NEW YORK, NY.- This December, Sotheby’s will present From the Vaults of A La Vieille Russie, a landmark sale drawn from the holdings of one of the world’s most respected authorities on Fabergé, Russian works of art, European decorative arts and antique jewelry. Celebrating its 175th anniversary this year, the family-owned New York institution has helped shape generations of collectors and major museum collections through its scholarship and connoisseurship. Reflecting both the firm’s rich history and the tastes of the extraordinary family behind it, the sale encompasses works across a remarkable breadth of periods and categories, from superb Fabergé works and masterful European gold boxes to paintings, icons, porcelain, silver, Imperial objects, and Swiss mechanical marvels.

Many of the works in the sale were featured in seminal exhibitions of Fabergé and Russian works of art from the 1930s onward, staged by leading international museums and by A La Vieille Russie itself. Together, these exhibitions helped shape both scholarly understanding and collector appreciation of Russian art in the West, bringing many of the works to public attention before they entered renowned private collections.

This unprecedented offering of more than 300 works will be sold in New York this December in a dedicated live and online sale, with a combined estimate in excess of $15 million. Complementing the live auction, the online sale will include works offered without reserve, underscoring the collection’s breadth and accessibility. Ahead of the auctions, select highlights will embark on a worldwide tour, with exhibitions scheduled in Paris, Geneva, and London, in addition to the pre-sale exhibition in New York.

As it enters its next chapter, the gallery will place greater emphasis on antique and period jewelry while continuing to offer exceptional decorative works of art, including works by Fabergé. The selection of works from the gallery’s vaults for sale at Sotheby’s reflects this evolution and offers collectors an unprecedented opportunity to acquire pieces with a direct connection to one of the most respected names in the field.

The gallery’s active program continues this fall with The Uncommon Jewel: Rare Materials, Remarkable Stories, a selling exhibition opening November 17 at its Fifth Avenue gallery in conjunction with NYC Jewelry Week. In January, A La Vieille Russie will participate in The Winter Show at the Park Avenue Armory for the 56th time.

From the Vaults of A La Vieille Russie celebrates not only the splendor of Imperial Russian and European decorative arts, but also the gallery’s pivotal role in building and defining the market for them. Many of the works boast distinguished exhibition histories; others are appearing on the market for the first time in decades, and several will be offered at auction for the very first time.





“Since its founding in Kyiv in 1851, and through its evolution in Paris and New York, A La Vieille Russie has not only brought the greatest works by Fabergé to this country — it has shaped the very market for Russian works of art here. The gallery advised and guided the formation of the major American Fabergé collections, including those that now form the heart of museum holdings, and set standards of scholarship, taste, and provenance that define the field today.”

“The family’s stewardship of this material, a legacy now spanning multiple generations and continents, stands as one of the most consequential contributions to the understanding, appreciation, and collecting of Russian masterpieces in the world. Whether through seminal loans, landmark sales, or its special relationships with private collectors and curators, A La Vieille Russie has been central to the globalization of Russian treasures, and to the way we think about them today. It is a privilege to present a collection of such lasting significance, and a truly unprecedented opportunity to acquire works of this caliber from one of the most esteemed galleries in the world.”

Collection Highlights

ICONIC FABERGÉ

A La Vieille Russie is known worldwide as the leading dealer and international expert in the work of goldsmith and jeweler Carl Fabergé, who was himself a client of the gallery. The family’s stewardship of this material stands as one of the most consequential contributions to the understanding, appreciation, and collecting of Fabergé in the world. As such, the collection spans the vast range of objects created by Fabergé, including extraordinarily delicate hardstone flowers, gold boxes, desk accessories, hardstone figures and animal models, jewelry, and much more.

The pièce de résistance of the collection is an incredibly rare and impressive Fabergé varicolor gold, rock crystal, mother of pearl and guilloché enamel model sedan chair. Estimated in excess of $1 million, it is one of only six miniature sedan chairs by Fabergé known to survive, and arguably the most elaborately designed example known. Miniature furniture and sedan chairs are among the rarest types of objects produced by the firm and seldom appear on the market, with the present example coming to auction for the first time since its initial acquisition more than a century ago.

The present sedan chair boasts illustrious provenance, first recorded in the possession of Leopold Rothschild, son of Baron Lionel de Rothschild — members of a family who were among the Fabergé firm’s principal patrons. Records from The Rothschild Archive reveal that Leopold purchased the present model as a gift for his brother, Alfred, in 1910 for £146 pounds. Intricately designed in the Louis XV style, and made of mother-of-pearl, gold, rock crystal, and pink enamel, the piece was executed by Fabergé head workmaster, Henrik Wigström, and typifies his more exuberant designs.

