A Pair of Soup Bowls and a Pair of Dessert Plates from the Kremlin Service, Imperial Porcelain Manufactory, St. Petersburg, Period of Nicholas I (1825-1855), 1848

all with blue Imperial cipher of Nicholas I and red coldpainted Kremlin Palace inventory numbers 21679 and 21595 (the soup plates) and 23536 and 23465 (the dessert plates)

some rubbing to gilding and enamels consistent with age and use
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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 while his designs for the "white" portion of the service were entirely the product of his artistic imagination. Irina Gorbatova, Curator of Ceramics and Porcelain in the Kremlin Museums, notes that the so-called "white" part of the Kremlin Service was used as a second-course plate and for soups. She argues that Solntsev adapted the strapwork decorating books and architectural ornament of the sort he had recorded in his monumental Drevnosti rossiiskago gosudarstva (Antiquities of the Russian State, Moscow, 1849-1853) inspired his complex, intensely-colored border in which interlace ornament alternatates with the Imperial coat-of-arms. On this service, see I. Gorbatova, "Kremlevskii serviz F.G. Solntseva," in Russkii farfor: 250 let istorii, Moscow, 1995, pp. 24-27; T. Kudriavtseva, Russian Imperial Porcelain, St. Petersburg, 2003, pp. 130-132; and, Pod tsarskim venzelem, St. Petersburg, 2007, pp. 104-107.