AN UNUSUAL PARCEL-GILT SILVER TEA AND COFFEE SERVICE
Lot 252

AN UNUSUAL PARCEL-GILT SILVER TEA AND COFFEE SERVICE

MARKED SAZIKOV WITH THE IMPERIAL WARRANT, MOSCOW, 1847

Closed5 June 2017

Price Realised

GBP 30,000

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AN UNUSUAL PARCEL-GILT SILVER TEA AND COFFEE SERVICE
MARKED SAZIKOV WITH THE IMPERIAL WARRANT, MOSCOW, 1847
Comprising a coffee pot, a teapot, a covered sugar bowl, a cream jug, and a waste bowl; each cast and finely chased with protruding male and female masks in high relief, within ornamental geometric cartouches, with scroll feet and handles, the tea and coffee pots with replacement composite insulators, interiors gilt, marked throughout
The coffee pot 10½ in. (26.6 cm.) high
133 oz. (4,145 gr.) gross

By repute, Aleksei Suvorin (1834-1912), a Russian publisher and journalist.
By descent to the present owner.

Specialist note

Aleksei Suvorin (1834-1912) was a famous Russian newspaper and book publisher. Starting as a liberal journalist, he later became a publisher and editor of the most influential pre-Revolution conservative daily newspaper, New Times.

As a literary critic and a writer himself, Suvorin started his own theatrical company in 1895. A close friend of Anton Chekhov, Fedor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy, their plays frequently premiered at his theatre. Suvorin was also the first to recognise Chekhov's genius, by publishing his first story in the New Times and subsequently supporting his writing.

For a comparable service by Sazikov from the Hermitage collection, see Z.Z. Bernyakovich, Russian Silver Wares of the XVIIth - Beginning of the XXth Century in the State Hermitage Collection, Leningrad, 1977, no. 165, and G. Von Habsburg, Fabergé Imperial Craftsman and His World, London, 2000, p. 52, no. 24.