The Fabergé firm was famous for the whimsy of its miniature objets de fantaisie, which included tiny replica furniture fitted with hinged or functional elements, such as the working door and removable handles on the sedan chair. The minute scale and diversity of materials used in these objects showcased Fabergé’s craftsmen at their most inventive, replicating the materials of the full-scale original in miniature. As with this object, the door opens to reveal a mother-of-pearl interior simulating a silk lining, the rock crystal windows are delicately etched to simulate gauze curtains, and the mother-of-pearl interior has even been engraved to match the ornamentation on the chair’s exterior.

Drawing widely on French sources, Wigström developed a diversity of guilloché enamel techniques, including the highly technically complex layering of circular, floral and linear guilloché enamel designs on the present sedan chair. Next to the Imperial Eggs, the sedan chair is one of Wigström’s most impressive expressions of enameling and intricate goldsmithing on a virtuoso scale.

The sale also includes exquisite examples representing the best of Fabergé’s famous lapidary work, chief among them a group of flower studies. Fabergé flower studies are among the most delicate and technically masterful of the firm’s creations. Employing a range of artists across Fabergé’s workshop, from stonecutters to gem-setters, flowers such as the three examples in the collection stand as a lasting testament to the diversity and ingenuity of Fabergé and its thoughtful use of precious materials. Elegant and simple in form, the flowers were, in Carl Fabergé’s own words, intended for a high-society clientele “long tired of many diamonds and pearls.” Indeed, the most dedicated collectors of Fabergé flowers were the Imperial family, who gifted them to one another. Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna is said to have had the largest collection of Fabergé flowers with just over thirty examples. Her collection, as well as that of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, formed part of the first exhibition of Fabergé flowers at the 1900 exposition universelle in Paris.

Fabergé flowers are extremely rare, but rarer still are those with Imperial provenance. This gold, enamel and rock crystal flower study of violets was purchased in 1901 by Emperor Nicholas II and his wife, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna (est. $300,000–500,000). In the language of flowers, violets symbolize “thoughts occupied with love” and connote faithfulness, making this joint purchase a fitting emblem of the Imperial couple’s devotion to one another. The Empress had an avid passion for flowers — violets and the color mauve among her favorites — as attested by numerous photographs of her surrounded by blooms preserved in the Imperial family’s albums. Its Imperial provenance and masterful enamelwork, capturing the subtlest of details down to the browning of the tips of the leaves, make this one of the most significant Fabergé flower studies known outside the British Royal Collection, and arguably, the finest study of a violet extant today.





Among Fabergé’s flower studies, this gold, hardstone and enamel study of a Japanese garden is notable for its exceptional intricacy (est. $300,000–500,000). It is one of Fabergé’s best examples of japonisme and the influence of Japanese art on Fabergé. In addition to its original box and impressive exhibition history, an original Fabergé photograph of this object exists in an album in the Fersman Mineralogical Institute, Moscow. These albums of photographs of the Fabergé workshops and some carvings, mainly flowers and animals, were given to the Institute by Peter Carl Fabergé’s son, Agathon, in 1926. In this study, a gold pine tree rises from a pot carved from nephrite set on an aventurine quartz base — one of a small number of Fabergé plant and flower studies not displayed in a rock crystal vase.

This beautiful gold and nephrite dandelion (est. $250,000–350,000) carries noble provenance, having been in the collection of Miss Emily Yznaga, sister of the Duchess of Manchester and one of three celebrated Yznaga sisters from Cuba who were renowned beauties of Edwardian high society. Emily Yznaga went on to lend important works by Fabergé to the very first major exhibition of Russian art held in London, at 1 Belgrave Square in 1935, and the present dandelion retains its original “J” exhibition label from that landmark show — as well as its original Fabergé box, a rarity among the firm’s flower studies. Although a handful of dandelion specimens are known, the present example is entirely fresh to the market, having been held in A La Vieille Russie’s ownership for many decades.

As this model reflects, Fabergé’s clientele often favored the simpler, more modern flowers of the Russian countryside over elaborate blooms. The process behind such pieces — from the cutting of the rock crystal vase to the setting of tiny diamonds along natural threads of seed-down — was a painstaking one. The gentle lean of the gold stem within its pot is perfectly balanced by the movement carved into its nephrite leaves, while bunches of the dandelion’s parachute-like seeds, rendered in the finest gold wire and topped with minute rose-cut diamonds, complete the illusion to wondrous effect.

Few objects in the sale speak as intimately to the inner workings of the Fabergé firm as this sumptuously decorated silver-gilt beaker, which unites two of the most celebrated names in Russian enameling — Carl Fabergé and Feodor Rückert (est. $180,000–250,000). Presented by Rückert to Fabergé in 1912 to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Fabergé’s Moscow branch, the piece is both an exceptional example of Rückert’s mature work and an unusually personal document in the history of the firm.

