Fabergé gilded silver and shaded cloisonné enamel kovsh, workmaster Feodor Rückert, Moscow, 1908-1917

This large and imposing cockerel-form kovsh is based on the oldest connections between the ancient vessel and the form of a bird. Interestingly, it reverses the essential form. While the prow usually serves as the “head” and the handle as a swimming bird’s tail feathers, in this case the bird has been turned around to face the interior. The exterior is decorated with stylized flowers, feathers, and berries ornament in shades of blue, brown, peach, green, and black with most of the forms picked out with fine silver wires or twisted cables. The handle has been cast and chased in the relatively realistic form of the head of a cockerel with a red coxcomb and long, curling feathers. 

BEMAF recently learned that this kovsh was once in the possession of the Hammer Galleries, founded by the Armand Hammer (1898-1990). While Hammer’s organization of exhibition-sales of Russian Imperial art in American department stores is well known, Hammer Galleries’ collaboration with Park & Tilford Distilleries has so far escaped notice. In 1936, the spirits manufacturer used Hammer’s most luxurious wares to enhance the perception of their recently introduced “Private Stock.” Advertisements in a number of American newspapers feature the cockerel-form kovsh, presented as having been in the private collection of Emperor Nicholas II. The ad shown here appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer in February 1936. Another one of the company’s ads used the 1912 Tsarevich Egg, now in the collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The kovsh, like the 1912 Egg, lent a sense of exclusivity to the newly introduced rye whiskey while also inviting readers to visit Hammer Galleries to purchase it or some other treasure. 

Silver, enamel, gilding, garnets, nephrite

10 1/4 x 9 in. (25.4 x 22.8 cm)

Inv. no. ab_0012

Exhibited: 

Moscow, Gosudarstvennyi istoriko-kulʹturnyi muzei-zapovednik "Moskovskii Kremlʹ", “Karl Faberzhe i Fedor Riukert. Shedevry russkoi emali,” 9 October 2020 – 14 February 2021, no. 247. 

Publications:

Muntyan, Tatiana. Fëdor Rückert i Karl Faberzhe. Moscow: M. Revyakin, 2016, p. 101.

Muntyan, T.N. Karl Faberzhe i Fedor Riukert. Shedevry russkoi emali. Moscow: Gosudarstvennyi istoriko-kulʹturnyi muzei-zapovednik "Moskovskii Kremlʹ", 2020. Cat. no. 247, p. 207.