A set of ten silver-gilt plates and a dish from the Orloff service, Edmé-Pierre Balzac and Claude Pierre Deville, Paris, 1770-1771

Catherine II, Empress of Russia (1729-1796), gifted to

Count Gregory Orloff (1734-1783) in 1772,

reacquired by Catherine II in 1784 and by descent in the imperial collections to

Czar Nicolas II (1868-1918) until 1917, 

Soviet government since 1919,

possibly Hermann Ball and Paul Graupe, Berlin, 25 September 1923,

private collection,

Galerie Sapjo, Monaco, 2017

The Orloff Service

Sophie-Frédérique-Augusta von Anhalt (1729-1796), a German princess, was chosen by Empress Elisabeth to marry her son and heir to the throne, the future Peter III, in order to strengthen the ties between the two nations. The union, celebrated in 1745, was not a happy one and the young woman overthrew her husband in 1762 becoming Catherine II, more commonly known as Catherine the Great. This annexation of the throne was made possible by the Gregory and Alexei Orloff, two brothers with military and political experience in Russia.

An enlightened despot, Catherine strengthened national unity by reforming the provinces, annexing Crimea and Poland and suppressing internal revolts. A Francophile, she was interested in the spirit of the Enlightenment, corresponding with Voltaire in particular and inviting him to stay with her in 1773. She would buy his library after his death in 1778. She also wrote fourteen theatre pieces in French. She was a keen art lover and inherited the collections of the Tsarina Elisabeth and bought many collections including the paintings of Johann Gotkowski in 1764 and those of Robert Walpole’s descendants in 1779. In order to decorate the various palaces of her vast empire, she ordered large silver services from the silversmiths of the European capitals Paris, London, Berlin and also St Petersburg. Thus, services were created for the palaces of Kazan, Riga, Nizhny Novgorod and Ekaterinoslav.

Catherine would have been familiar with the Parisian service made for her mother-in-law by François-Thomas Germain in 1756. However, ever eager to be at the forefront of artistic taste she moved away from want the rococo style and its asymmetrical forms, choosing instead a service which would embody the innovative spirit of the time. For this purpose she commissioned the sculptor Etienne-Maurice Falconet, a regular at the Court since his arrival in 1766, to have a service made for about sixty people. This order is well documented thanks to the correspondence between Catherine and Falconet. On 13 February 1770, she wrote “I have heard that you have drawings of silver service; I will see them gladly if you show them to me, because the fantasy could well take me to order one for about sixty persons”. (L. Réau, Correspondance de Falconet avec Catherine II, 1767-1778, Paris, 1921).

Falconet requested several designs from various silversmiths like Spriman and finally chose the Roëttiers family to execute this fabulous order of more than three thousand pieces including eight pots-à-oille (circular), eight tureens (oval), forty-eight pairs of torches, hundreds of plates and thousands of place settings. In 1771, she added to her initial order chocolate pots, milk jugs and stoves. The total cost of this service is estimated at one million two hundred thousand pounds (Foelkersam, Inventaire de l’argenterie conservée dans les garde-meubles des palais impériaux, St Petersburg, 1907).

Le service Orloff. Planche 32. Baron A. de Foelkersam, Inventaire de l’argenterie conservée dans les garde-meubles des palais impériaux, 1907

The style of this service is innovative, inspired by the first excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum publications thanks to the King of the Two-Sicilies in the years 1750-1760 and the rediscovery of the sober and delicate ancient style. No more scrolls or shells, but rather rosettes, flutes and laurel leaves which are found in the designs presented by the Roëttiers. This family of Antwerp origin is a great dynasty of goldsmiths and medal engravers. Jacques Roëttiers, born in 1707, received his training in the workshops of Thomas Germain and Nicolas Besnier. He was received as a master in 1733 and married Marie-Anne Besnier, the daughter of his master, the following year. He collaborated with his father-in-law who gave up his apartment in the Louvre in 1751. Taking advantage of his father-in-law’s position, he received prestigious orders and quickly became the King’s ordinary silversmith with his own lodging in the Louvre. His son Jacques-Nicolas began his apprenticeship in his father’s workshop in 1752 before becoming master in 1765. Father and son worked at the Court and made gold tableware for Madame du Barry.

