Russian gold and silverware

The collection of Russian gold and silverware is one of the main collections of Moscow Kremlin Museums. It includes jewelry works of XII to XX centuries, made basically of precious metals and stones, and numbers about 13200 exhibits. The collection with its variety and excellent artistic merits gives an opportunity to trace the development of the Russian jewelry art for a period of more than eight centuries. It helps to learn different types of articles and ways of adorning items made of precious metals, to trace the stylistic evolution of jewelry works. A lot of the collection monuments are memorial, linked to eminent statesmen, historical figures and important historical events.

The medieval part of the collection consists of XII - XIII centuries' items which represent the high level of jewelry art in Russia in the times before the Tartar yoke, precious articles of XIV-XV centuries indicative of the revival of artistic traditions and appearance of new creative impulses in the art of that time. The key monuments of the medieval part of the collection belong to the XVI-XVII centuries. They were created by the best court goldsmiths in the Kremlin workshops, Gold and Silver Chambers and were used to decorate official palace ceremonies and divine services. They belong to the masterpieces of national art and have no analogies in collections of this kind either in our country or abroad.

In the museum there are jewelry works of Novgorod, Pskov, towns of the Volga region and Solvychegodsk, which demonstrate the peculiarity of Old Russian art centers.

The jewelry art of XIII-early XX century is represented with creations by masters of Moscow, Saint-Petersburg and local artistic centers showing the evolution of art styles from Baroque to Modern. The works by the greatest masters of the XVIII century, such as A.Ratkov, A.Polozov, Ya. Maslenikov, I.Posiet who often worked on court orders illustrate the art of that time. A special place in gold and silver smithery of the XIX century belongs to works by the largest Russian jewelry firms, such as the firms of Khlebnikov, Ovchinnikov, Kurlyukov, Faberge. Among the works of the Faberge Firm Easter Eggs with surprising secrets are particularly far-famed. Ten of them are being preserved in the Museum collection.

The collection also comprises author works by artists-jewelers of the second part of the XX century that represent the development tendencies of Russian Jewelry Art nowadays.

Besides, the Museum's collection includes artworks of Huns' epoch, monuments of Byzantine, South-Slavic and Georgian art, which help to understand the sources and relations of the Russian Medieval culture.