Author(s): Cynthia Coleman Sparke

Art

Russia's last great Imperial celebration took place at the Winter Palace in St Petersburg with the lavish ball of 1913 celebrating 300 years of Romanov rule. The finest gowns, jewels, snuff boxes, and banqueting tableware of the Tsarist era were sumptuously displayed then for the last time. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 and the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 brought such opulence to an end. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russians have been eager to repatriate their lost heritage. Works by jewellers and silversmiths to the Tsars are particularly sought after today as status symbols, with the market for pre-Revolutionary decorative arts touching a wide audience - from the curators at the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, to the predawn bargain hunters at the Paris flea markets. Russian Decorative Arts offers an introductory guide to porcelain, glass, silver, Tula work and other base metals, orders and decorations, jewellery, objects of virtue, Faberge, lapidary, woodwork and walrus ivory. Each topic is detailed in an illustrated chapter introducing the techniques, its specific Russian characteristics and an overview of the principle makers.