Two Berlin KPM porcelain glacieres made for Grand Prince Nicholas.
Two Berlin KPM porcelain glacieres made for Grand Prince Nicholas. Designed as cylindrical gilt pails with continuous moulded rings and laurel wreath decor, containing gilt rimmed white porcelain insets and covered by domed lids with pinecone finials. The vessel with the inventory no. 7606 with blue sceptre mark and painter’s mark shaped like the symbol for Mars, incised 34 and with “N 7606”. The vessel with the inventory no. 7607 with blue sceptre mark and orange subsidiary mark and with painter’s mark shaped like the symbol for Mars, incised 34 and inventory no. “N 7607” under one foot. One inset with a restoration to the rim, the other with a hairline crack. H 28 cm.
Before 1823.
A total of four of these magnificent cooling vessels belonged to a dinner service presented by King Frederick William III of Prussia to his daughter Charlotte on occasion of her marriage to Grand Prince Nicholas of the House Romanov-Holstein-Gottorp in 1817. However, the service was first completed in 1823 as before this the manufactory was still working at full capacity to complete the “Feldherrenservice” for the Duke of Wellington.
In the record book “ContoBuch Sr: Mäjestät des Königs“, the pieces are mentioned in an entry on 17th April 1823: "Sr. Kayserlichen Hoheit den Groß Fürsten Nicolaus à Petersburg.....4 Glacieren mit drei Füßen und sehr reicher Vergoldung und Gravirung.". The service was conceived as a service “à la russe” in which the courses are served one after another and not presented on the table all at once. Two centrepieces from this service were sold in the Lempertz Berlin auction 1047 on 2nd May 2015 as lot 181.
The labels on these ice buckets show that they belonged to the inventory of the Anitschkow-Palais in 1930, which was known as the Leningrad City Museum from 1918 to the mid-1930s. In order to raise much needed funds, the Soviet government began selling state-owned paintings and decorative works abroad in the 1920s. Their most important partner in this undertaking was Rudolf Lepke's Kunst-Auctions-Haus in Berlin.
As of 1923, the company was permitted to choose Leningrad pieces directly from the state museums for their auctions in Berlin. The largest of these sales took place in honour of the firm's 60th jubilee in 1928, but Rudolf Lepke was able to host many more auctions of Russian state property in the following years, or at least include works from this source amid his usual offers. The present works were sold as lot 483 and 484 in the auction "Altes Porzellan aus ausländischem Staatsbesitz und Sammlung Dr. Witte-Rostock" on 21st and 22nd October 1930.