Sometimes searching in Russian really does pay off when you least expect it haha. Here is a lovely article published back in 2004, and authored by Mme. Iraida K. Bott, the Deputy Director for Scientific and Educational Work for the journal “Antiques, Objects of Art and Collectibles” which was active from 2002-2015.
Every manner of antique and archival material is discussed through-out the magazine’s publication. In the 16th Issue, back in April of 2004 the magazine published an article entitled:
DISCLAIMER: I do not know Russian, this was translated using a translator so I apologise for any errors. ^_^
“Tsarskoye Selo furniture by F. Melzer and N. Svirsky.”
The article itself goes into detail about the History behind the furniture which decorated the rooms of the Alexander Palace which were lived in by the Imperial Family.
“From the beginning of the twentieth century we are only one century, but in the palace meetings Petersburg remained, paradoxically, much less subjects of the time, than, say, the end of the XVIII or early XI centuries.
However, the paradox can be explained quite simply: interest in subjects of the era of historicism and modernism appeared in our country only in recent decades, but still earlier than the opportunity to freely study the objective world of imperial palaces and the artistic preferences of their owners. By this time, revolutions, wars and ideology destroyed much that had, if not artistic, then memorial value, so important for the preservation of historical memory.
In this respect, the last house of the last emperor of Russia is interesting - the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo, a kind of repository of information about time and people, which ceased to exist during the Great Patriotic War. Only those items taken out for evacuation, and therefore preserved individual items, as well as the memories of the owners and eyewitnesses, archival materials and photo chronicles, allow, albeit sketchily, to reconstruct the subject environment, undoubtedly interesting for the historian.
I would like to note that the furniture , which was perceived as a utilitarian component of the room, was especially damaged from all the decoration of the palace chambers . Indeed, the residential and ceremonial interiors of the palace included not only specially made items, but also samples of mass production of the capital’s factories. Perhaps that is why in the post-revolutionary years, furniturethey were distributed from the Alexander Palace to various state institutions and practically were not evacuated during the war years. Today we evaluate time and its material monuments in a different way. We are interested in both works created according to the projects of architects for a specific interior, and serial products produced by leading domestic manufacturers. It is important to note that many of the similar items are found in homes and on the antique market today, so information about the furnishings of the Tsarskoye Selo palace can identify unnamed objects that exist.
From 1905 to August 1917, the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo became the favorite home of Nicholas II and his family. The emperor was born in the Tsarskoye Selo palace and retained his love and affection for this place throughout his life. Here in 1894, shortly after the wedding, he brought Alexandra Fyodorovna; the young married couple stayed in the rooms of the left wing where Nikolai Alexandrovich spent his childhood.
By the next stay of the royal couple in several rooms of this half, they made repairs, put in order the furniture that was here during the time of the great-grandfather of Nicholas II . Perhaps, taking into account the Empire style of furniture, in the corner living room of the left wing, where Nikolai and Alexander stayed for the first time, they installed Karelian birch doors, borrowing them from the former rooms of Nicholas I, and, in accordance with them, according to the drawings of the architect of the Tsarskoye Selo palace administration S. A. Danini (1867-1942), FF Meltzer’s firm made two glazed cabinets, also from Karelian birch. Furniture created in the 1820s for Nikolai Pavlovich according to V. Stasov’s designs in A.K. Tour.
The decoration of the premises of this wing continued in the following years, in connection with this, in 1896, the name of the manufacturer N.F. Svirsky appeared in the palace documents for the first time, who became the supplier of the court under Alexander III and worked a lot for Nicholas II. At the request of Alexandra Feodorovna, this metropolitan master was entrusted with "making furniture for a bedroom and a ladies’ dressing room, with a bathtub and a water closet cladding” “according to samples and outline tracing papers brought by Her Majesty from abroad.”
In the late 1890s, Svirsky’s factory delivered several more items and sets of furniture to the palace: an icon case for the bedroom of the senior princesses, possibly according to the drawing of the already mentioned S.A. Danini, a corner sofa in the Louis XVI style - for the Empress’s Corner Drawing Room, furniture with painting and gilding - for the Portrait Hall (ill. 1, 2). For the same interior, Svirsky made six chairs “carved gilded wood, in the style of classicism, imitating the Jacob chairs,” repeating the forms and decor of the living room set by J. Jacob from the Arabesque hall of the Catherine Palace, transferred to the Alexander Palace at the request of Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna.
Small carved gilded tables with round and rectangular white marble countertops were made for the Empress’s Corner Living Room at the Svirsky factory in the Louis XV style, the base of which was decorated with garlands hanging from bows, with bucranium heads - a typical classicist motif. Graceful legs ended with hooves and were connected by a beautifully shaped prong with a chiseled vase in the center. These objects are examples of exquisite stylization, in which one can see the hand of a skilled draftsman, whose name has not yet been established (ill. 3).
