Topic: Tsarskoye Selo
Mr. Dmitri Rozental and other talented restorers from Yuzhakova’s Studio in St. Petersburg have brought back to life a glass vase that stood in the Alexander Park’s Arsenal and after 1917 in the Alexander Palace.
The piece belonged to a set of large vases with similarly decorated bowls, produced at the Imperial Glass Factory in St. Petersburg during the 1830s-1840s. It came to Tsarskoye Selo from the Winter Palace’s Storerooms in 1855. Disassembled and evacuated in 1941, the vase returned a few years later with some of its details lost and has not been exhibited ever since.
The vase of colourless glass with cobalt overlays has a deep bowl with acanthus decoration and a hexagonal base with six lictor’s fasces connected together with amber glass shields bearing anchors. The unique restoration required a complete recreation of the upper sides of the base and its hexagonal plate with cobalt beaded ornament. The restorers did what seemed impossible just a decade ago by replicating the lost elements with modern polymers that closely imitate 19th-century glass.
The new technologies raise hopes for a revival of the Blue Study or Snuffbox and the Bedchamber, Catherine II’s glass-decorated private rooms in the Zubov Wing of the Catherine Palace.
The festive looking vase will first join the Catherine Palace’s permanent displays and then, after the Alexander Palace restoration, will become a bright accent in one of the palace halls dedicated to Nicholas I and his family’s life at the Tsarskoye Selo residence.
© Tsarskoye Selo State Museum Preserve. 25 April, 2013
Photo © Tsarskoye Selo State Museum Preserve
Updated: Thursday, 25 April 2013 7:49 AM EDT
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