A RUSSIAN SILVERED-BRONZE-MOUNTED MALACHITE TAZZA

This malachite tazza of antique form relates to designs for hardstone objects by I.I. Galberg, dating from 1820-40, manufactured at the Ekaterinburg Imperial Lapidary Factory (V.B. Semyonov, Malachite, Sverdlovsk, 1987, pp. 114-115, figs. 21-22, 24). A design for a shallow tazza with angular flat base from Ekaterinburg illustrated in N. Mavrodina, The Art of Russian Stone Carvers 18th-19th Centuries, St. Petersburg, 2007, p. 256, fig. E.91 is particularly close.

Few ornamental stones are as closely associated with Imperial Russia as malachite. The appreciation of this simple copper carbonate by Russia’s aristocracy is attested to by the exquisite vases and table-tops produced by Russia’s lapidaries, culminating in the construction of the famous ‘Malachite Room’ in the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, and malachite objets were fundamental to the Russia section of the 1851 Great Exhibition (A.N. Voronikhina, Malachite dans la collection de l’Ermitage, Leningrad, 1963, pl. 1; ed. L. Tonini, I Demidov Fra Russia e Italia, Florence, 2013, pls. I.1-I.4; II.1).