A large malachite vase and cover Russian, possibly 19th century

The vase was believed to have been purchased by Madame Marie Lynen in the 19th century in Russia.

Madame Lynen was well connected in artistic and musical circles and was friendly with both Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt and the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev.

For further reading see: A. Chenevière, Russian Furniture. The Golden Age. 1780 – 1840, London 1988.

Stonecutting started in Russia in the mid-18th century with the establishment of a workshop at Peterhof producing small scale pieces. Initially trained by Italian craftsmen, the Russians quickly became highly skilled in working native stone, passing these skills through the generations. They perfected the 'Russian mosaic' technique, cutting the malachite into small pieces of veneer between two and four millimetres 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 skilfully masking the joints with a paste of powdered malachite. Many of these pieces were applied with gilt bronze detailing, a particularly sumptuous combination.

In 1765, an Imperial Lapidary Works was established at Ekaterinburg in the Urals, the source of many of the hardstones used. And in 1810, the popularity of malachite objects was greatly increased with the discovery of new and rich mineral deposits near Mednorudinsk, on the western slopes of the Ural Mountains, with further large deposits being discovered on the Demidov estate at Nizhnii Tagil on the Siberian side of the Ural Mountains, in 1835. This lead to unprecedented large-scale use of the stone in architectural projects, most notably the columns in St. Isaacs Cathedral in St. Petersburg, and in the Malachite Hall in the Winter Palace designed by Alexander Briullov in 1839, whose columns and pilasters used more than two tonnes of the stone. At the Great Exhibition in London in 1851 many large-scale malachite objects were exhibited.

In 1861, the director of the Ekaterinburg Works described the appeal of such objects: "Even time cannot destroy these hardstone objects: for future generations they will remain forever a reminder of a typically Russian art form".