417 - Abraham IV Drentwett

Abraham IV Drentwett A silver dish and cover From the Government Service of Kharkiv Shallow square-shaped platter with incurved sides and a moulded rim. The body of the conical, stepped cloche decorated with a continuous laurel wreath and palmette frieze, surmounted by a large vase-shaped finial. The platter and cloche with dot-engraved inventory marks “X” for Kharkiv and “P:1”. The platter additionally bears a stamped inventory number “1” from the Winter Palace in St Petersburg; a double-headed eagle is engraved on the exterior of the body. Height 22 cm; length 27.3 cm; total weight 1,920 g. Augsburg, marks of Abraham IV Drentwett, 1781 - 1783. In response to the massive Pugachev Peasant Uprising (1773–1775), Catherine the Great issued a new provincial constitution in November 1775 to decentralize state control within the Russian Empire and standardize its administration. The eight major governorates or viceroyalties, which had already been established by Tsar Peter I, were redistricted, resulting in the creation of 40 new governorates initially, and later up to 51, each with roughly the same population. The governors of the most important governorates were provided with representative residences, for which the tsarina commissioned precious silver service from the finest silversmiths of her time. In Paris, she commissioned Robert-Joseph Auguste to create, among other things, the services for Yekaterinburg and Moscow. In London, the tableware for Tula and Yaroslavl was ordered—and orders for Kharkiv, Olonets, Perm, Riga, Voronezh, and Arkhangelsk were placed in Augsburg. The pieces from the German noble collections presented at Lempertz originate from the Perm and Kharkiv services. In 1907, the Imperial Russian officer and art historian Magnus Conrad Armin von Foelkersam compiled an illustrated inventory of the imperial palace collections, in which the surviving components of the Government Services are also listed (Inventaire de l'Argenterie conservé dans les Garde Meubles des Palais Imperiaux, Palais d'Hiver, Palais Anitchkov et Chateau Gatchino, St Petersburg, 1907). This reveals that at that time, there were a total of eight remaining square dishes with corresponding covers from the workshop of Abraham IV Drentwett. Provenance German aristocratic ownership. Literature Illustrated in cat. Kaiserlicher Glanz aus dem alten St. Petersburg, Augsburg, 1991, p. 46, fig. 7. For the engraved inventory marks, see ibid., p. 61. For the Government Services, see also Björn R. Kommer, Zirbelnuss und Zarenadler, Augsburger Silber für Katharina II. von Russland, Munich, 1997, pp. 17 ff., and Marina Lopato, ‘Neues über die Gouvernement-Service Zarin Katharinas II. von Russland’, in: Europäische Goldschmiedekunst, Festschrift für Helmut Seling, Munich, 2001, pp. 307 ff.