A GERMAN SILVER ENTRÉE DISH AND COVER FROM CATHERINE THE GREAT'S PERMSCHEN SERVICE

This dish cover is en suite to those commisioned by Catherine the Great from the Paris goldsmith Robert-Joseph Auguste. Twenty-two silver table services were ordered for the new seats of regional government which Her Imperial Majesty established in Russia. To avoid transporting silver during her tours of the country, Catherine decreed that each centre of government should have a complete service of its own. Four of the French-made services employed the talents of one of the greatest silversmiths of the 18th century, Robert-Joseph Auguste. He was involved in producing, with the help of Louis-Joseph Lenhendrick and Charles Spriman, the services for Kazan (1778-1779), Nizhny-Novgorod (1778-1779), Ekaterinoslav (1776-1778) and Moscow (1782-1783). Five services were commissioned from Russian, London and Augsburg silversmiths. Christian Drentwett was ordered in the 1780s to produce the Permschen (1779-1781) and Charkowschen services. The services are all engraved with the same cyrillic inventory numbers, here 'Пр' for Permschen, and other dish covers square, rectangular and circular can be found in museums including in the Musée Nissim de Camondo and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.
After Catherine's death the services were re-called to St Petersburg by her successor, Tsar Paul the First. The next full published assessment of the remaining pieces is by Baron A de Foelkersam, in 1907. In the aftermath of the Revolution, the new Soviet Government sold some of the elements of the services along with other treasures from the Imperial collections.