The State Hermitage Museum: Hermitage News

Opening of the permanent exhibition The West European Silver of the 16th-19th centuries in the Alexander Hall

The Alexander Hall opened after restoration housed the permanent exhibition of the West European Silver. The Hermitage collection, which is one of the world’s biggest, comprises the works of craftsmen from France, England, Germany, Italy, Spain, countries of the North and Eastern Europe from the XVI century to the beginning of the XX century and enables to trace all tendencies of this art’s development.

The unique Wine cistern by English craftsmen of the XVIII century are of special value and interest. These massive ware filled with ice would be lodged beside festively laid tables. Bottles and flasks of wine were put into them. Fountains - high, vase-shaped vessels decorated with magnificent embossing and molten figures - were filled with wine too.

Kings’ and tzars’ tables used to be furnished in the centre with a silver Plat de Menage - an original tabletop decoration. Cruet-stands for various spices and a “basket” for fruit or sweets were placed upon it. The Hermitage collection includes three Plat de Menage made by a famous jeweller of the King Louis XV - Claude Ballin II, and by a not less renowned Augsburg craftsman Johann Ludwig Biller.

Masterpieces of the French silversmiths’ art are exposed in the collection. These include bottle-coolers by Thomas Germain representing the items of the Parisian service made by his son Francois Thomas Germain. No less renowned is the Orlov service presented to the Count Grigory Orlov by Catherine II: fine tureens, bottle and glass coolers from vicegerents’ services created under royal order of Catherine II by the king’s jeweller Robert-Joseph Auguste in Paris in 1780-s.

The items fabricated by London Huguenot craftsmen – Paul de Lamerie, Simon Pantin, Paul Crespin - attained worldwide fame. These include tubs, plates, dressing-table sets and many other items. Their pieces of work are noted for chiselled shapes and exquisite decoration motifs.

The collection of silver from the leading art centres of the XVII-XVIII centuries - Nurnberg, Augsburg, Hamburg, Leipzig, Dresden and Berlin - presents equal value in terms of art. The collection contains various drinking vessels - goblets, mugs, winebowls, pitchers, as well as luxurious plates, which used to adorn sideboards and plate-racks of well-off burghers.

Among other things, the Hermitage houses silverware from Italia, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Sweden and Poland. These collections are not so extensive, but the available specimens provide a glimpse of the high level reached by the art of silversmiths in these countries.

The Hermitage assemblage is based on silver art objects, which would be acquired or ordered from Europe for the royal family and the imperial household since Peter I until the time of Nicholas II. Many valuable jewellery works came from nationalized collections of the Russian noblemen after the revolution. Such collections concern, first of all, well-known collections of Princes Yusupovs, Counts Sheremetevs, Stroganovs, Baron Alexander Stieglitz.

The Curator of the exhibition is Marina Lopato, Doctor of Art History, Director of the Sector of Metalwork of the Department of the West European Applied Art of the State Hermitage.

Marina Lopato, Curator of the exhibition

At the exhibition

First visitors