Twenty-two rare artefacts of the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries joined the Tsarskoe Selo Collection thanks to a generous donation by Mikhail Karisalov, a longtime friend of our Museum.

The artefacts bring the number of objects that were either donated by Mr Karisalov or obtained with his support for our collections in recent years, up to over two hundred and thirty.

This donation includes six flat plates of 1903 from the famous Raphael Service, which was one of the best products by the St Petersburg Imperial Porcelain Manufactory in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. During a span of twenty years new pieces were regularly produced as Christmas gifts to the imperial family. Commissioned by Tsar Alexander III on the occasion of Italian painter Raphael's quatercentenary in 1883 and designed specially for Tsarskoe Selo, the porcelain masterpiece with ornaments inspired by the Raphael Rooms never made it here until over a hundred years later, when its pieces finally started to appear in our collection. Now the Museum has eighteen pieces of the Raphael Service, half of them donated by Mr Karisalov.

The larger part of the donation consists of sixteen wine glasses and chalices produced by St Petersburg's Imperial Glass Factory from the mid-1740s to the early 1760s using Bohemian glass-making techniques.

The oldest chalice of the mid-1740s is decorated with the monogram of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna and a double-headed eagle under the Russian imperial crown. A chalice of 1755–1760s has an engraved effigy of Elizabeth Petrovna and her EPI monogram. Three chalices of the Catherine II's time bear her EAII monogram in a roundel under the imperial crown, and a double-headed eagle. Such glass products were usually made on occasions like birthdays, name days, enthronement anniversaries and battle victories.

All the donated objects are on display for one month in the Third Antechamber of the Catherine Palace.

Some of the earlier donations by Mikhail Karisalov: 2023, 2022, 2020