Updated May 5, 2003

For Immediate Release

Hillwood Museum & Gardens is pleased to announce two recent acquisitions that add depth to its world- renowned collection of Russian decorative arts. A Vershinin double-walled glass, one of thirteen in the world, is a key piece that complements the museum's collection of almost 500 glass objects dating from the late seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries. A niello teapot extends the breadth of Hillwood's collection of eighteenth-century Russian niello, which includes objects from the famous Chicherin service made for Denis Chicherin, the governor of Siberia under Catherine the Great, and a platter from the Konovnitsyn service made for Piotr Konovnitsyn, one of the heroes of the war against Napoleon and a member of the Rimsky-Korsakov family.

The Vershinin beaker is a rare double-walled glass made by the serf artisan Aleksandr Petrovich Vershinin (d.1822) at the Bakhmetev Glassworks in Nikol'sk, Russia, ca. 1815-1820. In the early nineteenth century, Vershinin, who had no formal artistic training, produced a small quantity of double- walled glasses with interiors decorated with extraordinarily detailed landscapes. The rural scenes feature a combination of natural materials including twigs, moss and leaves, as well as more typical artistic media such as painted bits of paper. The glass acquired by Hillwood is decorated with an autumnal landscape that includes a mill on an island in a small lake and fishermen on a bridge.

Vershinin's distinctive technique is based on a type of glass decoration known as Zwischengoldgläser, or double-walled glasses, which was popular in Bohemia in the mid-eighteenth century. The interior was painted with a thin layer of gold in which a design is engraved.

The niello teapot, ca. 1770, belongs to a group of highly sophisticated wares produced in Velikii Ustiug, an important commercial post in the late eighteenth century. Comparable objects include a tray, a casket, and a snuffbox now in the Historical Museum in Moscow. The casket bears the mark of Aleksei Moschnin, one of the finest silversmiths of the region in the eighteenth century. He is credited with introducing a whole new range of subjects for niello decoration as well as patterned grounds.

The body of the teapot is profusely decorated with niello rococo scrolls framing two harvest scenes. Additional raised, scrolled ornamentation decorates the rest of the teapot's surface. With the exception of the niello designs, the pot is finely engraved in a distinct sunray pattern. The lid is decorated with a garland of fruits and flowers.

Niello, made from metal sulfides, is a black substance used as a filling for engraved decoration. Alloys of silver, copper, lead and sulfur are mixed and ground to a fine powder before being applied to an engraved silver or gold surface. During firing, the niello melts and adheres to the metal. Subsequent polishing removes the raised niello, leaving a black design in the recesses. Niello dates to the classical period, but its use declined in post-Renaissance Europe, except in Russia, where fine niello inlay continued to be made until the early twentieth century.

The teapot is a valuable addition to the limited eighteenth-century niello collection at Hillwood. Other objects in the collection from this period from Velikii Ustiug include two shell and niello boxes. From Tobolsk, the other major center of niello production, Hillwood has two charkas from the Chicherin service. A later piece is the 1798 platter from Moscow, which was part of the Konovnitsyn service.

No pieces comparable to the teapot have come on the market in recent years. The last teapot of similar shape and decoration to appear in a public sale was at Christie's Geneva, November 11, 1975, lot number 61.

Hillwood Museum & Gardens was the Washington residence of Marjorie Merriweather Post (1887-1973), cereal heiress, collector, and philanthropist. Mrs. Post collected art throughout her life, concentrating on the finest French and Russian objects. The collection includes the largest assemblage of Russian imperial art outside of Russia, as well as a magnificent collection of eighteenth-century French decorative arts. Notable items include imperial eggs by Fabergé, chalices, icons, and liturgical vestments from imperial Russia, as well as Beauvais tapestries, and Sèvres porcelain from France. Hillwood is set amid twenty-five acres of natural woodlands and formal gardens including a French parterre and a Japanese-style garden.

Images Available upon request