Amber at Palace of Catherine I in Tsarskoye Selo

Wieslaw Gierlowski

In the early 20th century, the former summer residence of the Russian Tsars, the most important building of the giant Tsarskoye Selo palace and park complex, received the name of the Palace of Catherine I, the wife and later successor of Peter I on the throne of the Russian Empire.

The decision to build the palace was made by Tsarina Elisabeth I, daughter of Peter I, in the mid-1700s. The Tsarina entrusted its construction to her court architect, Italian Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli. It was in this palace that Rastrelli placed the Amber Room and, alongside it, the largest amber workshop in Europe at the time, which employed up to 200 people at a time until the end of the 18th century. This workshop served not only to supplement and complete the wall decorations of the Amber Room, but also performed maintenance work on other large amber objects from the Tsar’s collection, obtained as gifts, purchases, but most often as contributions from the countries and cities occupied by the Russian army. The workshop also received artefacts which had before been collected at the Moscow Kremlin, the seat of the Tsars before the capital was transferred to St Petersburg by the River Neva.

In this way, the greatest collection of European artistic amber craft in the world was accumulated.

However, the quality of the maintenance work at the Tsarskoye Selo workshop was not the best. Its archives contain records of at least seven large closets and cabinets made in the workshops of Gdansk and Königsberg, which were worked on in Tsarskoye Selo after 1765, and fell apart rather shortly thereafter: before 1830. A large table for 12, made in Tsarskoye Selo in the 1770s in a technique similar to that used to make the closets, where the wooden structure was veneered with thin amber plates, failed to survive even 50 years. Only a single piece of furniture from the Catherine’s Palace collection has survived to our times. It is a small piece, a dining room chest of drawers measuring 55 x 34 x 31 cm. Property of the Gdansk City Council, this chest of drawers was seized in 1734 by Tsarina Elizabeth the First’s field marshal Brukchard Christopf von Münnich as part of a contribution for withdrawing from the siege of the city. It is worth emphasising the excellent technique in which a beautiful and colourful mosaic was placed on the chest’s wooden framework using an insulating and separating layer of foil and paper between the wood and amber. It is with certain regret that a Gdansker like myself looks at the front wall of the piece. It depicts the figures of the Lions of the City Coat of Arms and the faithful panorama of Gdansk etched on the base of a giant elliptical cabochon.

Today, the Catherine’s Palace collection has some 200 magnificent artefacts. It is exhibited in its entirety in the halls neighbouring the Amber Room at an exhibition entitled A Look Through the Ages. The exhibition’s catalogue covers 238 items because it presents not only amber works of art but also original documents and graphics illustrating the collection’s history. All the artefacts are in magnificent condition as they underwent thorough conservation in the 1980s, when most of the artefacts were disassembled, their individual elements were renovated and conserved, and any defects meticulously filled in. In this way, the Russian specialists used actual historical artefacts to gain the experience necessary to reconstruct the lost decor of the Amber Room walls. Earlier, in 1911-13, most of the collection underwent emergency conservation in the Gdansk Moritz Stumpf company.

Gdansk coffers

Four enormous coffers from Gdansk workshops are the finest testament to the grandeur of artistic amber craft in the 17th and early 18th centuries. Three of them, dating from the 17th century, are classic pure amber structures, without a wooden frame, but with double walls instead. This secures the durability of these large artefacts made of brittle material, while also doubling the form and content of the ornamentation: that visible on the outside and an equally careful composition inside the coffers, unfortunately the latter being inaccessible to today’s viewer. The kings and princes, however, who were the former recipients of the “diplomatic gifts,” took delight in all the charms of their presents.

The oldest and largest coffer, dating back to the mid-1600s, is impressive in its capacity (over 50 litres) and the diversity of colour varieties of amber used to make it. It affects the viewer more by its colour composition than the diversity of sculptural forms or architectonic elements. On closer inspection, however, it displays a full range of sculptural techniques: figural, relief and intaglio.

One of the most interesting artefacts is a coffer with the nymph Dione, patron of sailors, on the lid. This was probably the coffer described and drawn in the diary of Gdansk councillor Schröder as made in the workshop neighbouring St Catherine’s church and appraised then at 3,000 thalers. It features a characteristic high lid with ornaments engraved in transparent plates.

The third of the Gdansk coffers is very typical of the work of Michael Redlin, master of the amber craftsmen’s guild. This is a multi-storey piece, very complex in form, built as if with disregard for the structure’s cohesion. In fact, it is something between a coffer and a piece of furniture (drawers, storeys which open separately, tall legs). It is all the more valuable that its design, drawn by Redlin himself, has survived. Its large dimensions and complex form make it uncommonly expressive.

There is another large coffer of great importance to the Tsarskoye Selo collection. Although in comparison with the others, it may have a slightly less valued structure with a wooden base, veneered only on the surface with an amber ornament of thick acanthus leaves, but is a rarely seen example of a work that is clearly signed and dated.

During conservation work in 1983, a slip of paper was discovered between the layers of its bottom, with the legend: “Gottfried Turau – Inventor et fecit – Anno 1705 12 Iulius.” This is a signature of one of the chief makers of the decor of the Amber Room’s walls, which solved many doubts during the editing of the details during the reconstruction work. The box was most likely ordered by the Radziwill family, because a hundred years later it was seized by field marshal Suvorov from the Radziwills’ ancestral castle in Nieswiez and donated to the Tsar’s collection.

Curiosities from Gdansk workshops

The most interesting item seems to be a large chessboard (46 x 43 cm) from the late 17th century, in which half of the squares are transparent with intaglio at their bottom. In 1991, when the chessboard was disassembled completely for conservation, I had the opportunity to draw an accurate copy of the scenes and French inscriptions on the sculpted plates with 40 mm sides. I was hoping to decipher and understand the content of some larger storey contained in 32 scenes and captions. It turned out, however, that these were citations from the French game of flirt, witty and paradoxically combined.

The Tsarskoye Selo collection has one more example related to this game, which was so fashionable in the late 1600s. A large coffer with sculptures and a magnificent colour scheme, which contains 4 smaller boxes with almost 100 amber cards with inscriptions and figural depictions. This most expensive set, which is so pleasing to the eye and to the touch, could satisfy even the most capricious connoisseurs.

Collection of luxury items

The collection of artistic amber craft artefacts at Catherine’s Palace, although so copious and rich, contains no sacral items whatsoever, in contrast to all the other more significant museum collections. The Tsarskoye Selo collection is a testament to the lifestyle of the Russian court during the rule of famously autocratic and also quite morally uninhibited women on the imperial throne: Catherine I, Anna, Elisabeth I and Catherine II. There are many boxes for cosmetics, makeup tools, luxury dressing cases, clothes and table ornaments. All of them are impressive in their grandeur, artistic technique and precision of workmanship, but not in the subject matter of depictions or references to moral or religious paragons. Even love, the focal point of interest, appears either conventionally in sculpted couples of Venus and Cupid, or jokingly in the flirt game cards.

When the male tsars of the 19th century appeared on the scene and on the throne, the function of the objects meant to become part of the collection changed. Out of the entire oeuvre of the magnificent amber workshop at Tsarskoye Selo only the so-called “bachelor’s set” remains: a basin shaped as a large mollusc shell and several shaving tools.

Purchases and gifts, in turn, led to a large collection of pipes and stems for hookahs, Asian water pipes. Today, the collection is not being developed any further, as it is treated as a certain historical entirety.

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