An Imperial Presentation jewelled gold and enamel box, Carl Blank for Hahn, St Petersburg, 1896/1899

rectangular, the lid applied with the diamond-set crowned cypher of Emperor Nicholas II within fleur-de-lys corners and flanked by sunflowers, on a translucent white enamel ground over sunburst engine-turning, bordered and divided by diamond-set leaf-bound reeds, the sides of translucent green enamel over wavy engine-turning, struck with workmaster's initials and K.Hahn in Cyrillic, 56 standard, scratched inventory number(s) 44 844

Presented by Emperor Nicholas II of Russia, firstly to State Counsellor Dobriakov, on 27 April 1896, in honour of His Majesty's coronation; secondly to Major-General Alexei Nikolaevich Ostrogorsky, on 29 November 1899; thirdly to Professor Dmitri Oskarovich Ott, Imperial obstetrician, on 21 January 1900, following the birth of His Majesty's nephew, Prince Nikita Alexandrovich

Sotheby's Geneva, 15 May 1986, lot 320

Property of a Private European Collection

The box is in excellent, untouched condition. The white lid enamel and the green base enamel are in perfect condition. The green enamel of the lid sides with shallow enamel losses at three of the four corners, partially down to the gold. (One of these losses is visible in the catalogue photo on page 247. Please contact the Russian Department for additional photos.) The gold surfaces with light scratches as expected with age. There are no diamonds lacking. The hinge is in perfect order, the lid tight-fitting. Good weight. Impressive overall effect.
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According to surviving records relating to the administration of gifts from the Russian emperor, this box was presented by Emperor Nicholas II on two occasions before finally being placed into the capable hands of Professor Dmitri Oskarovich Ott (1855-1927), who served as Accoucheur (or obstetrician) to the Court of His Imperial Majesty and delivered all five of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna’s children.  The gift was bestowed on 21 January 1900 in gratitude for Ott having safely delivered the Emperor’s nephew, Prince Nikita Alexandrovich, born to Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna and her husband Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich on 4 January 1900 at their palace on Moika Embankment, St Petersburg.

The box is first listed in the inventory ledgers of the Imperial Cabinet on 27 April 1896; the cost of 800 roubles and the name of the supplier, the jeweller Hahn, are recorded.  The same date is given for the notation of its first recipient, State Counsellor Dobriakov, accountant of the Chief Administration of State Domains.  Dobriakov was one of sixteen Russians given a jewelled snuffbox with the Emperor’s cypher in honour of the coronation of Nicholas II, which took place in Moscow on 14 May 1896 (see U. Tillander-Godenhielm, The Russian Imperial Award System, 1894-1917, Helsinki, 2005, p. 324).  The coronation provided the Emperor with an opportunity to thank those who had served his late father and to engender feelings of goodwill toward his own reign and was therefore an occasion of unprecedented dispensing of gifts, orders, appointments and promotions.  Various gifts to members of the Imperial Family were made on the day of the coronation; at various dates, four foreigners, all active military leaders in Germany, also received snuffboxes bearing the Emperor’s cypher.  It is known that most of Dobriakov’s fellow functionaries were given their boxes after the event, in July; it is unclear from the ledger entry whether Dobriakov received his box earlier, on 27 April, or, more likely, that it was merely selected and designated as his gift on that date. 

Little is known about State Counsellor Dobriakov other than his rank and his position in the Chief Administration of State Domains.  His given and patronymic names are not recorded, though he may have been the same Alexander Dobriakov who registered a coat of arms on 14 February 1902 following elevation to the nobility.  Our Dobriakov returned the box to the Cabinet and was given its cash value on 8 October 1899.  The system allowed for the return of such gifts in exchange for money; in effect, the giving of gifts was a tasteful way for the Emperor to remunerate people for their service to the State, and there was no sense of affront attached to their return and no cause for embarrassment.  As Dr Ulla Tillander-Godenhielm notes in her seminal book on the subject of Imperial gifts (ibid., pp. 309-312), the selling back of gifts bestowed by the Crown had its antecedents in 18th century France.  Interestingly, Dobriakov seems to have made a small profit, as the box was entered back into the Cabinet’s inventory at 825 roubles.  This may have been a gesture in acknowledgement of some increase in value given the three years which passed between Dobriakov receiving and returning the object.

Following Dobriakov’s return of the box in October 1899, it was sent back to Hahn for embellishment in order to increase its value, thereby making it suitable as a gift to someone of higher rank.  This, too, was common practice, and usually involved re-setting the box with larger stones.  In this case however, given that the interior base of the box and the flange are struck with kokoshnik marks which only came into use on 1 January 1899 and which bear the initials of St Petersburg assay master Yakov Lyapunov, appointed in August 1898 (please see V. Skurlov, ‘Russian Hallmarks at the Turn of the 19th Century’, Fabergé: Imperial Craftsman and His World, ed. G. von Habsburg, London, 2000, pp. 404-405), it seems that the base and sides were remade by Hahn at this point, with the lid being repurposed on an otherwise new box.  It is likely that the original sides were plain gold, given other examples of Hahn boxes from the mid-1890s, and that the decision was taken to increase its value with the addition of the richly green-enamelled sides now present, rather than with larger diamonds.  The new value following Hahn’s refurbishment was recorded as 1,079 roubles on 29 November 1899. 

The next recipient was designated on that date as Major-General Alexei Nikolaevich Ostrogorsky (1840-1917) ‘for the Office of the Minister of War’.  Ostrogorsky taught at military institutions throughout his career and published a number of pedagogical journals focusing on Christian ethics.  The Major-General, unlike the previous owner of his box, wasted little time in cashing in.  He returned the box to the Cabinet and was paid his 1,079 roubles on 21 December, a month before it was given to the Imperial obstetrician.

