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State Diamond Fund (Алмазный фонд) holds the rooms on the first floor of the State Armoury. State Diamond Fund was found in 1719 by Russian Emperor Peter I to store important government documents as well as valuables including items made of diamonds, gold and other state jewellery. Originally all valuables of Moscow Kremlin Diamond Fund were placed in a single chest box that was put inside a bigger one, which in turn was put inside another one. On significant days three noblemen came inside State Diamond Fund and opened three chests with three separate keys that they kept. State Diamonds didn't actually belong to the Romanov (or Romanoff) Dynasty that ruled Russian from 1613 to 1917. Instead the rented their jewellery from the government. During World War I most of state jewellery was moved from Russian capital of Saint Petersburg to Moscow for safekeeping. Soon thereafter capital was moved here as well. Newly established Soviet government sold many of items between 1927 and 1933 to support massive industrialization of the country. Many jewels were lost including eggs of Faberge, precious stones and many others. In 1967 State Diamond Fund was opened to the public on the regular bases. It houses some of the most precious stones, crowns and personal items that once belonged to the Romanov Imperial family and aristocracy.
Petersburg period
Royal rentery under Peter I
On
December 22, 1719, by decree of Peter I, a special chamber board was
organized - the first state organization to control the unique imperial
jewels. The regulations of the College of Chambers contained the first
complete list of orders, ceremonial jewelry and state regalia, and also
indicated the procedure for their storage in the Royal Renterium.
Borrowed from the German language, the word "renteria" is the old name
for the treasury. In the future, the Tsar's rentery was called "The
Cabinet of His Imperial Majesty the Diamond or Diamond Room." The decree
of Peter I legally defined renteria as the basis of the State Fund of
Precious Metals and Stones of Russia.
Along with the imperial
regalia, the Renteria collection was replenished with unique valuables
from all over the world and jewelry, which the Cabinet of the Court
ordered for awards and gifts from court jewelers. According to the
regulations, it was possible to receive any item from the vault only by
direct order of the emperor. The jewels were stored literally “behind
three locks”: three close courtiers - the chamber president, the chamber
adviser and the royal rentmaster - each had a unique key, and only when
they got together they could open the treasury.
Peter I invited
jewelers from all over Europe to the new capital, their masterpieces
actively replenished the stocks of the imperial treasury. The most
sought-after court jeweler of that time was the Swiss Jeremy Pozier, who
had the idea to model future products from wax. Since 1730, he lived and
worked in Russia, fulfilling numerous orders at the court, it was he who
was instructed to make the Great Imperial Crown for the coronation of
Catherine II in 1762. Other famous court jewelers of that era were
Louis-David Duval and his sons, Leopold Pfisterer, Georg Friedrich
Eckart.
Diamond room of Catherine II
The Russian imperial
court was famous for its splendor and wealth, which flourished during
the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna and Catherine II. The latter was
especially fond of precious stones, she introduced at court the fashion
for "card games on iridescent crystals", the empress even named her
personal stallion Diamond. Under Catherine II, the imperial collection
received the most significant amount of treasures.
In 1762,
immediately after accession to the throne, Catherine II ordered to equip
a special room for storing jewelry. By 1764, the empress's bedchamber
from the complex of ceremonial chambers was converted into the Diamond
Room, the interior of which was created by the architect Yuri Felten. By
this year, jewels from other residences of the court were brought to St.
Petersburg, tested, marked, weighed and entered into registers. The
Diamond Room was located on the second floor of the southeastern risalit
of the Winter Palace, and overlooked the Palace Square and the modern
Millionnaya Street.
According to Felten's project, the imperial
regalia were placed on a table in the center of the room under a crystal
dome. The collection grew and soon new storage facilities were needed -
glazed showcases, which were made by cabinetmaker David Roentgen.
"State regalia are ... under a cap, on the walls of this room there
are several cupboards with glass, where there is a lot of decorations of
diamond and other precious stones, in others there are a great many
orders, portraits of Her Imperial Majesty, snuff boxes, watches and
chains, ready-made, rings , bows, golden sword hilts and other precious
things. From this the Monarchine chooses what She pleases for the gifts
she gives away."
Johann Gottlieb Georgi
Although the Diamond
Room was a "secret" room with enhanced security and a whole staff of
servants, it was not only a treasury, but was residential and was used
for meetings between the Empress and those close to her. On frosty days,
even church services were sometimes held in it. The keys to the glazed
cabinets were at the camera-jungfer Anna Konstantinovna Skorokhodova.