The attention and interest in the historical setting, characteristic of the last owners of the palace, was probably due to the architectural design of the ceremonial halls, which corresponded to the solemn and elegant classicist decoration. From the correspondence of the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, it became known that the nature of the interiors was largely determined by the artistic inclinations of the hostess, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. As Yuri Kudrin notes in the book “Empress Maria Feodorovna Romanova. Diaries. Letters. Memories “(M., 2000), in January 1896, after visiting new apartments in the Winter Palace, Maria Fedorovna, criticizing the taste of her daughter-in-law, in particular, wrote:” .. they [Nikolai and his wife - IB] had the unfortunate idea of choosing an Empire style, which I hate to such an extent that for me it’s just ah, and I would not want to live there for anything in the world. Hopefully, this will all look better over time as everything here is replenished and settled. The main thing is that they like it: Alix loves this terrible Empire style, and since she will live here, everything is done according to her taste, and she is very happy. “
In 1909, ”… The Empress Alexandra Feodorovna deigned to choose a drawing marked with a red cross, and ordered chairs for tables in the round hall of the Alexander Palace to be made from it,“ where the family usually gathered during ceremonial breakfasts. 48 beech chairs, covered with enamel paint and decorated with gilded Empire decor, were made according to the design of the architect Danini at the factory of F.F. Melzer. The appearance of these objects in one of the most elegant halls of the palace not only testified to the fashionable retrospective direction in Russian art of the 1910s, but was dictated by the interior architecture and decoration of the hall. It is interesting to note that two sketches were presented to the Empress for consideration and approval, of which the crowned customer chose, it seems, the best option (ill. 4, 5).
For many years, the artistic tastes of the last Romanovs were usually scolded in our country. Indeed, the residential apartments of Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna did not differ in sophistication of decoration and were "saturated … with items of factory production, characteristic of the industrial-capitalist class,” as the curator of the palace-museum V.I. Yakovlev wrote in 1928. However, it can be assumed that for Nicholas and his family, the comfort and warmth of human communication were more important than fashionable and elegant decoration, to which little attention was paid. Suffice it to recall that the interiors in the Winter Palace were designed only for the wedding, and the living rooms of the Alexander Palace, which became a favorite home, were created in two stages - in the 1890s and 1900s, and for two decades they practically did not change (Fig. 6 , 7). Nevertheless, today it is difficult to deny that the best architects and leading metropolitan masters of their time worked at the order of the imperial family, and such interiors, II in Aleksandrovsky, - among the best interiors of the turn of the century.
The most significant works in Tsarskoe Selo are associated with the names of the already mentioned FF Meltzer and his brother RF Meltzer. For the right wing of the Alexander Palace, which became the residential half of the royal family, according to the designs of the court architect , the decoration of all residential and ceremonial premises was created at the factory of the court furniture supplier.
Work here began in the winter of 1896, and in the first year of their stay in the palace, the new owners were content with the furnishings preserved from the previous owners. If pieces of furniture appeared here, then those that were not specially created, but were selected from those offered by the manufacturers. So, in 1895, from the supplier of the imperial court and the court of the Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, K. Greenberg, who had been manufacturing furniture for the Alexander Palace during the reign of Alexander II , in the Bedchamber of Their Majesties they purchased “ furniture at agreed prices, painted with lacquer paint in tones “, upholstered in chintz with a pattern -” on a white background, round medallions of flowers. Judging by the small number of items indicated in Greenberg’s account, as well as by the mention that at the same time in the Bedchamber “the old furniture was painted again with lacquer paint in tones,” the manufacturer only supplemented the existing decoration of the room, updated for the stay of the royal couple (Fig. 8).
The products of Karl Greenberg ’s small furniture and upholstery workshop, in which 30 apprentices and five apprentices worked in the 1880s, was awarded a medal at the Paris Exhibition of 1878 and the Big - a silver medal received in 1885 from the city of St. Petersburg - “for a very good furnishing and upholstery work ”, Greenberg supplied and refurbished furniture in the palace for several decades. Large ash wardrobes with sliding doors for the wardrobes of the Emperor and Empress, two of which have survived to this day, were made by him in the 1890s.
