SHOWCASE 16. GOLD- AND SILVERWARE FROM 1740 TO 1760. MOSCOW AND ST PETERSBURG

The showcase represents artworks of the renowned European and Russian makers of the mid-18th century, executed in the Rococo style .

The beginning of the 18th century was the time of great social perturbations and changes in the court life, aesthetics and cultural life of the Russian people. Relations and interactions with European countries, the adoption of foreign standards of life led to the appearance of new types of tableware, clothes and utensils. New traditions were absorbed by the mid-18th century when the Russian nobility have conceived a European way of life and requirements of a new epoch. Having enlisted the services of the finest jewellers of the period, i.e. Jeremie Pauzie, Benedict Gravero etc., Empress Elizabeth—daughter of Peter the Great—established a unique "foreign workshop" for revival and improvement of the Moscow jewellery-making. The showpieces of this period present a remarkable variety and richness of forms.

The Moscow workshops, having experienced the influence of European rococo, produced new types of tableware and interior utensils, i.e. coffee- and teapots, milk jugs, samovars and reduced production of traditional Russian vessels and plates, from now on used as gifts and rewards for service. The main technique of Rococo was metal casting and high-relief chasing. A fine specimen of rococo made by the 18th-century Petersburg maker is a silver soup bowl decorated with an embossed Rocaille ornament in the form of a scroll. Its lid is covered with cartouches of fruits' and flowers' garlands.