There were so many jewels that even with the most careful accounting
they were sometimes lost. For example, this happened with the unique
panagia by Louis-David Duval, which Catherine II herself wrote about in
her note to Grigory Potemkin: “For two years I was looking for a
panagia, and it lay in a box that ... no one looked into.”
In the
late 1780s, the Raphael Loggias building was built along the Winter
Canal, where, by order of the Empress, a second Diamond Room was set up.
The main set of imperial regalia remained next to the throne room of
Catherine II, probably, two Diamond Rooms existed in parallel for some
time.
After the death of Catherine II in November 1796, the
Diamond Room was included in the private apartments of Empress Maria
Feodorovna, wife of Paul I. At that time, the room was located on the
site of the current hall No. 238 of the State Hermitage, closing the
enfilade axis of the new empress's chambers. After 1799, three pantries
were created in the Luggage Office for storing diamonds and jewelry,
each with specific functions.
The diamond room was officially
called "Pantry No. 1 of the Cameral Department of the Cabinet of His
Imperial Majesty" and was intended to store imperial regalia and crown
diamonds "for all eternity." In Pantry No. 2 there were furs,
collections of precious stones, premium and gift jewelry. Here was the
dowry of the Grand Duchesses who left after marriage abroad, so the
collection was constantly changing. Pantry No. 3 was set aside for
various stone products and was replenished by the mining department of
the Cameral Department. He was in charge of grinding and cutting
factories, porcelain, glass and mirror factories. The famous porcelain
and stone Easter eggs that the imperial family gave to their servants
and associates were located in the third pantry.
Significant sums
passed through three storerooms every year: in the period from 1797 to
1801 alone, more than 3.5 million rubles were spent on the purchase of
jewelry. According to the memoirs of the Prussian princess Charlotte, in
baptism - Alexandra Feodorovna, in 1817, before the wedding, Maria
Feodorovna personally chose for her a crown and "countless crown
decorations, under which [the princess] felt barely alive." At the same
time, Maria Feodorovna gave her daughter-in-law a five-strand pearl
necklace worth 142,579 rubles. After the wedding ceremony, the jewels
returned to the Diamond Room, "which at that time adjoined the Empress
Dowager's bedroom."
Under Maria Feodorovna, brides from the
imperial family were gathering in the Diamond Room before solemn
marriage ceremonies. In the diary of the Prussian Chief Hoffmeister
Countess Foss, there is an entry about visiting St. Petersburg in 1809,
and in particular about the Diamond Room: “We dined like a family at the
Queen Mother. Before dinner, I looked around the room, which contains a
whole collection of the most wonderful fur coats for gifts. One, of a
magnificent black-brown fox, is intended for our queen; diamonds, rings,
necklaces, in a word, all kinds of jewelry are stored here, from which
the Tsar himself chooses gifts for the elect.
In 1817-1818, the
leading architect of that time, Carl Rossi, developed a project for the
restructuring of Maria Feodorovna's apartments. According to his plan,
the Diamond Room was to move again and take the place of the modern hall
of the Hermitage No. 289. For a number of reasons, this project was not
implemented, and after the death of Maria Feodorovna and the ascension
to the throne of Nicholas I, the Diamond Room was transferred from the
main chambers to the service premises. Approximately in the same years,
part of the jewelry was transferred to the “Diamond Pantry” (pantry No.
1 of the Cameral Department of the Cabinet) - it was arranged on the
third floor of the palace, near the Church Stairs under the Small
Cathedral. Under Nicholas I, officials of the Cabinet of His Imperial
Majesty already clearly distinguished between the personal collections
of emperors and the state collections of the Hermitage.
Maria
Feodorovna was the first empress for whom the first coronation small
imperial crown was made - before they were used only for everyday exits.
The wife of Paul I wore a crown ordered by Catherine II from
Jean-Francois Loubier at the end of 1795. The jeweler completed the work
only in 1797, during preparations for the coronation of the new imperial
couple. Until 1828, the crown was kept in the private chambers of Maria
Feodorovna, and after her death it entered the Diamond Room, where it
received an estimated value of 48,750 rubles. At the court, there was a
tradition to dismantle small crowns after the death of the owners, and
distribute the stones from it to the heirs according to the will. The
small imperial crown of Maria Feodorovna was dismantled in 1840 by
decree of Nicholas I and later turned into a diamond headdress of Grand
Duchess Olga Nikolaevna