By September 1896, in the Alexander Palace, in addition to Opoch-valna, the Rosewood drawing room and the Lilac study (room “ mauve ”) were ready for the Empress’s half, the Restroom and the Study for Nicholas II . The decoration of these rooms was created at the factory of FF Meltzer according to the designs of the architect RF Meltzer, who included 10% in his brother’s estimate documentation - “for drawing up drawings and technical supervision of painting, plastering and stove works”. The volume and terms of the order are impressive: for the Lilac office alone, the factory produced more than 30 pieces of lacquered furniture, and, as FF Meltzer wrote in his commitment, “the deadline for the execution of the main aforementioned works, including drawing up drawings, patterns, models, is 2 1 / 2 months". At the same time, Melzer not only made furniture, panels and “veneered pianos in the style of a room,” but also put tagans, lighting equipment, fireplaces, fabrics on walls and window fittings. The short terms of execution of the order were due to the large and well-established production and the use of proven samples of serial production, distinguished by high quality, in the furnishing of the imperial palace.
The furniture of the created interiors fit quite well with the historicism style of the 1890s - this is the furniture of the “third rococo” of the Lilac office, the “peasant chairs” of Nikolai’s study, two “richly carved” armchairs “ Renaissance ” made of walnut and chairs “a la Chippendale” Libraries and the State Office of Nicholas II , supplied by Meltzer’s firm in 1896-1898 (ill. 9-13).
Among the best works performed in 1902-1903 by the “duet” of the Meltzer’s in the palace are the state rooms of the royal couple - the Maple Drawing Room of the Empress and the New Study of Nicholas II , in which mahogany furniture , ceramic fireplaces from Vienna, marble columns on mezzanines made by Duckerhoff & Neumann from Nassau. Meltzer put in the Emperor’s Cabinet plafonds “with variegated glasses in tiffany soldering”, sconces “with tiffany tulips”, lamps over a round table and billiards, and 8 glasses “motley tiffany soldered for transoms.” Similar equipment and more than 40 pieces of built-in and free-standing furniture were made for the Empress’s Maple Drawing Room (Figures 14-18).
In 1903, Melzer completed a large amount of work in the children’s rooms, the corridor and the Corner Room of the upper floor, for which the furniture made of ash and oak was painted in ivory and maple green. In the rooms of the emperor’s children, objects were painted in ivory and decorated with pink, blue and green stripes, combined with the Chin designs on the walls and draperies on the windows. At that time, white painted furniture was in vogue: in 1895, on the name day of Grand Duchess Olga, sister of Nicholas II , the imperial “gave her various white furniture covered with beautiful chintz”; painted objects were also in the Empress’s purple study.
Some furniture today, items from the rooms of the imperial children can be seen in the collection of the State Hermitage, in pre-war photographs, watercolors of the 1930s, and on projects by the architect of the court office, Danini (ill. 19). Among them is a drawing of a dining room wardrobe designed by him in the 1900s, and a drawing of an icon case for the heir’s bedroom. The children’s dining room - an almost square room with two windows to the park - was located above Alexandra Feodorovna’s service quarters. As in other interiors, its walls were covered with an English chin, which the empress considered a hygienic material suitable for children’s apartments. In the dining room there were: a dining table, a sideboard, several side tables and Viennese chairs with overhead cushions. It is interesting to note that the chairs were of different heights - in accordance with the age and height of the Grand Duchesses.
Danini also belongs to the project of the icon case for the bedroom of Tsarevich Alexei, made at the Melzer factory. “A cabinet with six compartments with closed cabinets in the lower part, painted in ivory and decorated with twisted columns and flat carvings, was located in the corner of the room and was filled with icons of the“ new letter ”in vestments or frames, as well as images, crosses, etc. porcelain with Easter eggs. The same icon cases with icons were in the bedrooms of all the august children (ill. 20, 21).
All work in the Alexander Palace from the first years of the imperial couple’s stay in it was carried out under the supervision of Alexandra Feodorovna. The Empress approved the samples of the carpets; at her request, a fireplace was made from green majolica tiles in a nickel-plated frame in the ladies’ dressing room; lamps of her choice were installed for electric lighting, and even samples of bronze handles for doors and windows were submitted to her; fulfilling her desire, Danini was instructed to write, according to the available samples from Darmstadt - the empress’s hometown - wallpaper for the upper floor of the left wing of the palace, etc. Alexandra Feodorovna lovingly landscaped her house, using all the technical achievements of that time to create coziness and comfort. So, for example, in 1897 the Empress ordered “in their Majesties’ own chambers and in the rooms of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna.
This house was filled with things that reminded the owners of private and official events of their lives, favorite books and photographs of relatives and friends, it smelled of flowers, which Alexandra Fyodorovna loved very much, the House in the Alexander Palace pleased the family of Nicholas II and, leaving it early in the morning on August 1, 1917 years, they hoped to return to Tsarskoe…
This, however, did not happen, and the history of the palace after the Romanovs turned out to be as tragic as the fate of its last inhabitants, and the preserved objects still cannot return to their historical places.“
