MARKED VAILLANT, ST PETERSBURG, 1856

Jean-Baptiste Vaillant arrived in St Petersburg around 1842 and, alongside Fabergé, quickly established himself as one of the city’s leading silversmiths. In 1847 Vaillant won the Imperial prize for the annual Peterhof Regatta and, by 1848, he was supplying the Imperial Court. Vaillant’s fame grew and he was awarded first prize at the St Petersburg Industrial Art Exhibition in 1849 for ‘works of gold and works of diamonds and pearls framed in gold’. A. Borov, one of the judges on the Industrial Art Exhibition panel, described Vaillant thus: ‘The works of Sazikov and Vaillant may be described as refined in the fullest sense of the word, and some of their creations even move beyond the bounds of ordinary crafts, and stand [to] compare with true works of art.’ In addition to jewelled works, Vaillant was particularly known for accomplished figural silver pieces, such as the present decanter (L. Zavadskaya, ‘Gold and Silver in St Petersburg, 1830-1850’, G. von Habsburg, exhibition catalogue, Fabergé: Imperial Craftsman and His World, London, 2000, p. 49 and p. 51).