Russian Sale Reports

THE RUSSIAN ART MARKET is very much alive despite the war in Ukraine and Putin’s attempts to destroy the Russian economy. Sotheby’s and Christie’s may have scaled back their Russian Art operations, but these days it doesn’t really matter whether consignors go to the big established firms or opt to sell with smaller outfits in a variety of countries. Every Russian item is scrutinized on-line by collectors from all over the world – especially Russia. Serendipitous discoveries are extremely rare. Nothing goes unnoticed by dealers and collectors.

It may be illegal to sell to Russian customers but, believe me, serious collectors aren’t thwarted: they use all sorts of proxies to buy stuff for them. According to current laws, resulting from sanctions, it’s forbidden to sell any luxury item to Russians worth over a few hundred dollars. So who’s buying Russian art? Russians, of course. That’s where the market is. How do they do it? Aided and abetted, in typically enterprising fashion, by cohorts of aides, proxies and untraceable intermediaries.

DAZZLING DALLAS

The sale of Imperial Fabergé & Russian Works of Art at Heritage Auctions in Dallas on May 17 was incomparably the major Russia sale of recent times. In the good old days Heritage would have printed a comprehensive catalogue. I hate the Sotheby’s/Christie’s-style penny-pinching, online-only catalogues we get nowadays. Like most collectors and dealers I want to have proper paper catalogues for my records.

This was the first big Russian sale put together by Nick Nicholson since becoming Heritage’s Senior Specialist in Russian Works of Art in October 2023. I’ve known and respected Nick since way back when – ever since he was working for Christie’s New York in the 1990s, to be precise.

The 179-lot sale totalled $5.69 million, more than double the high-estimate, with just 2% of the lots unsold – a sure indication that much of the material came from private collections and was fresh to the market. Any piece with an imperial provenance – and there were plenty of them – prompted soaraway bidding. It was, claimed Nicholson, ‘the type of sale not seen in the U.S. since the 1990s, when the Russian market moved to London. The majority of significant lots were purchased by U.S. collectors, who responded eagerly. The market remains strong for superlative objects with important provenance.’

The majority of the most significant lots were bought by American collectors, who responded eagerly; the rest, I understand, went to Europe and the rest of the world.  One new American collector bought a number of the most important lots. I couldn’t obtain any more details about the buyers, which is understandable. I don’t expect to be advised of buyers’ names and contact details… but to learn which country they come from would hardly be an infringement of privacy!

Some 13 lots made it past six figures, led by a diamond-set and enamelled, gold-mounted bowenite Picture Frame in the form of an egg, 7.6cm tall on an enamelled base, once owned by Nikolai II’s nephew Prince Vasily Romanov (Lot 82007). At $750,000 this posted a new record price for a Fabergé frame. It came in its original, burl birch fitted box and contained an original photo of Empress Maria Feodorovna, for whom it was doubtless commissioned.

NELKIN COLLECTION

 

 

The sale’s second highest price of $475,000 was prompted by one of the few items not by Fabergé: an Icon Lamp (or Lampada) commissioned in 1850 from Feodor Solntsev by Alexander II before he became Tsar, to commemorate the survival of his new-born son Alexis; it was placed before the tomb of Saint Metropolitan Alexis of Moscow in the Chudov Monastery in the Kremlin. The lampada (Lot 82177) was confiscated in Soviet times and sold abroad; the monastery was destroyed by order of Stalin in 1929.

The lampada was one of over eighty items from the Ruth S. Nelkin Collection from Stamford, Connecticut that majored on Fabergé enamels and some less exciting porcelain; all lots sold. ‘Ruth Nelkin was a passionate collector of Russian works of art in one of the last periods of Russian sales in the United States before Russian buyers returned to the market in the 1990s’ reveals Nicholson. ‘Her jeweller’s eye for quality in enamel and metalwork led her to acquire masterworks.’

 

Nelkin’s niftiest enamel, sold for $212,500, was the Rückert en plein and cloisonné enamel silver-gilt casket (Lot 82152) that she acquired in 1978, incorporating  a reproduction of Konstantin Makovsky’s 1883 Boyar Wedding Feast. A Rückert cloisonné enamel vase (Lot 82151) made $93,750. Pick of the collection’s numerous Imperial Porcelain figures were a Finnish Man & Woman  (Lot 82103) from the Peoples of Russia series (c.1913) at $112,500. An icon of St Nicholas the Wonderworker by Kuzma Konov (Lot 82173), with a silver-gilt filigree and gem-set oklad 26.7 x 22.2cm, took $100,000.

