AN IMPORTANT AND EXTREMELY RARE PHOTOGRAPHIC CATALOGUE OF THE COLLECTION OF PETR ARKADEVICH KOCHUBEY -PERSONAL COPY c. 1870-80S

Sold at Gene Shapiro Auction September 29, 2012

Description
Catalogue. 2 Volumes. Folio. 400 x 320 mm. Half letter bindings, volume I with an impressed gilted K on the front cover for Kochubey. Petr Arkadevich Kochubey was a nobleman, member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, Chairman of the Russkogo Tekhnicheskaya Obshchestva [Russian Technical Society], and noted collector of antiques. This book of Kochubey’s famous collection of masterpieces of European and Russian decorative arts, known around the world during his lifetime, was printed in a very limited edition, probably just a few copies. The book is comprised of full pages of photographs (one photograph plate on each page), with the name of the photographer printed on the bottom of the plates: A. Delpace, St. Petersburg. Volume 1 contains 48 plates of photographs of items from Kochubey’s collection, including porcelain, enamels, silver, marble, ivory, and rare Russian objects. Plate 2 in Volume 1, depicting a pair of porcelain vases, has a contemporary handwritten inscription, probably by Kochubey’s hand, Prodany v angliiu za 35 tysiach/35,000/rub. ser. (“Sold in England for thirty-five thousand/35,000/silver rubles”). Many plates have pencil marks. Volume 2 (Supplement) contains 51 plates of photographs of chef d’ouevres of silver, porcelain, furniture, bronze, and other rare objects. One of Kochubey’s works, which appears on plate 42 of the second volume, is a silver soup tureen later known as the Thyssen Meissonier Tureen, one of only three pieces of silver made by Juste-Aurele Meissonier. It would eventually make its way into the collection of J. Pierpont Morgan, and later Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, and was offered at Sotheby’s in New York on May 13, 1998 at an estimate of $8,000,000-12,000,000

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