FIRST HALF 19TH CENTURY

The present vases relate to designs by the celebrated architect and designer Andrei Voronikhin (1759-1814), who provided these for the Imperial Lapidary workshops at Peterhof. The Russian vogue for stone-cutting led to the creation of some of the most beautiful objets d'art, more famously those in malachite. A stalagmitic form of copper carbonate, the malachite was sawn into very thin slices and then applied to a stone or metal ground, the veins being laid to form pleasing patterns. The whole piece was then highly polished with the joins barely visible. Peterhof is the oldest stone-cutting factory, just a few miles from St. Petersburg, however it was soon joined by the new imperial factory at Ekaterinburg, in the heart of the Ural Mountains. The third most famous factory was Kolyvan, in western Siberia, which specialised in colossal pieces made from the stones extracted from the Altai Mountains. Related malachite vases include a pair in the Grand Trianon, among an ensemble of pieces made from a gift of malachite from Tsar Alexander I in 1808, and further pairs sold anonymously, Christie's New York, 11 June 2010, lot 42 ($24,375), Christie's London, 10 July 2008, lot 132, and Christie's London, 7 December 2006, lot 247.