.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
The French and especially Russian, vogue for stone-cutting in the late 18th and early 19th Century led to the creation of some of the most beautiful objets d'art, most famously those in malachite. To create 'Russian mosaic' malachite, a stalagmitic form of copper carbonate, was sawn into very thin slices and then applied to a stone or metal ground, the veins being laid to form pleasing patterns and then polished with the joins barely visible.
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, Malachite, Swerdlovsk, 1987, vol. I, p. 133, fig. 11 and vol. II, pp. 112 and 124, figs. 10 and 59).
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, Malachite, Swerdlovsk, 1987, vol. I, p. 133, fig. 11 and vol. II, pp. 112 and 124, figs. 10 and 59).