Orders, Decorations and Medals

Coalport China Plate, from the ‘Emperor of Russia’ dessert service commissioned by Queen Victoria in 1845 for presentation to Czar Nicholas I, decorated with the central badge of the Russian Order of St Andrew, and six surrounding panels depicting the Russian Orders of St George, St Alexander Nevsky, St Vladimir, The White Eagle, St Stanislaus, and St Anne, the reverse with gilt stamp of retailers A. B. & R. P. Daniell, Manufacturers to Her Majesty & The Royal Family, 254 mm diameter, faint hairline crack, otherwise in outstanding condition with almost all of its original finish, extremely rare £2000-3000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The collection of Medals formed by the Late Clive Nowell.

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Collection

This plate is part of sixty-two piece dessert service commissioned in 1845 by Queen Victoria to commemorate the state visit of Emperor Nicholas I to England in 1844. A plate from this service was displayed at the Great Exhibition in 1851 to demonstrate the factory's design and technical skills.

The Times, in its May 26, 1845 article praises the service: 'A dessert service, of the finest porcelain, has just been completed by command of Her Majesty by the Messrs. Daniell, of Wigmore-street and New Bond-street, to be presented to the Emperor of Russia. The service is for 60 persons; it is highly credible to the manufactories of this country, and displays, both in the shape of the various pieces of which it consists, the brilliancy of the colours, and the splendour of the gilding, a great advance both in the art of design and the mechanical processes or preparing the clay and producing the enamel of the surface.'

Nicholas I later commissioned the Imperial Porcelain Factory to produce an additional one hundred twenty-four pieces to be used at great banquets at His Majesty's private table.

In 1934, several pieces from the service were sold by the Narkomat of Foreign Trade outside of Russia but many of the surviving pieces are preserved in the Hermitage.

For comparable pieces from the same service, see State Hermitage, Style and Epoch in the Decorative Arts, St. Petersburg, 1996, illus. p. 87, p. 268. M. Messenger, Coalport 1795-1926, London, 1995, pp. 220-221 A. Fay-Hallé and B. Mundt, Nineteenth Century European Porcelain, London, 1983, illus. p. 206.