MARKED NICHOLLS & PLINCKE, ST PETERSBURG, 1859

These pieces were later additions to the celebrated Orloff Service, one of the greatest commissions of French silver of the eighteenth century. Empress Catherine II ordered the service from the Parisian silversmiths Jacques Roettiers and son Jacques-Nicolas Roettiers for use at Court, although she subsequently presented it to her lover and political ally Count Gregory Orloff. The service was supplemented throughout the nineteenth century by the leading silversmiths of St Petersburg, including Carl Tegelsten, Nicholls and Plincke and Morozov. While the service consisted of 3,000 pieces originally, only about 1,000 pieces survived by 1907, when Baron A. de Foelkersam published his well-known inventory of the Russian Imperial silver collections, Inventaire de l'Argenterie conserveé dans les garde-meubles des Palais Impériaux.
See Baron A. de Foelkersam, Inventaire de l'Argenterie conserveé dans les garde-meubles des Palais Impériaux, St Petersburg, 1907, II, pp. 61-124. For other pieces from the service, also see Christie's, London, 8 June 2010, lot 199.