The beaker’s significance is made explicit by its dedicatory inscription: “XXV. To the highly esteemed Carl Gustavovich, in gratitude. F. I. Rückert. 1912.” Rather than a commission for one of Fabergé’s clients, this was a work made by one of the firm’s most distinguished independent masters for Fabergé himself — a gesture of gratitude that speaks to the patronage, commercial platform, and international clientele that Rückert’s association with the firm had afforded him. The painted reserve depicts the façade of Fabergé’s Moscow premises at 5 Kuznetsky Most with remarkable architectural precision. Its restrained, almost grisaille palette, set against a cloudy blue sky, contrasts strikingly with the rich cloisonné decoration surrounding it, so exacting in its detail that Rückert is thought to have worked from a contemporary photograph of the building. The beaker belongs to the celebrated late phase of Rückert’s career, when increasingly sophisticated combinations of cloisonné and painted en plein enamel became a hallmark of his work. Widely exhibited at leading institutions and museums such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Victoria and Albert Museum, and the State Hermitage Museum, this incredibly rare object now comes to auction for the first time.

While the Rückert beaker offers a rare glimpse into the personal and professional relationships that shaped the Fabergé firm, other highlights of the sale demonstrate the House’s extraordinary creativity as a maker of objects. Among the most striking is a rare varicolor gold loving cup, a sculptural and highly distinctive work that ranks among Fabergé’s most inventive modern designs (est. $70,000–100,000). One of Fabergé’s most distinctive goldsmithing achievements, this rare object exemplifies the firm’s ability to reinterpret historical techniques through a decidedly modern lens. Inspired by the use of colored gold in 18th-century French goldwork, the vessel is engraved with alternating feather-form lozenges and raised on a pair of elegantly stepped feet, creating a dynamic interplay of texture, color, and form.

As a uniquely conceived design, the loving cup has been widely exhibited and is perhaps most notably illustrated alongside H.M. Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother during its exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1977. Its distinguished provenance includes the collections of the mining industrialist, philanthropist, and renowned Fabergé collector Lansdell K. Christie, and later Sir Charles Clore, the British financier, philanthropist, and retail magnate. An icon of Fabergé’s ingenious goldsmithing, the loving cup combines technical virtuosity with remarkable originality. Appearing at auction for the first time in four decades, it stands among the finest expressions of the firm’s enduring capacity for innovation.

IMPERIAL PROVENANCE

Amongst the many Imperial Russian treasures that have passed through A La Vieille Russie’s galleries, perhaps none is more iconic than this silver-gilt samovar by Nicholls & Plincke (est. $300,000–500,000). A masterpiece of silversmithing with clear Imperial ties, it has remained one of the most important works in the gallery’s collection and was a highlight of its landmark 1936 exhibition, “The Schaffer Collection of Authentic Imperial Russian Art Treasures,” held at its original galleries at Rockefeller Center in New York.

Forming the handle of its spout is the cypher of Grand Duke Alexander Alexandrovich, the future Emperor Alexander III. The samovar dates to 1866, the year he became heir to the Russian throne and wed Princess Dagmar of Denmark, the future Empress Maria Feodorovna. The couple’s wedding, an exceptionally lavish affair held in the Imperial Chapel of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, marked one of the great ceremonial occasions of the Russian court.

The samovar is arguably one of the most significant surviving examples of Imperial silver by the renowned firm Nicholls & Plincke, known widely as “The English Shop” and the primary supplier of silverware to the Russian Imperial Court from the 1840s through the 1870s. Its production bears the hallmark of Robert Kokhun, the prominent St. Petersburg silversmith who ran the firm’s manufacturing workshop.

PAINTINGS & ICONS

The Collection is also highlighted by a series of paintings and works on paper by leading Russian painters of the late 19th and 20th centuries, by such celebrated names as Isaak Levitan, Ivan Shishkin, Viktor Vasnetsov, and Ivan Aivazovsky. Particularly exciting is the appearance at auction of a group of works by Alexander Yakovlev, mainly from the Croisière noire, the automobile expedition across the African continent organized by the French car manufacturer Citroën in 1924–25, in which Yakovlev participated as the official artist. These works were included in the Alexander Yakovlev exhibition held at A La Vieille Russie in 1993, the artist’s first solo show in half a century.

Among the highlights is a lovely example of one of Ivan Aivazovsky’s favorite subjects, the coast of his native Crimea, to which he turned throughout a sixty-year career as the leading marine painter of his generation. Painted in 1896, The Bay of Yalta held a special place in his work — he painted the town and its surrounding coastline in every decade of his career, in every light and season, in works ranging from small panels to monumental canvases collected by patrons including Pavel Tretyakov and the Imperial family. Bathed in the soft, rose-colored light of a setting sun, a two-masted ship flying the Russian Imperial flag anchors the scene, while sailors below load a boat with provisions against a choppy sea — a quietly Romantic tension between the vastness of nature and the industry of man that recurs throughout Aivazovsky’s oeuvre.

