Seventy five rare pieces of the Korbievsky and Raphael porcelain services of the 19th and early 20th centuries have joined the Tsarskoe Selo collection as a generous donation by the art collector Mikhail Karisalov.

According to director Olga V. Taratynova, "It is a great joy for the museum to receive such a priceless gift from the period of Nicholas I to Nicholas II. Especially important that these pieces come from two legendary sets and are historically connected with the Tsarskoe Selo imperial residence. A long-time friend and partner of the museum, Mikhail Karisalov has been contributing to our collection for years, with some rarest works of Russian art, as well as with his financial support to help us win at several auctions. Many of those objects originate from the historical collection of Tsarskoe Selo."

The Korbievsky pieces in the donation are seventy three objects which include those made at St Petersburg's Imperial Porcelain Manufactory under Nicholas I, Alexander II, Alexander III and Nicholas II. Also, several wares possibly by the English Coalport porcelain of the early nineteenth century, which might serve as prototypes for the Korbievsky Service produced and expanded during the 1830s–1900s. The initial set was purchased for the Russian Imperial Court at the Paris shop of Gerard Corbié (hence the name, Korbievsky) in the 1820s and sent to the porcelain storage of Tsarskoe Selo in 1823. Plates for 150 more persons were added to the set by the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory in 1838, and tea/coffee cups with saucers in 1842. Other additions kept coming until the early twentieth century. St Petersburg's Kornilov Brothers also made pieces for the Korbievsky Service from the late 1840s to the 1870s. This set now graces the large and small tables in the Hermitage pavilion of Tsarskoe Selo, like it did under Nicolas I.

Two flat plates from the Raphael Service in the donation were produced by the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory in 1903. They bring the pieces of this set in the Tsarskoe Selo collection up to eleven. Other pieces of this set in our collection

The seventy five donated objects are now for three weeks on display in the First Antechamber of the Catherine Palace.