The Hermitage guide

The collection of enamels numbers approximately 500 items, of which those made in Veliky Ustiug in the eighteenth century deserve particular attention. From 1761 to 1776 the Popov factory there produced very beautiful and ingenious articles, such as large dinner services of silver and non-precious metals, completely covered with enamel, mainly white, and decorated with silver trimmings and delicate painting in silver.

The collection of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century jewellery comprises articles manufactured at the Fabergé, Sazikov, Ovchinnikov, and Grachov factories.

One of the most remarkable in the Hermitage is the distinguished collection of art objects in steel, made by the armourers of Tula. Of the five hundred such works recorded in various museums, three hundred are in the Hermitage. The collection contains articles of furniture, lighting fittings, vases, writing sets, perfume burners, caskets and coffers, snuff-boxes, and samovars. All these show the unrivalled skill and exquisite taste of the Tula craftsmen. The decorative effect of their work is based on the combination of ormolu and steel, either faceted to look like precious stones, or burnished blue, with its surface polished like a mirror. There are occasional examples of Tula steel in many museums all over the world, including those of London and Berlin.

The collection of artistic metalwork in bronze, tin, steel, iron, and cast iron has some interesting eighteenth-century examples of copperware: loving-cups, jugs, cups, large chased sconces with representations of the city arms of St Petersburg or of flowers, and also a tray made in 1723 at Yekaterinburg.

Decorative articles for the court — in jasper, malachite, lapis lazuli, agate, cornelian, porphyry, and rhodonite — were produced in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries at the Peterhof, Yekaterinburg, and Kolyvan Lapidary Works. The Hermitage collection is the best in the Soviet Union and includes huge vases, bowls, elegant obelisks, lampstands, and a large number of smaller items, all done by gifted Russian craftsmen.

The collection of Russian furniture from the late seventeenth to early twentieth centuries boasts many fine items designed by the architects Charles Cameron, Giacomo Quarenghi, Vasily Stasov, Carlo Rossi, and Leo Klenze, as well as articles by the well-known St Petersburg cabinet-makers Christian Meyer, Heinrich and Piotr Gambs, Vasily Bobkov, and André Tour, and by craftsmen of the town of Archangel.

The Department possesses a very varied collection of walrus ivory, ranging from small pendants and spillikins to writing-desks, all made by bonecarvers from Kholmogory, well known for their skill in this art. The collection includes very rare items crafted by O. Dudin and N. Vereshchagin at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The delicate carving, openwork decoration, and original designs of the compositions are indicative of the great respect these masters had for the agelong traditions of their art.

There are many examples of the art of woodcarving: distaffs, round birch bark boxes, caskets of varying shapes, sizes, and ornamentation, gingerbread boards, ladles, salt-cellars, handled bowls, and other household objects.

The collection of textiles and costumes numbers over 20,000 items. The costume section contains many excellent examples dating from the late seventeenth to early twentieth centuries, each one a work of art in its own right. The textiles section comprises a rich assortment of Russian fabrics of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. The world-famous Kolokoltsov shawls, for example, a type made only in Russia, were woven by serf craftswomen from very finely spun goat’s down on both sides (i.e. there is no wrong side on the finished cloth) and had ornamental floral borders, worked in an amazing variety of hues and tints.

The Hermitage is proud of possessing the largest collection of flags and banners in the world — about 6,500 items dating from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries. They are interesting from both the historical and artistic point of view. In addition to Russian regimental colours, there are banners from Sweden, Prussia, France, and Oriental countries, as well as standards, Turkish horsetails, ensigns, insignia, and flags from over fifty countries. Old Russian banners are represented by a collection dating from the seventeenth century. The huge banner of the streltsi (the shooters) regiment, with an icon of the Last Judgment on one side, and portraits of the Tsars Peter and Ivan on the other, dates from the 1680s.