Nicholas Merchant speaks to Rochdale Antiques Society

Nicholas Merchant speaks to Rochdale Antiques Society

Nicholas Merchant, a highly respected antiques expert and lecturer, especially on the decorative and fine arts, spoke to Rochdale Antiques Society about the collections of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great of Russia.

In the early 18th century Peter the Great was the first Czar to turn to the West as a sphere of modern influence.

He was greatly interested in all new things and built up huge collections of tools, sailing items, clocks, medical and dental equipment plus curiosities from all over the world. He collected plants and had an enormous album made up of dried specimens. He studied mineralogy and acquired many items in order to discover how they were formed and where they came from.

As an autocratic ruler he could command the best and brought in experts from Europe to help build St Petersburg city with its magnificent palaces and the dockyard where he was very involved in the creation of the Russian navy.

He built the first library in Russia and filled it with books from Europe. His curiosity knew no bounds and he wanted to educate the people around him to give them wider knowledge of the world especially European inventions and art.

Catherine was a German princess who married Peter the Great’s grandson. She was much more intelligent and capable than her husband so when he died young she was accepted as the new Czar, becoming known as the Empress.

She had admired Peter the Great and continued his activities of collecting, although in her case it was jewellery and precious metals.

She realised that as an outsider she had to impress the Russian people to maintain her position and she worked hard at securing that place and succeeded, being lauded as Catherine the Great.

She didn’t just dress the part in sumptuous gowns and jewels, but created a kind of constitution for Russia and took Crimea into the Russian Empire.

She was interested in new ideas and discussed philosophy with people such as Voltaire.

She bought art collections from Europe, including the whole collection of Robert Walpole’s from Houghton Hall in Norfolk for £30,000 in 1747.

She loved new materials such as cream ware which didn’t exist in Russia, and bought large dinner services from Wedgewood and Sevres. She brought expert craftsmen from Europe to teach Russians how to produce beautiful silver and gold pieces.

All these wonderful items needed to be housed somewhere and so she had the Winter Palace, now the Hermitage, extended on a large scale.

Nicholas Merchant concluded by saying that Peter collected to educate his people, Catherine collected to adorn.

The next meeting of Rochdale Antiques Society is on Wednesday 14 January at 7.30pm at St Vincent’s Community Centre, Caldershaw Road, and the speaker is Will Farmer (an auctioneer who has appeared on Antiques Roadshow) on the subject of Lost and Found: Great finds in the saleroom.