The painting was completed a year before Aivazovsky’s eightieth birthday and the sixtieth anniversary of his career, a period in which he continued to work and exhibit with undiminished vigor. Remarkably, the canvas survives unlined, with the artist’s signature and date still visible on the reverse. It left Russia before or shortly after the 1917 Revolution and entered a Norwegian collection by the 1920s, bearing a label from the Oslo framer and dealer Blomqvist. Having remained in the collection of A La Vieille Russie for decades, The Bay of Yalta will be offered at auction for the first time in its history, with an estimate of $600,000–800,000.

A La Vieille Russie’s exceptional record of provenance and exhibition history is particularly evident in the collection of icons that lies at the heart of the gallery’s history. Spanning well-provenanced and documented panel icons of the sixteenth century through to richly goldsmithed and enamelled works by the greatest Russian makers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the group is remarkable both for its breadth and for the histories attached to individual works, including icons from the collections of Zeiner-Henriksen and Helena Rubinstein.

At the heart of the group is an extremely rare jeweled, enameled and nielloed gold icon of the Mother of God of Vladimir, circa 1650 (est. in excess of $800,000). The painting and the goldsmithing of the present icon are of extremely fine quality and are the work of a small group of 17th century craftsmen known as the Tsar’s Icon Painters, or Tsarskie Ikonopistzi. These artists benefitted from tsarist patronage, working in the official workshops of the Kremlin Armory in Moscow, and created masterworks for Court and Kremlin churches, cathedrals and palaces, especially during the 17th century.

When the delicate gold oklad of this icon was dismantled years ago for cleaning, a note was found on the inside, on which was stated that the icon belonged to the family of the Counts Tolstoy, one of the oldest and most distinguished families of the Russian nobility. The association of an icon of this exceptional richness with the Tolstoy family is particularly evocative. In seventeenth-century Muscovite society, precious icons were not merely devotional objects but could constitute important dynastic possessions, preserved within aristocratic households, presented to churches and monasteries, or passed from one generation to another. Icons encased in gold and precious stones occupied the highest level of this tradition and were closely associated with the court, the great noble families and the most important ecclesiastical foundations. The inscription therefore provides significant evidence for the icon’s early aristocratic provenance. Further underscoring its importance, the icon was included in The Exhibition of Russian Art held in London in 1935, one of the earliest major international surveys devoted to Russian artistic achievement.

Its combination of finely worked gold, niello, enamel and precious stones places it among the most sumptuous objects of private devotion produced in seventeenth-century Muscovy. The rarity of the present icon is further underscored by the very small number of comparable early Russian icons with elaborate gold oklads that survive in major institutional collections, such as the Kremlin Armory and the Munich Schatzkammer.

SWISS MECHANICAL MARVELS AND OBJECTS OF VERTU

The Collection also features exceptional examples of watchmaking and automatons that embody the golden age of Swiss craftsmanship, when celebrated makers married technology and artistry to create miraculous objects in miniature for export throughout Europe, Turkey, India, and the Imperial court in China. Among the group are a number of extraordinary automata, including a curated selection of animals made in early 19th-century Switzerland, decorated in rich materials such as gold, enamel, pearls, and gemstones. While it is not certain who created the miniature animal automata, it is thought most likely to be the work of Henri Maillardet, who trained in the workshops of Jaquet-Droz.

Perhaps the most active and realistic in action of the small animal automata is the Siberian Mouse (est. $250,000–350,000). Life-size and cast in pearls, gold, and enamel, the mouse darts forward, twirls nervously as if fearing a concealed cat, then scampers off in a different direction. Only nine automaton mice of this type are thought to have survived, with others found in the most important collections, such as the Maurice and Edouard Sandoz Collection in Switzerland, the Sir David Salomons Collection in Jerusalem, and the Patek Philippe Museum, Geneva. The present lot has remained in the private collection of A La Vieille Russie for more than 60 years.

The collection further includes rare eighteenth century gold boxes featuring a variety of materials and techniques, including a magnificent gold and enamel box by the sought-after Parisian Joyallier Bijoutier, Jean Formey, which was formerly in the famous collection of mining magnate Sir Alfred Chester Beatty (est. $200,000–300,000). A few other examples by Formey combining exquisite gold work and finely painted enamels belong to the most important museum collections around the world, and the same applies to an elegant, early snuff box by Claude-Auguste Prévost, 1738–1744, masterfully inlaid with crescents and chevrons in differently shimmering hues of mother-of-pearl, whose comparables can be found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Musée du Louvre in Paris.