BY G. MULLER, ST. PETERSBURG, CIRCA 1840

The Russian vogue for stone-cutting led to the creation of some of the most beautiful objets d'art, most famously those in malachite. The Peterhof Lapidary was perhaps the most celebrated of the Russian stone-cutting factories, followed by the imperial factories at Ekaterinburg. Nearly identical tazze shown without ormolu handles by the Peterhof factory are illustrated in J. Kugel, Trésors des Tzars, Paris, 1998, no. 296 and 297, the latter being a gift presented by Tzar Nicolas I to the Infante Luisa of Spain on the occasion of her marriage to the Duc de Montpensier in 1846.