 

I had to go to a double-estimate $36,250 to secure a pair of translucent blue guilloché enamel, two-colour gold Opera Glasses by Henrik Wigström, with garlands etched into guilloché patterning under the enamel (Lot 82162, est. $12,000-18,000). Fabergé opera glasses are mighty rare. Only a handful were ever made. The Fabergé archives record another pair in pink enamel, probably made around the same time, that were sold in London in 1908. A pair set with diamonds, made for Tsarina Alexandra, are in the Link of Times Collection, in St Petersburg.

 

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Now for items of other provenance. There were three sturdy prices for hardstone animal figures, led by $312,500 for a purpurin Elephant & Castle once owned by Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna (Lot 82030) – the Order of the Elephant being the most important order of chivalry in Maria Feodorovna’s native Denmark.  The ‘castle’ on the elephant’s back took the form of a white and gold champlevé enamel turret; diamonds were used for the elephant’s eyes. The purpurin was of a deep, rich red colour known in French as sang de bœuf (‘bull’s blood’). A gold-mounted carved hardstone Cockerel (Lot 82006), almost identical to a fowl in the British Royal Collection, strutted to $300,000. It came with its original fitted case, as did a diamond-eyed obsidian hardstone Bear (Lot 82017) that prowled to $106,250.

 

A silver-gilt Clock by Mikhail Perkhin with gold mounts, pearl bezel and apple-green guilloché enamel (Lot 82018) collected $118,750, and a delicate, two-colour gold and opalescent, diamond-shaped Desk-Clock once owned by Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna powered to $300,000 (Lot 82005). The guilloché enamel was coloured a striking rich pink (some people never consider buying Fabergé that isn’t pink, or in the pinkest condition!).

An unusually small Rückert cloisonné and en plein enamel box with silver-gilt mounts (5.1 x 4.4cm), once owned by Dowager Empress Maria and brought to the United States by Prince Vasily, was acquired for $250,000 (Lot 82004). The lid contained a masterly miniature reproduction of Falconet’s famous statue of Peter the Great (the ‘Bronze Horseman’) on its giant slab of granite. I was less than impressed to read at the bottom of the catalogue entry Heritage Auctions thanks Valentin Skurlov for his assistance with the research of this lot. The items is obviously by Rückert, so no endorsement was required. Heritage could have saved themselves the expense of bringing in a so-called ‘expert’ here!

 

 

 

I liked the look of the Dowager Empress’s nephrite Gum-Pot in the form of a Tomato with a diamond-set silver stalk (Lot 82031). Despite a gobsmacking $150,000 estimate this made it to $218,750. Then came two bell-pushes which, revealed the catalogue, were once owned by Nikolai II. A silver-gilt Bell-Push (Lot 82027) with gold mounts and mustard-yellow guilloché enamel scored a healthy $150,000, while a spherical, gold-mounted translucent pink guilloché enamel Bell-Push by Perkhin (Lot 82003), with a gold leaf-patterned white band around the equator (so to speak), hit $75,000. I have a couple of very similar bell-pushes in different-coloured enamel.

 

The estate of Sicily-born Princess Maria Romanova yielded a couple of modest items. Maria (who died in New York in September 2023, aged 91) was the widow of Prince Alexander Nikitich Romanov (great-nephew of Nicholas II); the couple ‘became one of the most socially prominent in New York and were well known as serious collectors’ asserts Nicholson. An Ovchinnikov baptismal triptych icon (featuring SS Nikita, Xenia and Alexander), commissioned by Alexander’s father Prince Nikita Alexandrovich in 1900, took $36,250; and a Fabergé champlevé enamel silver paper-knife presented by Nicholas II to his brother-in-law Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich sold for $30,000 (Lot 82044).

 

 

SPRINGTIME IN GENEVA

There was a sprinkling of Fabergé at two sales in Geneva in May. Sotheby’s sale of Gold Boxes & Fabergé on May 13 featured two miniature photograph frames by Mikhail Perkhin.

