Lot Essay
Commissioned in 1809 for the Winter Palace and originally called the Russian Service, the Guriev Service was moved in 1848 to Peterhof for formal use in the Catherine House of Montplaisir, whereupon it was renamed for Count Dmitri Alexandrovich Guriev, director of the Imperial Porcelain Factory under Tsar Alexander I.
The service was created for fifty place settings but expanded in the second half of the nineteenth century to include over four thousand five hundred pieces. One of the finest services ever decorated by the Imperial Porcelain Factory, it was a collaborative effort involving the factory's leading craftsmen of the time, such as the artists Kanunikov and Shiflyar, and the designers Ziusin and Ankudinov. While the centers of the dinner and soup plates have simple gilt decoration, those of the dessert plates and serving pieces are decorated with various Russian and folk types, drawn from a number of sources, including Johann Gottlieb Georgi's Folk Types of Russia, Christian Gottfried Geissler's Petersburg Scenes and Types, and the works of Alekseev, Vorobiev, and Shchedrin.
A related plate from the Guriev Service was sold in these rooms, April 18, 2007, lot 206.
The service was created for fifty place settings but expanded in the second half of the nineteenth century to include over four thousand five hundred pieces. One of the finest services ever decorated by the Imperial Porcelain Factory, it was a collaborative effort involving the factory's leading craftsmen of the time, such as the artists Kanunikov and Shiflyar, and the designers Ziusin and Ankudinov. While the centers of the dinner and soup plates have simple gilt decoration, those of the dessert plates and serving pieces are decorated with various Russian and folk types, drawn from a number of sources, including Johann Gottlieb Georgi's Folk Types of Russia, Christian Gottfried Geissler's Petersburg Scenes and Types, and the works of Alekseev, Vorobiev, and Shchedrin.
A related plate from the Guriev Service was sold in these rooms, April 18, 2007, lot 206.