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he newly renovated Hillwood mansion will feature several important
new acquisitions, most notably a rare Vienna, Du Paquier Period
hard-paste cup and saucer set (1730-1735) from the "Tsar’s
Service" (Zarenservice). The cup from the service, which
was produced by the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory, is an important
addition to Marjorie Merriweather Post’s Russian and
French collections because this porcelain served as a prototype
for the designers at the Imperial Porcelain Factory in the
following decades and because it represents one of the earliest
porcelain table services produced in Europe.
The "Tsar’s Service" was
most likely a diplomatic gift from Austrian Emperor Charles
VI to Empress Anna Ioannovna (r. 1730-1740) to cement the
anti-Ottoman alliance he had formed with her predecessor,
Catherine I. Indeed, one of the service’s most prominent
decorative elements, the gilded figures of seated Turks crowning
the tureen lids, clearly refers to the shared enemy. The multi-colored
bands encircling the cup and saucer and the delicately rendered
flowers and insects were quite innovative for the time, when
the firing of enamel colors was in a very early stage. The
other remaining pieces of the "Tsar’s Service"
are in the distinguished collections of the State Hermitage,
Victoria & Albert Museum and The Metropolitan Museum of
Art.
The Vienna Porcelain Manufactory was the
first institution to challenge Augustus the Strong’s
Meissen factory in the production of European hard-paste glazed
porcelain. Only a decade after the process was founded, Austrian
Court official Claudius Innocentius Du Paquier founded a factory
outside Vienna, and thus pieces from the earliest years of
manufacture (1718-1744) are now referred to as "Du Paquier."
Also acquired for Hillwood’s museum
were three elaborately embroidered bishops miters (19th and
20th century) worn for performing the holy liturgy. The 19th-century
example is covered with black velvet and decorated with paste
stones and embroidery of silver thread. These miters are an
important addition to the already rich collection of icons,
chalices and vestments at Hillwood, and they will be rotated
with the rest of the liturgical textiles on a regular basis.
In addition, a significant 1930s inkstand
from Natalia Dan’ko’s Discussion of the Draft Stalin
Constitution in Uzbekistan desk set has been added to the
Hillwood collection. Dan’ko, head of the sculpture workshop
at the Lomonosov State Porcelain Factory, produced this inkstand
as the centerpiece of an elaborate six-piece desk set to celebrate
the proposed Stalin Constitution intended to signify the defeat
of capitalism. On the surface of the inkstand, a group of
Uzbek men and women discuss the draft constitution; the other
pieces, depicting a folk musician, laborer and women and children,
include a lamp stand, pencil holder, ashtray, tray and vase.
Among the most monumental of the artist’s
desk sets, Discussion of the Draft Stalin Constitution in
Uzbekistan was designed and produced in the years Mrs. Post
lived in the Soviet Union. The inkstand’s depiction of
Uzbeks, inhabitants of one of the former Soviet Union’s
southern republics, places it in a long tradition of ethnographic
sculpture at the Imperial Porcelain Factory (subsequently
renamed the Lomonosov State Porcelain Factory). Throughout
her life, Mrs. Post collected numerous examples of this sort
of statuary from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. The rarity
of the piece can be attributed to the outbreak of World War
II, which seemingly curtailed production of the complicated
Dan’ko sets.
Another important new Hillwood acquisition
is a major collection of 300 rare Russian books from the late
19th and early 20th centuries, which are devoted to the history
of decorative arts in the context of Russian imperial culture,
demonstrating the quality and scope of art historical scholarship
in pre-revolutionary Russia. The books, many of them illustrated
folios, include leading literature on icons and iconography
of that period and design books that inspired ornamentation
on decorative objects. The collection comes from the personal
library of the late Dr. Nicholas Shoumatoff, son of the Russian-born
society portraitist Elizabeth Shoumatoff, and it was originally
assembled in the 1920s and 1930s by Andre Avinov, the brother
of Elizabeth and a former director of the Carnegie Museum
in Pittsburgh, PA. Key works include multiple volumes of folk
prints by Dmitrii Rovinskii and his dictionary of Russian
engravers, as well as design books by Viktor Butovskii and
Vladimir Stasov and numerous fundamental texts on icon painting.
This small but significant addition to the Hillwood Museum
and Gardens Research Library, dramatically repositions the
Museum toward one of its new strategic initiatives -- that
the Museum expand its scholarly activities.
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