Professor Ott

A renowned doctor and professor of gynaecology, Dmitri Ott was appointed Accoucheur to the Court in 1895, a position he held until the Revolution.  His main occupation was running the midwives institute which, under his leadership, ‘became Russia’s leading scientific, medical, and educational institution in this field’ (Tillander-Godenhielm, op. cit., p. 357).  In addition to delivering the four Grand Duchesses and the Tsarevich, he attended the Empress throughout her pregnancies, including that which sadly resulted in a miscarriage in 1902.  His fee for each delivery averaged 10,000 roubles, this in addition to his salary of 8,000 from the midwives institute.  This was supplemented further with gifts of presentation gold boxes including the present lot.  He received twelve in total between 1896 and 1906, ranging in value from 1,000 to 1,350 roubles; Ott sold back seven and kept five (ibid., p. 357).  The present lot is not recorded as having been returned so was presumably among the five that he kept. 

The box which Professor Ott received following the birth of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna, the Emperor and Empress’ first child, in November 1895, also survives.  It was also made by Carl Blank and supplied by Hahn and bears the cypher of the Empress in diamonds on a pink lid with gold sides (illustrated, ibid., p. 359).  Its value was 1,001 roubles.  Interestingly, the box he received following the birth of the long-awaited Tsarevich in 1904 was valued at 1,000 roubles, although one might have expected something more expensive on that occasion.  The values of the boxes given following the births of the Emperor's niece and nephews were likewise commensurate.   

Proof of Professor Ott’s delivering the children of Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna is provided by a letter, dated 15 February 1897, from her husband Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich to Professor Ott following the birth of their son Prince Andrei Alexandrovich, referencing ‘a gold snuff box decorated with diamonds with the cypher of His Imperial Majesty’ and thanking him for his services. 

Prince Nikita Alexandrovich

The baby delivered by Professor Ott, the service for which he was thanked with the present lot, Prince Nikita began his life cosseted in the Imperial splendour of his uncle’s reign until, when he was in his late teens, everything he knew was upended by the Revolution.  He was the fourth child and third son of his parents.  The baby’s birth was celebrated by the whole family.  Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna wrote to her sister on a postcard which she had painted herself, ‘It was too stupid last night, the telephone muddled everything…. I congratulate you with dear baby Nikita’ (J. van der Kist and C. Hall, Once a Grand Duchess: Xenia, Sister of Nicholas II, Stroud, 2002, p. 58).  Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, the baby’s grandmother, wished to see her daughter Xenia’s children treated as Grand Dukes, despite their lesser titles, and thus insisted on a full twenty-one-gun salute to announce the birth of Prince Nikita and his brothers and sister, not the fifteen-gun salute they should have had as grandchildren of an Emperor.  In the years to come, Xenia’s children would become a special delight for their grandmother.  As her relations with her daughter-in-law Empress Alexandra were strained, she enjoyed a closeness with Xenia’s family that she could not find with Nicholas’.

Prince Nikita, accompanied by his dog Bobi, was with his mother and grandmother on HMS Marlborough, the British warship sent by King George V to rescue his Russian relations in April 1919.  Boarding at Yalta, the family were transported to safety in Malta via Constantinople.  Nineteen-year-old Nikita, another passenger remembered, seemed to be the only Romanov who had no thoughts as to what the future might hold (F. Welch, The Russian Court at Sea, London, 2011, p. 93).  His first years in exile were spent living in Paris.  In 1922, following his graduation from Oxford University, he married Countess Maria Vorontsova-Dashkova, famous in White Russian circles for her elegance and grace.  The couple had two children, and later lived in Rome, Czechoslovakia, California and New York, though the Prince never adopted any nationality other than Russian.  He died in Cannes on 12 September 1974.

Hahn and Blank

This Imperial Presentation snuff box is one of fifty-nine boxes with the cypher of Nicholas II supplied by Hahn to the Imperial Cabinet between 1895 and 1907; the boxes ranged in cost from 592 to 2,700 roubles, according to Dr Tillander-Godenhielm’s research (op. cit., pp. 179-184).  Karl August Ferdinand Hahn, an Austrian by birth, founded his company in 1873.  He became an important supplier to the Imperial Court, awarded the distinction of ‘Purveyor to the Court’ during the reign of Alexander III, a title renewed for his son, Dmitri Karlovich Hahn in 1903.  Although less mythologised than Fabergé, Hahn’s production was also of the best quality and was equally well-regarded by the Imperial family.  It was Hahn who created Empress Alexandra Feodorovna’s coronation crown, invoiced at 76,200 roubles, in 1896, and it was to Hahn, not Fabergé, that the new Empress went to purchase her first New Year’s present for her new husband in 1895, just weeks after their wedding, a very fine enamelled gold cigarette case with diamonds, which sold, Sotheby’s London, 27 November 2012, lot 586.  Hahn also supplied the cufflinks given as gifts to guests at Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna’s wedding, on 4 August 1894 at Peterhof, one with a miniature photograph of the bride, the other with that of the groom, within borders of diamonds and enamel.

Carl Blank (1857-1924), whose maker’s mark was only identified in recent years, was the son of a Finnish blacksmith.  From 1882 to 1909 he served as Hahn’s head workmaster, establishing his own workshop in 1894.  He worked in partnership with Hahn from 1909 to 1911 when that firm closed.  Blank then founded his own entirely independent business and continued supplying objects to the Cabinet.  In addition to presentation snuff boxes, he supplied diamond insignia and swords, as well as presentation jewellery.

Sotheby’s is grateful to Dr Ulla Tillander-Godenhielm for her assistance in researching this lot.