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17th - 19th Century Silver Filigree from the
Orient in the Collection of the State Hermitage The exhibition in the Blue Bedroom of the Winter Palace in the Hermitage is devoted to one of the most complicated forms of decorative and applied art - artistic creations from fine silver wire made by masters of India, China and Southeast Asia. The exhibition presents around 100 works from the Hermitage collection, which has one of the richest collections of 17th – 19th century oriental silver filigree in the world Most of the works are being shown to the public and put into scholarly circulation for the first time. Following the opening of sea routes to India and the countries of the Orient and the creation of East India trading companies, it became fashionable in Europe to own exotic oriental art works and materials. Very fine silver filigree made by oriental jewelers delighted the Europeans. During the 17th and 18th centuries, there were several major centers where articles of filigree jewelry were produced. In India, these were the Portuguese state of Goa on the western coast and the city of Karimnagar in Deccan, in the central part of the country. Many orders for filigree were filled in southern China, in Canton (Guanchou) and Macao, as well as in the regions of Southeast Asia where there were cities open to trade with Europe and settlements of Chinese masters, as for example in Manila in the Philippines or in Batavia (modern day Jakarta) on the island of Java. Òoilet sets and caskets, candlesticks and perfume bottles, table decorations and small boxes for cosmetics were all purchased for the first museum collections in Europe, for the collections of oddities held by royal families, the treasure rooms of churches, and the private homes of wealthy Europeans. The precious rarities served as symbols of authority, as objects for collecting and as diplomatic gifts. The very delicate silver filigree which was ordered for representational purposes and to decorate interiors became the privilege of wealthy and distinguished owners both in the Orient and in Europe. Many of the palaces around Europe had their own "Cabinets of Filigree" at the end of the 17th and early 18th centuries: this was true of Louis XIV’s Versailles, Friedrich I Wilhelm’s Berlin, and in the London of Queen Charlotte. The exhibition puts on display works of Indian and Chinese jewelry which were largely held in the collection of the Russian tsars as early as the 17th and 18th centuries. Among them are such important historical monuments of the 17th century as the writing set of William of Orange, who was the Stadtholder of the Netherlands and King of Great Britain, and large caskets with a two-headed eagle which belonged to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. There is also filigree silver from the collection of Peter the Great. Toilet sets belonging to Catherine the Great and made by oriental jewelers in the mid-18th century are a great rarity. One of them was made in China, another in India. Among the other display items are Chinese silver filigree works which were kept in the earliest palace collections of St Petersburg, those of the Yusupov princes and F.I. Paskevich, as well as other rarities which were formerly kept in the Treasure Gallery of the Imperial Hermitage . An illustrated full-color catalogue of the exhibition has been prepared by the Publishing House of the State Hermitage. The author of the catalogue and curator of the exhibition is M.L. Menshikova, senior researcher of the State Hermitage’s Department of the Orient.
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 Tray in the form of a leaf China Larger view |
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