she had returned to the capital just in time for all of the difficulties.
Speaker: What ended up happening is the government began issuing arrest orders for the members of the family.
Speaker: They wanted them to stay in place while they tried to figure out what to do with the new government.
Speaker: And as a result, many members of the family chose to leave.
Speaker: So the Dowager Empress and Grand Duchess Xenia made their way to their estates in Crimea.
Speaker: They were joined by Grand Duchess Olga and her family, and Prince and Princess Yusupov joined them as well with their young daughter.
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 relatives who were there.
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.
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.
Speaker: They left in 1919 and many of the objects in our sail were on that boat with them.
Speaker: Yeah, so this is, you're queuing this up perfectly because my next question is about what happened to all their stuff.
Speaker: So this group has successfully sort of holed up in Crimea, but now they're being rescued and embarking on this journey.
Speaker: Of course, their palaces were full of just an incredible wealth and volume of
Speaker: wildly valuable stuff, right?
Speaker: So presumably what they have with them is, is a tiny, tiny little slice of that pie, right?
Speaker: Correct.
Speaker: Um, none of the Romanovs were given really sufficient, uh, warning, um,
Speaker: about how long they would be gone.
Speaker: Many of them didn't understand that when they left St.
Speaker: Petersburg, it was going to be the last time.
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.
Speaker: Clothing, her traveling jewelry, the porcelain that she chose to use while she traveled, clothes for one season, you
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
Speaker: And of course, they had a great number of things in the Crimea where they lived in off season.
Speaker: So there were there were objects there as well.
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.
Speaker: The bank, they were hidden away in the Kremlin, so there was no access to them at the beginning of the war.
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.
Speaker: Okay, now quite a few of these objects that we're talking about were made by Fabergé.
Speaker: And so I want you to talk to me about Fabergé.
Speaker: We all know about the eggs, but there's a lot more to the company than that.
Speaker: Why were the czars and their family members relying so heavily on this one company?
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.
Speaker: And that's not the case.
Speaker: You have to think of Fabergé the same way you think of Cartier or Tiffany.
Speaker: It was a major luxury concern with hundreds of employees all around Russia and in Europe as well.
Speaker: They had...
Speaker: a London shop.
Speaker: They did trunk shows in Paris.
Speaker: They had...
Speaker: Atelier in Moscow, St.
Speaker: Petersburg, Kiev, Odessa, they were a big organization.
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.
Speaker: So many of the greatest enamels came from Fyodor Rukert's workshop in Moscow.
Speaker: and many of the great guilloté pieces came from Wigstrom's workshop in St.
Speaker: Petersburg.
Speaker: And a lot of the gold work and jewelry came from Holmstrom and Holming, who also had atelier in St.
Speaker: Petersburg.
Speaker: So it was an enormous concern with a massive output.
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.
Speaker: table silver, it made objects for the house, and it, of course, specialized in these everyday objects done in a very luxurious manner.
Speaker: Their objets de luxe, like bell pushes, cigarette cases, clocks, frames, things for the home, were justly famous around the world.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Speaker: So there was both a corporate imperial family aspect to the relationship with Fabergé, as well as a personal collecting relationship with the firm.
Speaker: So let's fill in the gaps here.
Speaker: So we have a sense of how some of these pieces left Russia in 1919 and left Crimea.
Speaker: Where did they go from there and how did they make their way ultimately to the sale room and heritage?
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
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,
Speaker: who really familiarized in particular the American audience with these Russian works of art.
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.
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.
Speaker: And these objects have been...
Speaker: on the market for now almost 80 years since the revolution.
Speaker: And so those are objects that we are used to seeing.
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.
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.
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.
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Speaker: 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.
Speaker: Tell me about this wonderful little box.
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.
Speaker: Um,
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.
Speaker: And I said, no, that's part of what I'm doing.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: He said, I've got something that I just want to show you.
Speaker: These photographs came in from a friend in California.
Speaker: What do you think?
Speaker: And he showed me the pictures.
Speaker: And I said, I think we need to get on a plane.
Speaker: And that's exactly what we did.
Speaker: And we flew out to California and met with this absolutely wonderful family.
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.
Speaker: Yes, please.
Speaker: There was a wonderful woman in California called Thelma Downer Zane.
Speaker: And Thelma Zane came from an old California family.
Speaker: She was old San Francisco and had grown up there in the 20s and early 30s.
Speaker: She was a very young collector of objects.
Speaker: She was sort of known as a connoisseur, very social in San Francisco.
Speaker: And she married.
Speaker: And by the late 30s, the early 40s, she found herself pregnant with her first child, very excited.
Speaker: And she went to the hospital and found that she had this sort of marvelous roommate because in this hospital in...
Speaker: California, all the mothers were sort of in wards together and they were sharing a room.
Speaker: And the two women turned out to both be having children on the same day.
Speaker: They were very excited to see what happened and they became friends.
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.
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.
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.
Speaker: and that they had been living in Woodside, California ever since.
Speaker: Why does this never happen to me at the hospital?
