The reopening after reconstruction of the Antechamber in the Western Apartment of the Menshikov Palace

June 2006 saw the reopening after reconstruction of the "Antechamber" architectural and decorative ensemble in the Menshikov Palace, in the former reception room of Darya Menshikova, the wife of St Petersburg's first governor. (The work was carried out by the Art Expert scientific restoration company.)

In the eastern part of the Menshikov Palace a few interiors have survived down to the present with the unique decor of Peter the Great's time (the rooms finished with tiles and the Walnut Room). In the rooms belonging to the Western Apartment, the original decor did not survive. Over the course of many years the staff of the Menshikov Palace museum department have carried out major research work, using archive documents and analogies to recreate interiors typical of Peter's day. The foundation for the recreation of three of them was Chinese silk wall-hangings from the late 17th - early 18th century that had undergone twelve years of restoration and refurbishment.

The interior of the Antechamber reflects typical features of the decoration of residential rooms in the early 18th century and the personal tastes of members of the Menshikov family. It was fashionable and quite common in that period to line walls with fabric - silk, broadcloth or velvet. The fabrics displayed in the Antechamber were created in the Starinnye tkani (Old Fabrics) workshop in Moscow that during more than half a century remains the only place in Russia where decorative period fabrics are produced on hand looms only after serious scholarly research and technical reconstruction of the texture and pattern of the original. The process of weaving on a hand loom is as laborious as in the 18th century, with only 10 cm of fabric being produced in a working day. The Muscovite craftspeople have recreated fabrics for the palace museums of St Petersburg, Moscow and their suburbs. For the Antechamber of the Menshikov Palace the Starinnye Tkani workshop made brocade with a complex plant fantasy pattern using threads of a large number of colours, taking an early 18th-century French fabric as a prototype. On display in Darya Menshikova's apartment are numerous examples of expensive imported furniture, silverware and also works of Chinese applied art, interest in which became particularly strong in the early 18th century.

The Antechamber in the Western Apartment of the Menshikov Palace
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