 

 

A circular Photo Frame comprising three pink ‘arms’ with sunburst engine-turning, and three white ‘arms’ with chevron engine-turning, scored CHF 69,850 (Lot 1501, est. CHF 15,000-25,000). It was purchased in St Petersburg by Nikolai II’s younger brother Grand Duke George Alexandrovich in 1897, and came with a fitted Wartski case. Sotheby’s claimed, perhaps with potential clients in mind, that the clock was ‘in the form of a Star of David.’ Hey, come on! The idea of a Russian aristocrat buying a ‘Jewish-looking’ frame or a clock is preposterous! According to Sotheby’s, Grand Duke George may have bought this frame  ‘due to an admiration of a highly similar frame owned by his ‘uncle’ [sic] Nicholas II a couple of weeks earlier.’ No chance! Nicholas II and his family were fervent anti-Semites!

Sotheby’s cataloguer did not do his or her homework. Okay, maybe it was some unpaid intern just out of school – but that’s no excuse for being historically clueless when you’re working for what is purportedly one of the world’s top auction firms. Next time Sotheby’s write a Fabergé lot description, perhaps they could stoop to doing a teeny-weeny bit of research? Like even opening the odd reference book… or just googling the stuff?

The six-pointed star crops up in many cultures around the world, including Christianity and Islam, and only became irrevocably associated with Judaism after being stitched on to the flag of the new State of Israel in 1948. The star-shaped Fabergé frames, bought by the Tsar and his brother, were doubtless meant to evoke the Holy Trinity: God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit descending to earth, then ascending to Heaven after the Crucifixion. (The same star, formed by two overlapping equilateral triangles, is also used by Freemasons, who refer to it as Solomon’s Seal; Freemasonry was only legalized in Russia after 1905).

A rectangular Photo Frame with ‘Chartreuse yellow’ guilloché enamel and a yellow gold laurel-wreath border, bought by Tsarina Alexandra in St Petersburg in 1897, made CHF 40,640 (Lot 1502, est. CHF 12,000-18,000).

 

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Two superb Fabergé clocks graced Christie’s Magnificent Jewels two days later on May 15. A gold-mounted and guilloché enamel silver-gilt desk Imperial Presentation Clock (diam. 12.5 cm) by Wigström with an octagonal dial and opalescent salmon pink guilloché enamel, painted en grisaille and with a ribbon-tied, laurel-chased gold rim, soared to a triple-estimate CHF 535,000 (Lot 57, est. CHF 120-180,000). The clock was further decorated with an eight-point star with similar guilloché enamel, within opaque white enamel borders on an opalescent white guilloché enamel ground. It came with its original, fitted Fabergé wooden case, and had a prestigious provenance: it was presented to Lord-in-Waiting Baron Herschell by Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna when she attended Edward VII’s funeral in London in 1910. Latterly the clock had been with A La Vieille Russie; I’d seen it on their booth during the latest TEFAF show in Maastricht, among other places.

 

An enamel, seed pearl and sycamore Desk Clock by Victor Aarne (c.1890), with circular dial, lilac guilloché enamel and a seed pearl bezel, sold above top-estimate for CHF 113,400 (Lot 56, est. CHF 60-90,000). This had a later fitted case by Wartski, which my good friend once said to me that it is just as good as a real Faberge one. I chuckled over this presumptuous statement.

 

FALL IN CALIFORNIA

 

 

