Written by Ashton Hawkins
Some of the Russian pieces in the auction (including the Russian silver coffee service), were collected by my Russian-born mother. She was raised in St. Petersburg, and at the age of seventeen, her father abruptly moved his family to their property in Crimea, two weeks after Czar Nicholas abdicated in 1917. Six months later, my mother and grandfather escaped to Istanbul and ultimately to Lausanne, Switzerland.
My mother was placed in Brillantmont, a privately owned boarding school in Lausanne. My grandfather returned to Crimea – against everyone’s advice – to try to sell the family’s vineyards and other properties. Four months later, he was murdered by the “Reds”. My mother was obliged to stay on at Brillantmont, and the head mistress, Mademoiselle Heubi (whose family had owned the school for fifty years), kept her on as her assistant because she was fluent in French, English, Russian and German from her schooling in St. Petersburg.
Ten years later, my mother had become Assistant Head Mistress, and during that time, she met my American father. He was living in New York and came to St. Moritz to ski and to see his younger sister who was enrolled in the school earlier that year. They fell in love, and four months later were married in London, where my mother had a number of supportive relatives. They moved to New York a month before the stock market crash in 1929. Fortunately, after the crash, my parents were able to soldier on in the following years and build a new and interesting life.
I became interested in Russian works of art because of my mother’s heritage and began to collect Russian objects as a young man. I often gave them to my mother as a Christmas present.
The diverse collection, to be included in our September 27th auction, includes a number of Russian silver boxes, including trompe l’oeil cigar boxes and cigarette cases and Niello snuff boxes. There is an exotic Russian lacquer glove box from the Estate of Diana Vreeland, a Russian Wheel Engraved Goblet, Russian Engraved Silver Tea and Coffee Service, Moscow, 1884; a pair of Russian porcelain grisaille cups and saucers with views of St. Petersburg, and a Russian enamel coronation cup from the Coronation of Nicholas II in 1896 to name a few.