The Russian Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent execution of the Imperial family set in motion one of the largest movements of jewellery and precious objects in modern history. The Romanov dynasty had accumulated extraordinary gemstones over centuries, and the dispersal of those stones, through exile, sale, and Soviet government auction, reshaped the European jewellery market across the following two decades.
The Soviet catalogue
Before the sales began in earnest, the Soviet government commissioned a systematic inventory of the imperial treasures held in the Kremlin Armoury. In 1922, a commission led by mineralogist Alexander Fersman, assisted by Agathon Fabergé among others, began cataloguing the collection. The resulting publication, Russia's Treasure of Diamonds and Precious Stones, appeared in four parts between 1925 and 1926 in Russian, French, and English editions and was distributed to potential Western buyers. Although the text stated the jewels would not be sold, the multilingual catalogue served in practice as an illustrated sales document for a foreign audience.
The exile wave and Christie's 1927 sale
The first wave of dispersal came through the Russian aristocracy who had fled. Families who had managed to take pieces out sold what they could to sustain themselves in exile, often through the jewellery houses they had patronised before the war. Princess Zinaida Yusupova and Grand Duchess Vladimir were among those whose pieces entered the market through these channels.
A more concentrated release came in 1927, when a syndicate including the Hungarian-born London dealer Norman Weisz consigned 124 lots to Christie's on 16 March. Weisz and his partners had purchased the consignment directly from the Soviet government's Gokhran (State Depository for Valuables) for a reported £50,000; the auction, catalogued as An Important Assemblage of Magnificent Jewellery mostly dating from the 18th century, which formed part of the Russian State Jewels, was held to dissolve the partnership account.
The sale included as lot 62 a diamond nuptial crown, traditionally worn by imperial brides. The crown's diamonds, approximately 1,535 old mine-cut stones, date from the eighteenth century and were repurposed from items in the imperial treasury, possibly epaulet ornaments belonging to Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich, son of Catherine the Great. The tradition of dismantling and reassembling the crown after each royal wedding was reportedly abandoned in 1884, for the marriage of Grand Duchess Elizaveta Feodorovna; the preserved crown is believed to be the one that survives today. Empress Alexandra Feodorovna wore it at her 1894 wedding to Nicholas II. At auction it sold for £6,100 to the dealer Founés. Pierre Cartier subsequently acquired it, and when he showed it to Prince Christopher of Greece in New York, the Prince recognised it at once: the encounter is recorded in Christopher's 1938 autobiography. The crown eventually reached Marjorie Merriweather Post in 1966, purchased on her behalf by the dealer A La Vieille Russie at a Parke-Bernet auction of the estate of Helen de Kay. It is now at the Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens in Washington, D.C.
In 1929 Weisz was unsuccessfully sued by Princess Olga Paley, who argued the lots had been stolen property. Other pieces in the 1927 sale included a diadem made by court jeweller Carl Bolin for Empress Alexandra Feodorovna.
Specific pieces through Cartier
Several of the most significant acquisitions by Cartier can be traced with some precision. The Colombian emeralds of Grand Duchess Vladimir were retrieved from the Vladimir Palace by her English friend Bertie Stopford, who carried them out concealed in Gladstone bags after the Grand Duchess had already left the city. After her death in exile in 1920, her son Grand Duke Boris inherited the emeralds and sold them to Cartier. Cartier reset them into a sautoir for Edith Rockefeller McCormick. After McCormick's death, Cartier reacquired the stones and sold them to Barbara Hutton in 1936; in 1947 Hutton commissioned Cartier to create a new tiara setting for them.
Felix Yusupov, son of Princess Zinaida Yusupova, sold several pieces to Cartier in Paris after fleeing Russia, including the Polar Star diamond and a pair of diamond earrings said to have once belonged to Queen Marie Antoinette. Those earrings were subsequently sold by Cartier to Marjorie Merriweather Post and are now in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
A necklace of natural pearls once belonging to Catherine the Great was acquired by Cartier and sold to American automobile manufacturer Horace Dodge in 1920; secondary sources give its count as 389 pearls.
The Soviet sales and scale of dispersal
The second wave came from the Soviet government itself, which from the late 1920s into the 1930s sold off Imperial treasures to raise foreign currency. Dealers including Cartier and others in Paris and London were active buyers. The stones acquired through these channels entered a secondary market that mixed the recently dispersed with pieces in private hands for longer. Of the 773 items catalogued in the Diamond Fund, an estimated three-quarters were dispersed through sale or other means during this period. The items that remained, including the Great Imperial Crown and the Orlov Diamond, are now held in the Kremlin Diamond Fund.
Cartier's design response
For Cartier specifically, the dispersal provided access to stones of a quality and history that could not be sourced new. Many pieces were taken apart and the stones reset in contemporary designs. Carved emeralds and rubies from Mughal objects that had passed through the Russian imperial collections and then into exile were among the material that came to be reset in the tutti frutti jewellery style Cartier developed during the same period. The connection between the post-Revolution market and Cartier's most distinctive 1920s and 1930s work is direct.
Sources
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019), chs. 6–8
- Alexander Fersman, Russia's Treasure of Diamonds and Precious Stones (1925–1926), 4 vols
- GIA Gems & Gemology (Winter 2016), review of Fersman catalogue republication
- Hillwood Museum, Washington D.C., collection records (diamond nuptial crown)
