Artful salute to St. Peterburg's 300th

NEW YORK, Oct. 16 (UPI) -- The continuing celebration of St. Petersburg's 300th birthday year has inspired the Metropolitan Museum to mount a one-gallery exhibition of art and precious objects from its collections, all of which once graced the palaces of Russia's imperial family and members of its court.

Aptly titled "Celebrating St. Petersburg," the show is as dazzling as any exhibit of the treasures of a spoiled aristocracy with rubles to burn has a right to be. Some 75 displays, not a few glittering with diamonds, will be on view in the Met's new special exhibitions gallery for European decorative arts through Jan. 25.

The centerpiece for all these luxurious goods made in England, France, Germany and Switzerland, as well as in Russia, is the only example of steel furniture made at the metal workshops of the Tula Imperial Armory that can be seen outside Russia. It is a pedestal table with four dolphin-footed legs and a mirror top, completely fashioned of faceted studs of cut steel that glitter like diamonds.

Made for Empress Maria Feodorovna about 1785, it once graced her bedroom in the Pavlovsk Palace near St. Petersburg. It disappeared after the 1917 revolution and surfaced at auction in London in 2001, selling to a dealer for $990,223, the highest price ever paid for a piece of Russian furniture at public sale. Its acquisition last year by the Metropolitan was made possible by the Annenberg Foundation.

"We've been looking for a piece of Tula furniture for 25 years," said Wolfram Koeppe, the Met's associate curator of European sculpture and decorative arts, in an interview. "This table is the ultimate embodiment of 18th century Russian decorative arts."

If Tula was the ultimate in the 18th century, it was Faberge in the late 19th and early 20th century. The exhibit has a number of glamorous trinkets from the Peter Carl Faberge workshop in St. Petersburg, including a small figure of a peasant woman, one of many created out of various precious hardstones, and an Art Nouveau jade frog with diamond eyes posed on a white marble pedestal.

Peter the Great founded St. Petersburg in 1703 by fiat, announcing "Here it has been ordained for us by nature that we shall break a window through to Europe."

He transformed a swampy area on the Gulf of Finland into a capital city of canals bordered by the palaces of courtiers who were forced to move there if they wished to remain in favor and power. Peter's lifestyle was notoriously simple, but his widow - the peasant-born Catherine I who succeeded him - soon acquired extravagant tastes under the tutelage of her favorite, Prince Alexander Menshikov, who ruled in her name.

A silver gilt ewer and basin of magnificent size decorated with the double-eagle imperial coat of arms, ordered as part of a complete dinner service from London silversmith Samuel Margas Jr. in 1726, the year after Peter's death, gives the viewer an idea of Catherine's aspirations to be one of Europe's great hostesses. A pensive portrait bust of Menshikov fashioned from red pine is displayed nearby, the detailing of his curly wig and dress armor a whittling wonder.

Odd pieces from other great imperial table services in silver, silver gilt and porcelain include two candy dishes in the shape of scallops and one of 22 heavy silver tureens with their own stands from a French-made service in the neo-Classic style given by Catherine II to her lover, Count Nicholas Orloff. There also are fine examples of porcelains made for the imperial tables by the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory established in St. Petersburg in 1744.

Russia's princely families lived almost as well as the Romanovs and none were richer than the Demidoffs. On view are a pair of ravishingly beautiful silver gilt cruet stands bearing sculptures of Leda and the swan and engraved glass bottles ordered from the Paris silversmith, J.-B.-C. Odiot, in 1817 by Prince Nicholas Demidoff.

There also are examples of German silver including a tea and coffee service of rococo design ornamented with enamel portraits of Catherine II.

When it came to furnishings, the St. Petersburg smart set's preference was French. One of the grandest displays is a very feminine secretary-desk fashioned of rare woods and ornamented with Sevres porcelain floral plaques from the Paris workshop of the great 18th century cabinetmaker Martin Carlin. Empress Maria Feodorovna picked it out herself on an incognito visit to Paris in 1782 for her boudoir at Pavlovsk.

Other treasures that demand attention are a remarkably lifelike marble bust of philosopher Francois Voltaire, Catherine II's pen pal, by Jean-Antoine Houdon, who also sculpted George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette, five exquisite Swiss watches with enamel portraits of Nicholas I and Alexander II, and examples of fine bone carving associated with the whaling port of Archangelsk, notably a pair of perforated walrus ivory urns designed to hold potpourri.

A whole array of jewel-encrusted gold and enamel snuffboxes are on display, but the most cunning of all in design is one made of an actual shell of a green turban snail fitted with silver mounts. It stands like a beacon of spontaneous natural design in a sea of artificiality.