English silver in Russia.

Many years ago the eminent silver dealer Eric Shrubsole stated that one of the most important and best-documented collections of Elizabethan silver was in what was then the Soviet Union. He lamented that it would remain largely unknown to scholars of English silver. The Soviet Union is no longer, and a visit to the Armory Museum of the Kremlin in Moscow reveals cabinet after cabinet of rare sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English silver of astonishing quality. From a collection of approximately five hundred pieces of English silver, some one hundred date to this early period. In England much of the silver made between the 1550s and 1660s was melted down during the Civil War, making what survives in Russia all the more important.

Recently a traveling exhibition drawn from this collection was co-organized by the Armory Museum, the Gilbert Collection in London, and the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut. The show is entitled Britannia and Muscovy: English Silver at the Court of the Tsars and recently opened in New Haven, where it may be seen until September 10. It then travels to London. The exhibition is comprised of nearly eighty objects. It includes silver made in France, but with a connection to England and Russia, as well as a few Russian-made objects to demonstrate the influence of English silver on goldsmiths there. Ornately embellished firearms are also included in this exhibition.

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The British first encountered Russian civilization in 1553 when Richard Chancellor, the pilot of the Edward Bonaventure, sailed with two other ships in search of a sea route to China and India. The ships were separated in a storm, and while searching for the other two, Chancellor landed on the Russian shore of the White Sea. Escorted overland to Moscovy, Chancellor was presented to Czar Ivan IV, and was overwhelmed by his incredible wealth. During an elaborate dinner, for example, the guests were attended by 140 servants and the czar changed jeweled crowns three times during the banquet. Chancellor described the "Cupboorde," or buffet, so laden with plate that it "was scant able to sustayne the weight of it; the better ...