A PAIR OF BERLIN (KPM) ARMORIAL PIERCED HEXAFOIL DESSERT-PLATES FROM THE GRAND DUKE PAUL SERVICE

These plates are from the service made for Paul Petrovich (1754-1801), who became Tsar Paul I of Russia in 1796. The armorial panels relate to the House of Romanov-Holstein-Gottorp rather than his marriages. The example from the service illustrated by Erich Köllmann and Margarete Jarchow, Berliner Porzellan (Munich, 1987), Vol. II, p. 449, fig. 291a was sold in these Rooms on 8 October 2002, lot 222.

Paul was the son of Tsar Peter III and Catherine the Great. His first wife, Wilhelmina Natalia, died in 1776 and in the same year he married Sophia Maria, daughter of Friedrich Eugene, Duke of Württemberg. Catherine The Great's maternal grandfather was Christian Augustus, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp and her husband's father was Karl Friedrich, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp. Paul succeeded his mother in 1796 becoming Tsar Paul I. An unstable dipsomaniac, he dug up his murdered father's remains and placed them on the throne so that he would not have to succeed his mother directly. His mental health caused him to be considered a potential loose canon, and in 1801 he was strangled with his son's consent.