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: It doesn't happen to me either.
Speaker: But what ended up happening is they formed this sort of inseparable friendship.
Speaker: And the Zanes and the Romanovs became quite close.
Speaker: And there were letters and telegrams that went back and forth between them.
Speaker: And they became very dear friends.
Speaker: And over time...
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.
Speaker: And he asked them if they would allow him to put these objects into their safe deposit box in San Francisco.
Speaker: And Mrs. Zane said, absolutely, of course, your friend's not a problem.
Speaker: So they began this
Speaker: arrangement where these valuable objects were kept in the safe deposit box in San Francisco.
Speaker: And these valuable objects included the cross of St.
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.
Speaker: And those are the ones that we had been invited to come see.
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.
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.
Speaker: So they are in the catalog and no one had seen them since 1996 until the photographs showed up at Heritage.
Speaker: So we're honored that the family trusted us to offer these objects and we're really looking forward to it.
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.
Speaker: It is...
Speaker: I mean, the catalog description is it's an imperial Fabergé, Féodore Ruecker, Cloisonnet, and enameled gilt silver box.
Speaker: And we don't know what it was originally intended for.
Speaker: It may have been for stamps.
Speaker: It may have been for pastilles, for breath mints.
Speaker: It is described in the Fabergé bill as a bonbonnière.
Speaker: So it could have had any kind of use, really.
Speaker: It's just a small box.
Speaker: How small is it exactly?
Speaker: It is, I would say, two inches wide by one and three quarter inches deep.
Speaker: Quite small.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So really miniature.
Speaker: I mean, you're not going to get a whole lot in there.
Speaker: No, you're not.
Speaker: And it's smaller than a snuff box, for example.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: It might hold pills.
Speaker: It could certainly hold a larger size set of stamps.
Speaker: The family told me that Mrs. Zane used it for stamps.
Speaker: But we don't really know what the Romanovs used it for.
Speaker: But it arrived and it was spectacular.
Speaker: And it was, forgive me for saying so, filthy.
Speaker: So I have an extraordinary conservator that I work with in New York who managed to clean it.
Speaker: And this little box just began to sink.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So what does it look like?
Speaker: I mean, it's such an evocative piece.
Speaker: And again, I encourage listeners to look at the pictures of this on a heritage website or a magazine antiques website.
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.
Speaker: And just tell us what cloisonne is.
Speaker: Sure.
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.
Speaker: So what you end up with is sort of like a coloring book, thin golden wires separating areas of color.
Speaker: And
Speaker: In earlier enamels, these cloison are generally filled with solid enamel.
Speaker: They're white, turquoise, cobalt, red, green, yellow, black.
Speaker: These are pink.
Speaker: These are colors that you see very frequently.
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.
Speaker: So instead of having...
Speaker: For example, the wing of a bird where every feather is articulated in black, white, gray, black, white, gray, black, white, gray.
Speaker: You're going to see big swaths of painted areas with varying colors and varying shades of enamel.
Speaker: And you get...
Speaker: it's a more painterly surface than typical Cuesnay.
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.
Speaker: So it is a 20th century look at a 16th or 17th century aesthetic.
Speaker: And so the sides of the box have a very typical floral pattern, which you see in Russian enamels of the 17th century.
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...
Speaker: a landscape, and this is quite popular.
Speaker: Normally, it's a country landscape, but this is, in fact, a view of St.
Speaker: Petersburg and an exceptionally beautifully painted one showing Senate Square with the famous Falconet sculpture of Peter the Great on horseback.
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
Speaker: one of the other painters who were very popular in the period.
Speaker: And these miniatures are often done in quite small scale.
Speaker: They're shrunk down to three inches by four inches or in a big piece, five by seven.
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.
Speaker: So it's probably three quarters of an inches high by an inch wide, and it's a full view.
Speaker: And if you look at it under a loop or under a microscope, the detail is extraordinary.
Speaker: The view is one that everyone in St.
Speaker: Petersburg knows, and it's very well known.
Speaker: And the Bronze Horseman is one of everybody's favorite landmarks in St.
Speaker: Petersburg.
Speaker: But the
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.
Speaker: But there were so many engravings of this view done as well.
Speaker: It's sort of hard to ascribe it to one artist.
Speaker: But what it is and what makes it sort of stand out is it is a
Speaker: very Russian Moscow enamel box in the middle of which is a St.
Speaker: Petersburg scene.
Speaker: And that's unusual.
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.
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.
Speaker: Oh, well...
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.
Speaker: This happened then as well, even with objects.
Speaker: of this value and this prominence.
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 1909.
Speaker: And the Imperial Cabinet had a real relationship with Fabergé and bought many things because
Speaker: no matter what was true in Russia, what was true is the emperor never went anywhere empty handed.
Speaker: He could not visit a town without leaving a congratulatory silver presentation piece with the mayor.
Speaker: He got onto the train and handed a gold watch to the conductor.
Speaker: It was part of the Russian tradition that these gifts were given on coming and leaving almost anywhere.
