Author Description

It was under Peter the Great that Russians began to mine silver and shape it into implements based on Western European models, such as coffee and tea cups, and into traditional Russian forms of medieval metalwork: chalices, bible covers, loving cups, ladles, and trays. Two sections of the Hermitage provided the works for the exhibition of which this is the catalogue: the Gallery of Treasures (Gallereia dragotsennostei) and the Silver Trove (Serebriannaia kladovaia) of the Winter Palace, both collections formed during the tsarist period but enriched by works from private collections after the 1917 revolution. The works are varied enough to illustrate all stages of silver working in imperial Russia, its successive styles and technical innovations. -- Summary written by John W. Emerich, Bronze Horseman Literary Agency.