The Jewellery & Watches at John Moran Auctioneers on September 17 in Monrovia, a few miles north-east of Los Angeles, had three notable items of Fabergé. A Perkhin gold and enamel Lorgnette, with reeded and engraved red and gold enamel, accented by rose and green gold and finished with ‘X’ accents of rose-cut diamonds, made $25,400 (Lot 131, est. $10,000-15,000). It came with a fitted Wartski box. There were two nice pieces by Wigström. A silver, enamel and seed pearl Bell-Push with a floral bouquet and ribbon motif enhanced by blue enamel, its white chalcedony push-bell encircled by seed pearls, that took $24,130, five times estimate; the enamel was the same colour as that of the Wigström Opera-Glasses sold at Heritage in May – and the etched flower-pattern under the enamel was similar too. The Bell-Push retained its original fitted box (Lot 130). A gold and enamel mounted Parasol Handle (c.1880) with a floral bouquet motif, enhanced with cobalt blue enamel, finished with a ring of etched green gold and a singular round chrysolite, climbed to $16,510. The silver-gilt magnifying glass was of a later date. I am quite certain that the magnifying glass handle  was never intended to be connected to the glass in the first place, it was born as a parasol handle and for some unknown reasons some smart-ass decided to create this bizarre contraption. The ensemble came with a fitted Wartski box (Lot 132, est. $4,000-6,000). I’ve never heard of John Moran Auctioneers. They do not specialize in Fabergé. There are thousands of such outfits around the world. Moran’s sale results only prove my earlier point that nothing is hidden or secret any more: even small auction-firms command prices on a par with the big guys. 25 years ago you could still track down something nobody else knew about. Nowadays sale platforms like Invaluable reveal everything. Forget about making a killing. No more bargains!

 

ONLINE IN NEW YORK

 

An online Collections sale organized by Christie’s New York from October 9-22 featured 42 items by Fabergé, including more items from the recognizable stock of A La Vieille Russie. I hope this doesn’t signal that this venerable firm – founded 1851 – is thinking of calling it a day. Along with Wartski of London, they’ve been movers and shakers on the Russian market for as long as anyone can remember. Quality competition is always healthy. They’re also the only front-line Fabergé dealers in America. The first sign they were scaling back came a few years ago when they moved from their street-front boutique at the corner of 59th Street and Fifth Avenue, next to the Plaza Hotel, to fourth-floor ‘appointment only’ premises one block away. I note with some alarm that the most recent item in their website’s ‘Hot off the Press’ section is their 2022 Holiday Catalogue. It would be a tremendous blow to the Fabergé retail business if A La Vieille Russie left the market.

The highlight of Christie’s on-line sale was a tapering, opalescent enamelled gold clock by Wigström, 11cm high, painted with a view of the mega-spired St Petersburg Admiralty (built under Alexander I) in sepia enamel: one of a series of objects featuring St Petersburg monuments Fabergé produced to commemorate the city’s bicentenary in 1903. The clock was shown at A La Vieille Russie’s Wigström exhibition in New York in 2000, and at the Romance to Revolution exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2021/22. Bidding was fierce: the clock doubled predictions on $504,000 (Lot 178, est. $200-250,000).

 

Also by Wigström: a guilloché enamel, parcel-gilt silver Playing-Card Box at $100,800 (Lot 175, est. $40,000-60,000); and a jewelled and champlevé enamel gold-mounted nephrite square bowl at $63,000 (Lot 180, est. €10-15,000).

 

The sale’s second big price was $252,000 for a large, cloisonné enamel silver-gilt Kovsh (Lot 215, est. $80,000-120,000). A jewelled, two-colour gold-mounted, guilloché and champlevé enamel Carnet-de-Bal also made it to six figures with $119,700 (Lot 222, est. $60,000-80,000).

Lot 220 was a whimsical, gold-mounted by Mikhail Perkhin – ‘realistically carved as a potato’ according to Christie’s Botanical Department – that claimed a double-estimate $81,900. Why did Christie’s call it a Potato? Other root vegetables come to mind too. Maybe it’s some kind of esoteric fruit from the Amazon Jungle (after all, Fabergé produced a model of a Capybara, who live in the same neighbourhood). Or something from Africa – maybe a deformed crocodile egg, or simply a roadside rock. Who knows what Perkhin had in mind when he contrived this beauty? Whatever it is, we’ll never know. I hope the new owner will enjoy this lump.
 
Christie’s also claimed the box was made from agate (agate, really? My gem advisor says that it is clearly jasper) – in flagrant contradiction to what Géza von Habsburg wrote in the catalogue to the Fabergé In America exhibition held in 1996/7 at the Metropolitan Museum, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, New Orleans Museum of Art and Cleveland Museum of Art. Géza stated the box (catalogue item 33) was made of ‘flecked breccia marble.’ Agate is often brown (like a potato) and sometimes stripey (not like a potato), but it is never flecked with little black veins, like this particular ‘potato.’ Who was the Christie’s wise-guy who consigned Géza’s accurate description of the box’s material to the potato-bin of art history? And why? Did Christie’s reckon that lying about it being made of agate not marble would up the value?

