A Group of Thirteen Russian Serving Platters from the Kremlin Service, Imperial Porcelain Manufactory, St. Petersburg, Period of Nicholas I (1825-1855)

the centers painted with stylized swirling foliage with blue tulips centering on a coral-colored rosette, all set against a black ground within a border of green heart-shaped leaves, the remainder of the plate with elongated palmettes in blue-green and black on a richly ornamented ciselé gilt ground, the tooled, gilded rim painted with a band of simulated red and green jewels, the foot with gilt band.

The Kremlin Palace
"Magnificent Imperial Russian Banqueting Services," Christie's London, March 21, 1967
Anonymous
Sotheby's London, December 15, 1994, lots 284-287, illustrated

With some rubbing to gilding and stacking ware
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

This service was commissioned for use in the Great Kremlin Palace, the official Moscow residence for the Imperial family, when the process of renovating, and ultimately rebuilding, the palace began in 1837. The Imperial Porcelain Manufactory completed the great majority of the service between 1837 and 1838. The palace was designed by the architect Konstantin Ton (1794-1881) with a brief from Emperor Nicholas I to create a building in the Russian Style showing the influence of Byzantium. The task of designing the new service appropriate for use in the residence fell to the talented student and future professor of the Academy of Arts Fedor Solntsev (1801-1892), who had been studying and recording Russian antiquities and the material culture of pre-Petrine Russia. His research would ultimately be published in five volumes as Drevnosti rossiiskago gosudarstva (Antiquities of the Russian State, Moscow, 1849-1853). For the porcelain table service, he drew upon 17th-century metalwork as a model; in the case of these serving dishes, the source was the interior of a richly jeweled and enameled tazza that was part of an ablution set belonging to Tsaritsa Natalia Kirillovna Naryshkina (1651-1694), second wife of Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich (1629-1676) and mother of the future Emperor Peter I (1672-1725), that was housed in the Kremlin Armory Museum. As several scholars have noted, Solntsev selected the interior of this vessel made in Constantinople as a gift to the Russian court; it was a rarely seen view even for visitors to the armory, but the graphic power of the repeated, enameled palmettes lent itself perfectly to the service's plates. On the Kremlin Service, see I. Gorbatova, "Kremlevskii serviz F.G. Solntseva," in Russkii farfor: 250 let istorii, Moscow, 1995, pp. 24-27 and T. Kudriavtseva, Russian Imperial Porcelain, St. Petersburg, 2003, pp. 130-132.