One hundred and fifty-five lacquer panels for the Chinese Hall of the Catherine Palace have arrived after nearly two years of production in China.

The Chinese Hall is one of Catherine the Great's Private Rooms in the Zubov (South) Wing of the Catherine Palace. It was designed by architect Charles Cameron in the late eighteenth century, lost during the Nazi occupation in 1941–44 and reconstructed thanks to PJSC Gazprom in 2019–24. But the final touches are yet to be added.

The Hall's magnificent decoration includes wall panels of two types: polychrome lacquers in the kuan cai technique, a.k.a. Coromandel lacquer in Europe, and gold on black lacquers in the miaojin technique. Their manufacturing was entrusted to the highly qualified craftsmen of Beijing New Dancing Lion Art Co., Ltd. (Beijing Xinxingshi) after an agreement signed between Tsarskoe Selo, Gazprom's Social Initiatives Support Foundation and the Chinese company in 2023. A pilot production of two trial panels in 2022 was supervised by Mr Cheng Xiangjun, a lacquer art specialist and associate professor at Tsinghua University and director of Lacquer Art Committee in the Chinese Arts and Crafts Artists Association, and by lacquer restoration specialists from the Palace Museum of Beijing.

The original panels in the Chinese Hall came from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Chinese screens depicting subjects like figures in landscapes, figures on clouds, Taoist immortals, and various landscapes with palaces, bridges, pavilions, gazebos, trees, capes and islands.

The scientific reconstruction of the Coromandel lacquers is based on the surviving eighteenth-century samples from the Chinese Theatre in the Alexander Park of Tsarskoe Selo, as well as on an authentic seventeenth-century Chinese twelve-panel screen from the State Hermitage collection. The gold on black lacquers' reconstruction refers to images on eighteenth-century Chinese furniture pieces preserved in Tsarskoe Selo and other museums, and on a screen and a tray of the same period from the collection of Tsarskoe Selo. 

After careful unpacking, the re-created panels will be installed on the walls in the Chinese Hall, with all works to be be completed in the summer. The historic interior will regain its reconstructed magnificent chandeliers and some of its original furniture, including eighteenth-century chairs from Guangzhou, Cameron's table and armchairs, and console tables. In 2025, twelve decorative chinoiserie sets were reconstructed and installed over the Hall's doors and windows.

The Chinese Hall is the largest room restored during our project The Private Space of Catherine II, which was launched together with PJSC Gazprom in 2019. The other seven Private Rooms of Catherine II are the Blue Study or Snuffbox, the Mirror and Silver Studies, the Bedchamber, the Domed Hall, the Dressing Room and the Raphael Room. Those were the private apartments of Catherine the Great, designed for her by the architects Charles Cameron and Giacomo Quarenghi in the eighteenth century and destroyed during the Second World War.