ly all the school rooms, the libraries and even the bedrooms. The decoration of the main imperial residence, devised by leading architects was seen by the people of the time as an indicator of fashion, a demonstration of the latest trends in artistic and decorative craftsmanship. Drawings and sketches by gifted architects and designers working on the palace interiors were used for the production of furniture in the workshops of leading St Petersburg manufacturers – the Gambs brothers, Vasily Babkov, Konrad Gut, Adolf Emsen and others, who then included them with minor changes in their own ranges, delighting their customers with items from the furnishing of the palatial halls of “His Majesty the Emperor”. Having furniture similar to the monarch’s was always prestigious, although exact copies were generally avoided.
There are 300 items in the exhibition, the majority of which are being shown for the first time – drawn designs for furniture; engraved depictions of furniture from the showrooms of St Petersburg shops and workshops; watercolours depicting palace interiors and works of decorative and applied art – reflect the most distinctive phenomena of the time from an artistic point of view and with regard to the patterns of daily life.
The exhibition curator is Natalia Yuryevna Guseva, Candidate of Art Studies, deputy head of the State Hermitage’s Department of the History of Russian Culture.
A scholarly illustrated catalogue in Russian “Furniture for a Body’s Every Whim…” The Age of Historicism in Russia (St Petersburg: State Hermitage Publishing House, 2018 – 318 pp., ill.) has been prepared for the exhibition with a foreword by Mikhail Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage. The catalogue text is by Natalia Guseva.
The exhibition Furniture for a Body’s Every Whim… The Age of Historicism in Russia runs until 11th November 2018, in the the Manege of the Small Hermitage, in the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg
© State Hermitage Museum. 21 September 2018