Speaker: Boy, that makes travel expensive.
Speaker: It sure does, but they...
Speaker: They could afford it.
Speaker: So this piece was acquired by the Imperial Cabinet for gift purposes in 1909, but it was never dispersed.
Speaker: So it sat with the Imperial Cabinet for several years and it was returned to Fabergé stock in late 1910, beginning of 1911.
Speaker: And they put it back into the cases in their store in St.
Speaker: Petersburg.
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.
Speaker: And so we have the sale to Grand Duke George.
Speaker: It's included in under its inventory number and the list of objects that he bought in 1911 at Christmas.
Speaker: And then it appears he gave it as a gift to the Dowager Empress.
Speaker: The box was with her.
Speaker: She may have used it for pills or stamps or pastilles or something like that.
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.
Speaker: So the box traveled with her and then it traveled with her on the Marlboro when she left.
Speaker: And at the time of her death in 1928, she had quite a large collection of jewelry and Fabergé.
Speaker: And we've said that they brought very little with them outside of Russia.
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.
Speaker: And that house was full of Fabergé.
Speaker: So she got back many things that were already abroad and brought these things with her.
Speaker: So in 1928, the objects at Fidura, the house, were divided between her daughters Grand Duchess Xenia and Grand Duchess Olga.
Speaker: And this box we know went to Grand Duchess Xenia because on the bottom of the box,
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.
Speaker: And then the date, it's either 1921 or 1928.
Speaker: I can't really read it, but my best guess is that it was a gift.
Speaker: It came to her as an inheritance in 1928 after the death of the Dowager Empress.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it then went with Granda Chisina when she moved to Great Britain.
Speaker: So by the way, this is a good lesson for collectors out there, which is make a record.
Speaker: A little detail like that little engraved phrase enriches the story of this box so much.
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.
Speaker: Right.
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.
Speaker: Right.
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.
Speaker: So I did some research and I found that Vasily visited Europe before the Second World War twice, once with his fiance.
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.
Speaker: So the objects stayed with Vasily and he sold them in 1949 to the Zane family before the death of Grand Duchess Xenia.
Speaker: So, you know, they knew they were parting with them when it went to the Zanes.
Speaker: Yeah.
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.
Speaker: So tell me a little about, you've mentioned the name Fyodor Ruckert, the enamelor who worked for Fabergé.
Speaker: Who was Ruckert and what made his work so extraordinary?
Speaker: Fyodor Ivanovich Ruckert was actually born Friedrich Moritz Ruckert in Alsace.
Speaker: And he moved to Russia in the probably 1860s or 1870s and began working with Fabergé by 1887.
Speaker: And he specialized in these Moscow enamels, the Cloazenay work and the
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.
Speaker: And he became known for his inventive use of shaded enamel techniques and
Speaker: putting these enamels on new and interesting forms.
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.
Speaker: And he retailed things to Fabergé, who often overstruck his mark with their own, which is the case with this piece.
Speaker: You can actually see a little bit of the original Fyodor Rookert mark peeking out from under the Carl Fabergé mark.
Speaker: And sometimes his mark was obliterated or placed side by side with the Fabergé mark.
Speaker: So your estimate on this piece is $30,000 to $50,000.
Speaker: How would you recommend that a collector think about the value of it and what to bid for it?
Speaker: Well, I think the first thing I can say is when you're dealing with this particular box, first of all, all Ruegert...
Speaker: works are expensive and are sought after by collectors.
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.
Speaker: But with this particular piece, you're paying a premium for the Imperial Association.
Speaker: There are many pieces by Rukert in the sale at entry-level prices.
Speaker: We have some wonderful beakers and salt cellars and
Speaker: and other works that are a few thousand dollars, like two to four, five to seven, that someone could get interested in.
Speaker: Though I have had friends in Europe tell me that these prices are way too low and they should have been estimated higher.
Speaker: We're trying to pay attention to what's going on in the world with some of these estimates.
Speaker: But this piece and the imperial pieces in this sale are phenomenally high quality.
Speaker: They've had very little, if any, restoration, almost none.
Speaker: This box has had nothing except a cleaning.
Speaker: And it has impeccable provenance from the moment it was created by Fabergé through its sale to the imperial cabinet.
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.
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.
Speaker: And of course, we're about to have a new owner, a new generation.
Speaker: And I'm very excited for you to find out who that will be.
Speaker: Once again, the sale is Imperial Fabergé and Russian Works of Art on May 17th at Heritage Auctions.
Speaker: Nick, good luck with the sale and thanks for sharing this wonderful story with us.
Speaker: Thanks so much, Ben.
Speaker: I really appreciated the invitation and I look forward to seeing you online at the sale.
Speaker: Very good.
Speaker: Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati with social media and web support from Sarah Bellotta.
Speaker: Sierra Holt is our digital media and editorial associate.
Speaker: Our music is by Trap Rabbit and I'm Ben Miller.
Speaker: As a raider scavenging a derelict world, you settle into an underground settlement.
Speaker: But now you must return to the surface.
