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The Celebration of Easter at the Russian imperial court in the 18th and late 19th centuries The 18th century was the age of porcelain, when Europeans at last managed to discover the “Chinese secret” of how to make this precious rarity. The third porcelain factory in Europe, after Meissen and Vienna, was the Imperial Factory, founded in St Petersburg in 1744. From that time porcelain eggs became a part of the court’s Easter celebrations. The ceremonial for marking Easter used in the 18th and 19th century followed long-established traditions and remained almost unchanged. Before midnight on the eve of Easter Sunday, invited members of the aristocracy, summoned by a cannon, gathered in the palace of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna. At twelve the service combining an all-night vigil and the Liturgy (Orthodox communion) began. Catherine II’s chief residence was the new Winter Palace that had been built by Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli for her predecessor, the grandest palace in Europe at that time. Easter at the court of Catherine the Great was an unforgettable spectacle. “The whole court and all of the city aristocracy gathered on that day in the palace church, which was full of people. The palace was drowning in splendour: it was not for nothing that the common people at that time imagined it to be paradise,” Countess Varvara Nokolayevna Golovina recollected. In the early hours of Easter Sunday, after one in the morning, a magnificent procession began through the halls of the palace to the Great Church to attend the vigil. The magnificent cortege was preceded by the officials of the court; then came the imperial family and guests. For this occasion the ladies put on Russian-style court dresses, while the gentlemen wore colourful festive caftans. The key moments of the Easter service – the start of matins, the singing of the hymn Khristos Voskrese (Christ Is Risen) and the reading from the Gospel – were accompanied by cannon salvos from the nearby Peter and Paul and Admiralty fortresses. A 101-gun salute announced the end of the Liturgy. The churches of the city filled the silence of this holy night with the joyful ringing of bells. The service ended at half past four in the morning, then the special rich Easter dish known as paskha (made with sweetened curds, butter and raisins pressed in a mould) was served on a gilded dish to the courtiers in Catherine’s rooms and sometime after five, usually in the Diamond Room where Catherine’s most precious possessions were kept, a banquet began for those closest to the Empress. The following day a formal dinner was given in the palace dining-room for a wider circle of guests. The table was laid with gold tableware with one complete change of dishes and the drinking of the imperial goblet was accompanied by a 51-gun salute from the Admiralty fortress. The celebration of Easter at court was accompanied by a succession of audiences, balls, concerts and performances in the Opera House of the Winter Palace. Over the following days of Easter week the Empress received felicitations from the Metropolitan, the senior clergy, her generals, the nobility and other distinguished visitors who were permitted to kiss her hand. The exchange of good wishes was usually accompanied by the distribution of Easter gifts - the symbolic festive token of an egg was sometimes accompanied by a more materially valuable present in the form of items made by the court factories and jewellers. Porcelain eggs were delivered to the court in special openwork porcelain baskets or serving dishes on trays that were also made at the Imperial Factory. For Easter 1793 six baskets and six dishes and trays were delivered to Catherine’s apartments filled with the fine ceramic eggs that she presented to her guests. In all she handed out 373 Easter eggs, large, middle-sized and small, painted with “landscapes and figures, covered with paints and arabesques”. The Empress was also the recipient of gifts. The coronation of Catherine’s successor, Emperor Paul I, took place on 5 April 1797 in the Dormition Cathedral of the Moscow Kremlin and coincided with the Easter festivities. Porcelain dishes and baskets were delivered to Moscow for the new sovereign. They contained 200 porcelain eggs “with different painting and gilding”. In the 19th century the number of porcelain and glass eggs distributed at Easter increased with every reign. By the middle of the century it amounted to over 5,000 porcelain eggs and 7,000 glass ones. Besides this, the Peterhof Lapidary Works produced eggs from semiprecious stone: jasper, malachite, lapis lazuli, agate and porphyry. In addition to the eggs, vases, table services, lamps and sculptures were made for use as Easter gifts. All these items were allotted between the members of the imperial family, the grand dukes and their wives, who depending on their status were expected to hand out between 200 and 500 eggs. The custom of making gifts to members of the court was maintained throughout the 19th century. Here, for example, is a description of the ceremony of Easter greetings at the court of Alexander II: “The Emperor entered. He had just exchanged Easter greetings with a mass of orderlies, the sentries standing at the doors to his rooms and all his servants... Then the Empress came in... together with Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, who was holding a fairly large basket of porcelain eggs. We approached the Empress one after another and said ‘Christ is risen!’ Nodding, she responded very pleasantly, ‘Merci.’ We kissed her hand, and she kissed our heads, took an egg from the basket and pronounced, ‘Voici pour vous aussi un ?uf.’ [Here is an egg for you too.] She gave me an egg made of porphyry. (The Empress occasionally added some porcelain or glass knick-knack to the egg: a vase or fruit bowl, a jug and tumblers, candlesticks or some nice dressing-table ornament.)” In the second half of the 19th century the court’s orders for Easter gifts dropped off. In 1881 Alexander III gave orders that “no other presents shall be given at Easter apart from Easter eggs.” In January 1887 instructions were given to reduce the number of Easter eggs produced for the imperial family. “For the Emperor 20 with paintings of saints and 50 ordinary ones, with different decorations, but large; and for the Empress only 50 large ones decorated in various ways.” As well as porcelain and glass eggs, the works of the capital’s jewellers were also often used as Easter gifts. In court circles and in the homes of the wealthy and distinguished people exchanged expensive Easter adornments made of gold and silver. In the late 19th century miniature egg-shaped key fobs made of gold, silver and mounted precious stones came into fashion. They were given each Easter and collected together to form necklaces and bracelets, as well as being used as the drops of earrings. Men wore them as ornaments on their watch chains or cuff-link. In this period Faberge’s star was in the ascendant. It was in the Easter surprises produced by the skilled jewellers of the celebrated firm to commissions from the court that inventiveness and virtuoso craftsmanship reached their apogee. The first egg, ordered by Alexander III for Empress Maria Fiodorovna, was fairly modest and unpretentious. It was followed by a succession of works with a variety of surprises of almost incredible complexity and fine workmanship that were exquisitely decorated. In all 52 eggs were made for Empresses Maria Alexandrovna and Alexandra Fiodorovna. The example of the court was followed by the Petersburg aristocracy. A gift from Faberge became a fashionable, prestige item. The firm received commissions for surprise eggs like those given at court from the Yusupovs and the Nobels, the Duchess of Marlborough and the Siberian gold-mining magnate A.F. Kelch. |
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