When Falconet entrusted them with the order of Catherine II, through the intermediary of the company Barral, Chanony & compagnie, and after numerous exchanges of letters and revisions of the drawings, its realization was very fast. Catherine made the first payment on 14 January 1771 via her agent at the French court, Nikolai Khotinski. According to Falconet “they are encouraged to do well by the approval with which Your Majesty honored their sketches and I would be deceived if, for the execution, they did not make all that there can be of better in the kind”. The order was so large that the Roëttiers had to subcontract certain pieces, such as the plates, to the silversmiths Edmé-Pierre Balzac and Claude-Pierre Deville to meet the deadlines.

Between May 1771 and September 1775, thirteen or fourteen shipments per boat were sent to deliver the service, the majority being delivered in eighteen months. Catherine was very satisfied with the service, as she wrote to Falconet on August 18, 1771: “I am very happy that Messrs. Roëttiers is satisfied; I am very happy with a dozen pieces of silver plate that I received from Paris a month ago”. Even if she had herself corrected and chosen the designs of this personal service, she did not enjoy it for long. Indeed, she offered this magnificent service to Gregory Orloff, her favorite adviser for more than twelve years. Their relations have deteriorated for some time, Orloff had left to negotiate peace with the Ottomans in Focșani and Catherine had replaced Gregory with the young Alexander Vasiltchikov as her favorite.

The service could be seen as a parting gift, as she explains it to the elder brother Orloff, political adviser, “the silver service, of French invoice, which is in the cabinet. I wish to give it to the count G.G with the one that was bought to Danish minister for our daily use “.

Gregory Orloff took this service with him during his exile in Holland and kept it some ten years until his death in 1783. Catherine II was very affected by this disappearance and wished to buy back the service, as she confides it to her aide-de-camp Colonel Buxhoevden “...that the mentioned service... be inventoried and weighed with their cases and delivered to the persons in charge of the goldsmith’s shop of his Majesty Konstantin Kulichin and Ivan Rodionov”. She also wanted the Orloff family coat of arms to be removed, as evidenced by a letter from the court chancellor Aleksandr Bezborodko to Gregorii Nikitich Orloff.

After the death of Catherine II in 1796, the service was kept in the imperial collections, undergoing successive castings in 1838, 1841 and 1849. From 1904 it remained in the Imperial Winter Museum where it was listed by Baron Foelkersam in 1907. He still listed eight hundred and forty-two pieces. During the Russian Revolution of 1917, the imperial collections were confiscated and the new Soviet government sold the pieces of the service in the 1920s through the Antikvariat agency and by mutual agreement in Berlin to the major collectors. The majority of the service was sold in Berlin in September 1930 at large auctions organized by Ball & Graupe. The French art dealer Jacques Helft acquired many lots which he then sold to various important European collectors, such as a pair of pots-à-oille to Moïse de Camondo, pieces which are now kept in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

Today, about two hundred and thirty pieces are listed in public collections (Louvre Museum, Hermitage Museum, Metropolitan Museum of New York) and in private collections. Some of them have been offered at auction, such as in 1971 in the David-Weill collection, in 1992 in the Ortiz-Patino collection in New York, in 2011 in the Paul-Louis Weiller collection in Paris and in 2022 at Sotheby’s Paris.

Among the plates from the Orloff service which had been offered at auction, we can mention a set of twelve silver-gilt plates by Jacques-Nicolas Roettiers, Sotheby’s, London, 25 October 2016, lot 563, a set of eight silver-gilt plates, Christie’s, Paris, 4 October 2012, lot 29, and two sets of twelve, Artcurial, Paris, 16 December 2019, lots 9 and 10.