After a design by I.I. Galberg

RELATED LITERATURE

V.B. Semyonov, Malachite, Sverdlovsk, 1987.

N. M. Mavrodina, The Art of Russian Stone Carvers 18th-19th Centuries, St. Petersburg, 2007.

L. Budrina, Malachite Diplomacy, 2020.

The sharp and elegant design of this impressive malachite tazza is related to the work of Ivan Ivanovich Galberg (1782-1863) (fig.1), the most prolific designer for hardstone objects in Russia, and is an exciting addition to a group of malachite works executed in the first decades of the 19^th century, when the production of large scale objects such as this was still in its inception.

Malachite had always been prized for its rich green colour, with dramatic almost black wavy inclusions, since the Neolithic Era, when it was used as a dye. But it was in Russia, during the 19^th century, where the stone became a national treasure, a passion most famously proclaimed in the Malachite Room of the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, furnished with massive malachite columns and fireplace in the 1830s.

Initially trained by Italian craftsmen, the Russians quickly became highly skilled in working their native stones, passing these skills on through the generations. In 1721, Peter the Great founded the first Russian lapidary manufacture and hardstone grinding mill, in Peterhof near St Petersburg and in 1751 the Imperial Lapidary Works was established at Ekaterinburg in the Urals. From the 1810’s, the popularity of malachite objects was greatly increased following Nikolai Demidov’s commissions in Paris using this material, but also a few years later with the discovery of new and rich mineral deposits near Mednorudinsk, on the western slopes of the Ural Mountains. In the 1830s, further large deposits were discovered on the Demidov estate at Nizhnii Tagil on the Siberian side of the Ural Mountains.

The malachite used in the first decades of the century, both in the Imperial lapidaries like Peterhof and Ekaterinburg but also in the private workshops like Maderni, mainly came from the two Urals deposits respectively at the south and north of Ekaterinburg, and these are generally of two clear types. The first, used here masterfully for this tazza, is characterized by concentric layers of small stalactites and is quite vivid green in colour. The other – a shimmering variegated malachite - is a stone in plain dark green, whose mass is composed of a multitude of crystals. To work with both types of malachite, the Russians had also perfected the 'Russian mosaic' technique, cutting the malachite into small pieces of veneer between two and four millimeters thick, sorting them for their patterns, and then after grinding and polishing, carefully cementing them to the metal or stone form of the object, and skillfully masking the joints with a paste of powdered malachite.

There are not many prominent examples of pre-1830s malachite creations, and there are only a very few early malachite works of a comparable scale to the present tazza. The reasons are multiple: malachite in such quantity enabling a continuous pattern of such large scale was rare; malachite was expensive, especially in such amounts, and covering a large body with a veneer of malachite required an advanced level of craftsmanship only held in a few workshops.

The present tazza therefore seems to be part of a small group of malachite objects that kicked off production of large scale vases in the St Petersburg and Ekaterinburg lapidary works from about 1825. Ivan I. Galberg was instrumental in this, as he would supply the drawings for these projects, both for the production in Imperial workshops, but also in private ones, which would also supply the Imperial household.

Most notable amongst the private workshops is that of the Italian Vincenzo Maderni (1797-1843), who executed a vase-amphora circa 1824-25 (The Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg) according to Galberg’s designs and it is possible that he also supplied the Medici vase in the Royal Collections (inv. no. RCIN 1708), a gift from Empress Alexandra Feodorovna to George IV. Together with another Medici vase, bought by the Duke of Westminster in St Petersburg from Maderni, (fig.2 - Victoria & Albert museum, nr. 339-1886, on loan to Lancaster House, London), they share the same type of malachite, with a deep green colour and contrast, veneered with small pieces, but still creating surface patterns, like the present lot. (Budrina, p.125-126).

A tazza executed by the Maderni studio after a design by Galberg was given to the Duke of Wellington by the Emperor Nicolas I in 1826, part of the Wellington collections at Stratfield Saye House, Hampshire (Budrina, p.122).

This group of objects suggest the start of using malachite on its own, as the preeminent material, not as frame for gilt or patinated bronze. Malachite thus became the main actor and the conduit for the object’s attraction.

Ivan Ivanovich Galberg (1782-1863)

Ivan Ivanovich Galberg, an architect and designer, was educated at the Imperial Academy of Arts until 1798. He was then an assistant to the architect Giacomo Antonio Domenico Quarenghi, then served as an architect at the Cabinet of His Majesty and participated in the construction of the Mikhailovsky Palace, the Alexandrinsky Theater and other buildings in St. Petersburg. In March 1840, Galberg received the title of academician, and on January 14, 1842, he became a professor of the 2nd degree in consideration of his work and the benefits he brought to the students of the Academy where he taught for many years. For several years, he also taught architecture at the Institute of Railway Engineers and the Civil Engineering School.