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Lot Essay
This pair of 'mosaic' malachite-veneered ewers is identical to that in the Hermitage Museum. Executed in St. Petersburg in the 1840's, the Hermitage ewer is illustrated and discussed in V.B. Semyonov, Malachite, Swerdlovsk, 1987, Part 1, fig. 52, p.188, as well as A. Voronikhina, Malachite dans la Collection de l'Hermitage, Leningrad, 1963, fig. 14.
The Russian vogue for stone-cutting led to the creation of some of the most beautiful objets d'art, most famously those in malachite. Malachite is a stalagmitic form of copper carbonate, and the technique used in the manufacture of objects and furniture is known as Russian mosaic. The malachite was sawn into very thin slices and then applied to a stone or metal ground, the veins being laid to form pleasing patterns. The whole piece was then highly polished with the joins barely visible. Peterhof is the oldest stone-cutting factory, just a few miles from St. Petersburg, however the huge distances from the mines and quarries meant that it was soon joined by the new imperial factory at Ekaterinburg, in the heart of the Ural Mountains. The third most famous factory was Kolyvan, in western Siberia, which specialised in colossal pieces made from the stones extracted from the Altai Mountains.
Some of the original coloured designs for malachite mosaic vases and tazze survive by ornemanistes such as I.I. Galberg and Carlo Rossi (V.B. Semyonov, op. cit., Sverdlovsk, 1987, vol. I, p. 133, fig. 11 and vol. II, pp. 112 and 124, figs. 10 and 59).
The Russian vogue for stone-cutting led to the creation of some of the most beautiful objets d'art, most famously those in malachite. Malachite is a stalagmitic form of copper carbonate, and the technique used in the manufacture of objects and furniture is known as Russian mosaic. The malachite was sawn into very thin slices and then applied to a stone or metal ground, the veins being laid to form pleasing patterns. The whole piece was then highly polished with the joins barely visible. Peterhof is the oldest stone-cutting factory, just a few miles from St. Petersburg, however the huge distances from the mines and quarries meant that it was soon joined by the new imperial factory at Ekaterinburg, in the heart of the Ural Mountains. The third most famous factory was Kolyvan, in western Siberia, which specialised in colossal pieces made from the stones extracted from the Altai Mountains.
Some of the original coloured designs for malachite mosaic vases and tazze survive by ornemanistes such as I.I. Galberg and Carlo Rossi (V.B. Semyonov, op. cit., Sverdlovsk, 1987, vol. I, p. 133, fig. 11 and vol. II, pp. 112 and 124, figs. 10 and 59).