A Victorian Silver-Gilt Nine Piece Tea and Coffee Set With Circular Tray for the Russian Market, John S. Hunt for Hunt & Roskell, London, 1849

Probably Princess Elena Pavlovna Beloselsky-Belosersky, later Princess Kochubey (1812-1888)

Mrs. Whitney T. Blake

Hammer Galleries 

MM Morris Brenner

Wolf Family Collection No. 0342 (acquired from the above in 1961)

According to Hammer Galleries, this service was, "ordered by Prince Kotchubey, a member of the private committee of Czar Alexander II formed to attack the problems of reform in Russia. The tea set was later given as a wedding gift to Grand Duchess Elizaveta, nee Bessunger, Princess of Hesse, who married Prince Sergei, fourth son of Alexander II and Governor General of Moscow. For this occasion, each piece was engraved with the initials of Elizaveta and the Imperial Crown."

While many Hammer Galleries provenances are suspect, this one may have some basis. In the collection of the Hermitage is a toilet mirror by John S. Hunt, London, 1849, with the same crown above the arms of Beloselsky-Belozersky. Marina Lopato proposes that it was ordered by Princess Elena Pavlovna, widow of Prince Esper Alexandrovich Beloselsky-Belozersky, on the completion of the new palace on the corner of the Nevsky Prospect and the Fontanka Canal (State Hermitage Museum Catalogue: British Silver, 2015, no. 93, pp. 217-219). Princess Elena married as her second husband Prince Vasily Viktorovich Kochubey.