Also by Perkhin: a champlevé enamel and hardstone Bonbonnière that fetched $81,900 (Lot 184, est. $25,000-35,000), and a two-colour gold enamel Cup that rose to $60,480 (Lot 169, est. $12,000-18,000). A jewelled two-colour gold, silver-gilt and guilloché enamel Taper-Stick by Feodor Afanasiev made $52,920 (Lot 176, est. $15-20,000).

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Christie’s corresponding on-line Collections sale in London (October 9-23) showcased a square, translucent blue enamel Desk Clock (c.1890) by Mikhail Perkhin, with a wavy sunburst guilloché ground within a laurel-chased silver border, that sold for a hefty, premium-inclusive £107,100 (Lot 249, est. £40,000-60,000).

 

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There was a strong Russian component to Doyle’s wide-ranging auction in New York on October 16, assembled by the firm’s highly respected Senior Vice-President Mark Moehrke, who joined Doyle in 2016 after working for Christie’s New York. Mark and I have known each other for donkey’s years.

The 66 Russian items totalled $520,000, with 52 of them (79%) sold. Enamels led the way. Top price was $108,450 for a parcel-gilt silver and cloisonné enamel Icon of Christ Pantocrator (1890) by Ovchinnikov, 22.5 x 18.4cm, once owned by Tsarist warlord Baron Wrangel (Lot 505). The $8,000-12,000 estimate was beyond modest, for reasons unknown. Maybe a misprint! Icons with enamel sell for huge prices these days.

A silver-gilt and cloisonné enamel Three-Handled Cup by Rückert, 13.3cm tall, made $38,400 as anticipated (Lot 547). An engraved inscription underneath revealed that it was presented by a Doctor and Mrs Polk to Doctor and Mrs Hamlen on 21 November 1904.  A silver and champlevé enamel Ovchinnikov Casket (1884), 8.9 x 12 x 6.7cm, with domed lid and velvet interior, claimed a triple-estimate $25,600 (Lot 504).

The sale’s only Fabergé item was a small, tired-looking enamel Icon (Moscow 1908-17), 12.7 x 7.5cm (Lot 552), with its Guardian Angel raising a (very faded) cross with his right hand and clutching an orb in his left. Bidding also reached triple-estimate: $48,000. But the sale’s top enamel failed to sell: a tiny silver-gilt, cloisonné and en plein enamel Rückert Box, its lid featuring a reproduction of Sergei Solomko’s painting The  Rivals. The box had been expected to bring $80,000-120,000 (Lot 548).

 

 

A pair of late Alexander II Imperial Porcelain, Louis XV-style Baluster Vases (c.1881) with gilt-bronze mounts, 61cm tall, fetched a mid-estimate $102,100 (Lot 564). Each vase had a painted frieze around the belly full of gambolling putti – flanking Sea God Neptune on a shell and Booze God Bacchus atop a barrel of wine. A similar vase by the same designer (German-born August Spiess) is in Peterhof.

A Village Radio scene made in Leningrad’s Soviet Porcelain Factory in 1927 doubled predictions on $54,400 (Lot 560). Naum Kongiser’s design has a goody-goody pioneer encouraging his elderly dedushka (sitting on a tree trunk sporting incongruous headphones) to ingurgitate his daily dose of Stalinist propaganda.

LOOKING AHEAD

Sotheby’s have a sale of Fabergé, Imperial & Revolutionary Art in London on November 26 (no details as yet).

Heritage are planning a fresh sale of Imperial Fabergé & Russian Works of Art in Dallas for December 16, with an important collection of Russian Cloisonné Enamels to the fore.  ‘Not since the important sales of the Greenfield Collection at Christie’s in 1998, and the Chen Collection in London in 2008, has such an important collection been offered at auction’ Nick Nicholson assures me. His sale will also feature ‘rare and unusual’ items of Imperial Porcelain plus early enamels from Solvychegodsk and Veliky Ustyug.

I’m confident both auctions will be successful – and continue to help resurrect the Russian market towards where it used to be.