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Two
New Loans Enhance Hillwood's Historic Russian Collection
Washington, D.C. –
Hillwood Museum & Gardens is pleased to announce two important loans of
objects that notably complement the museum's world-renowned collection of
Russian decorative arts: a rare embroidered icon produced around 1660 and
150 pieces of porcelain from the collection of Raymond F. Piper.
A Rare Embroidered Icon
A rare embroidered
icon is now on view in the Russian Liturgical Gallery through December 31,
2003. It will again be on display in Hillwood's upcoming temporary
exhibition, Tradition in Transition: Russian Icons in
the Age of the Romanovs, June 1 through December 31, 2004.
The icon was produced around 1660 in a workshop belonging to Anna Ivanovna
Stroganov, a member of one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in
Russia.
The icon's
attribution was confirmed after a private collector contacted Hillwood
curator Karen L. Kettering, Ph.D., while in search of information
concerning an embroidery that he had inherited. Prior to this icon coming
to light, only 175 pieces from the Stroganov workshops were known to
exist. The majority of these objects are in public museums in the Russian
cities of Solvychegodsk and Perm. The Stroganov embroidery identified by
Kettering is the first discovered outside Russia.
The icon depicts the
Lamentation, with Mary, Mary Magdalene, Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea,
and others standing over the body of Christ after his crucifixion. Each
patterned or textured surface is achieved through the use of different
types of stitches. Such an image would have taken one to two years to
complete. The Stroganov workshop in which this item was made is considered
to have been one of the most important in seventeenth-century Russia.
Located in Solvychegodsk, almost 500 miles north of Moscow, it is known to
have produced works of unparalleled excellence. That high quality is
particularly apparent in the figures mourning over the body of Christ.
Based on the icon's shape, size, and image of the Lamentation, it is
believed that this rare discovery was originally a winding cloth (Rus.
plashchanitsa), a special type of icon venerated on Good Friday during
Easter services, or an aer (Rus. vozdukh), a veil used to cover the
unconsecrated bread during the Liturgy. This icon would originally have
included fabric surrounding the image to identify its purpose. This fabric
has been removed, but Kettering continues to research the function of the
piece.
Embroidered icon
Solvychegodsk, Russia, ca. 1660
Workshop of Anna Ivanovna Stroganov
Silk, linen, and gold- and silver-wrapped silk threads
H. 12 7/8 inches (32.7 cm)
W. 20 15/16 inches (53.2 cm)
Private collection
Piper
Collection
Hillwood
Museum & Gardens has successfully negotiated a five-year loan of more than
150 pieces of Russian porcelain from the collection of Raymond F. Piper of
Plymouth, Wisconsin. Most of the pieces in the Piper collection were
produced in the Imperial Porcelain Factory, which operated in St.
Petersburg from 1744 to 1917. Mr. Piper, a retired English teacher,
initially collected silver and European porcelain and first became
interested in Russian porcelain after a trip to the Soviet Union in 1975.
His research has kept him in contact since the 1970s with Hillwood's
curators, including curator emerita Anne Odom, who negotiated the loan.
Select objects from the collection went on view in September.
The Piper
collection beautifully complements Hillwood's extensive holdings of
Russian porcelain, which include twenty-two pieces of the famous Orlov
Service. A Piper bowl from this service is on display in the Mansion.
Catherine the Great presented this toilet and tea service to her favorite,
Grigorii Orlov, probably between 1762 and 1765. The Piper bowl, unlike
other pieces from the service held by Hillwood, is painted with a
polychrome military scene, likely a battle from the Seven Years War, which
ended in 1763.
A number of
Piper's objects from the reign of Nicholas II are featured in the Visitors
Center. They include one of four vases in his collection with underglaze
painting, a Chinese technique revived in Russia at the end of the
nineteenth century. The body of this vase, created in 1902, has a
monochrome underglaze and is decorated with a mythological figure in
pâte-sur-pâte. This latter technique involves creating a relief by
layering coats of slip clay, one on top of another. Hillwood is
particularly pleased to display this vase, as it has no examples of this
type of decoration in the museum's rich collection of vases from the
mid-nineteenth century.
Another
important piece on view is Lady with a Mask, a figure designed and
first modeled in 1906 by World of Art artist Konstantin Somov (1869–1939).
Somov is famous for his paintings of eighteenth-century women, like that
depicted in this porcelain object. The Imperial Porcelain Factory produced
this figure around 1910.
Pieces from
the Piper collection have been exhibited in several museums, including the
Edsell and Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Pointe, Michigan; the Lowe Art
Museum of the University of Miami; and the Payne Art Center in Oshkosh,
Wisconsin.
Bowl
St. Petersburg, ca. 1765
Imperial Porcelain Factory
Gavriil Kozlov, designer
Hard-paste porcelain
H. 2 5/8 inches (6.7 cm)
Diam. 10 ¾ inches (27.3 cm)
Raymond F. Piper Collection
Hillwood
Museum & Gardens was the Washington residence of Marjorie Merriweather
Post (1887–1973), cereal heiress and art collector, from 1955–1973. Mrs.
Post assembled the most comprehensive collection of Russian imperial art
outside of Russia and a world-renowned collection of eighteenth-century
French decorative arts. Among the notable items are imperial Fabergé eggs,
chalices, icons, and liturgical vestments from imperial Russia, Beauvais
tapestries, and Sèvres porcelain. Hillwood is set upon twenty-five acres,
twelve of which are enchanting formal gardens, including a Japanese-style
garden and a French parterre. Hillwood opened to the public in 1977.
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