The art of crafting decorative objects from hardstones developed in Western Europe in the Renaissance, but in Russia, the lapidary arts did not flourish until the mid-18th century, when St. Petersburg was being built. Peter the Great founded the first imperial Russian lapidary in 1721. By 1800 Russia's rich mineral deposits were vastly exploited and countless varieties of stone were discovered; interest in geologic exploration was so intense it had been called "a common disease" by Empress Catherine the Great. This pair of candlesticks is an example of the early work of the Russian manufactories. A pair of columnar table decorations made at Kolyvan in 1790 for the Stroganoff Palace, now in The Hermitage, are a related example from the late 18th century. Both pairs use red jasper for the top and base, and quartz for the shaft. Count Alexander Stroganoff (1733-1811) was a great patron of the arts, president of the Imperial Academy of Arts and director of the Imperial Lapidary works.

Oil on canvas. Signed and dated 'R.S. 1804' (lower right). The featured ship is the Alfred, shown in three positions, thought to be off the Mersey, Liverpool.

Of tempera on canvas. Each panel depicting a vignette from the tale of Zemire et Azor showing elegant ladies and gentlemen in period costume variously swooning and indicating horror at the sight of the beastly Azor. All set within a painted faux gilt frame.

Oil on canvas.

Of mahogany. The cart section with shaped sides, lined with a detachable copper tray, is fronted by a carved head of a horse. The whole raised on finely turned concentric wheels each pair joined by an axel and held with split steel pins.

This picture made of 108 hand-painted tiles is attributed to Vicente Navarro, who ran the most important tile manufactory in Valencia in the mid-1700s. Valencia was the center of painted tile production in Spain at that time, and the city's workshops received commissions from the Spanish nobility and even royalty. One of the best-preserved examples of Navarro's style of rococo kitchen tile paintings can be found in the Casa del Marqués de Benicarlo, in Benicarlo, Spain. The Benicarlo painting, like the present one, shows a kitchen scene of liveried servants carrying trays of food, while household dogs and cats beg or steal scraps from the table. The servants are life-size and wear fashionable clothes of the time, and there are trompe l'oeil baskets, food, and kitchen utensils shown hanging from the walls, as they actually would in a kitchen. The scenes in the Benicarlo painting are so remarkably similar to the present piece as to allow a confident attribution to the Navarro workshop.

Of silver-plated tin. The circular corona issuing stylized foliate fronds above a moulded band surmounting the pierced spreading body composed of roundels, facing C-scrolls, flowerheads and S scrolls and acanthus leaves, the body centred by a stylized pierced undulating frieze issuing eight drip-pans raised on shaped brackets, the frieze above a shaped drum similarly composed with shaped S-scrolls and acanthine fronds terminating in an inverted finial.

Of gilt and white painted limewood. Each with candleholder and drip pan supported by carved acanthus leaves above a fluted tapering column centred by a bulb carved with stiff leaf decoration, the whole resing on a two tier base, the upper tier white painted with a carved gilt swag, the lower tier gilt and reeded.

Of carved giltwood. Each with rock work drip pan raised on a shaped shaft lapped by foliate decoration and resting on a triform base carved with flowers and scrolled feet.

Of mahogany, verre églomisé, with marbleized decoration. The incurved superstructure set with a verre églomisé mounted drawer flanked by repeating lozenge marbleized decoration. The projecting ends set with black and silver foliate verre églomisé panels. The lower section with a reeded tambour above a verre églomisé mounted and geometrically inlaid sliding false drawer front opening to reveal two banks of narrow drawers flanked by foliate verre églomisé panels. The four cylindrical tapered legs headed by faceted sections with inset triangular foliate verre églomisé panels. The legs united by an incurved fretted stretcher painted with marbleized decoration.

Of finely figured mahogany. The rectangular ratcheted top above a plain frieze set with a single full length drawer fitted with a leather lined writing slide and lidded compartments. The front set with two rococo cast brass swan neck handles. The whole raised on four moulded and chamfered straight legs ending in a replaced block foot.

A very similar table can be seen in William Odom's book, A History of Italian Furniture. The table Odom illustrates is of walnut with elongated drawers, however the identical Greek key frieze below the drawers, coupled with the closely comparable fluted tapering legs and fluted corner-posts strongly suggest that both pieces share the same maker. The table illustrated by Odom is described as being either 'Liguria or Emilia, Late XVIII Century'

The signature of Franz Kientz appears on the reverse of one of these extraordinary pictures, which combine intricate marquetry with painted skies and water effects. The only other known example of this type of work is an elevated view of Schloss Mannheim, almost certainly by the same artist, which is in the collection of Mannheim Museum. It shares the present pictures' distinctively painted sky, and is peopled with the same characteristic tiny painted figures. A further distinctive feature of Kientz's intarsia is his use of various woods to create the illusion of texture, particularly in his representation of gardens: tight maple burs represent the graveled paths, and a veneer with a meandering grain is used to depict water. The views of Schloss Nymphenburg and Schloss Schleissheim are from a series of engravings of gardens and houses by the German garden designer Matthias Diesel (d. 1752), who brought the French style of garden to Germany's palaces, after his visit to France.

The neoclassical style and architectural imagery of these later 18th-century marquetry commodes identify them as pieces designed and created by the artisans of the famous botteghe in Rolo, Italy, which by that time was known as the center for high-quality marquetry furniture. The Rolese workshops had been producing fine intarsia work since the 1400s, in the illusionistic style established by the brothers Cristoforo (1448-1491) and Lorenzo (1425-1477) Canozi da Lendinara. In the 18th-century, the entire region of Emilia-Romana had become a hub of neoclassicism, inspired by the arrival in 1753 of Ennemond-Alexandre Petitot to serve as court architect to the Duke of Parma. Under Petitot's influence, the artisans of Rolo began producing furniture that was neoclassical in form, but still decorated with Renaissance imagery inspired by the Lendinara brothers' work. The present commodes, with their rectilinear form and perspectival architectural decoration, are an example of this.

Mosaics as an art form emerged in Rome in the 16th century, under the influence of the Pope, and were used primarily in a religious context as a type of "permanent painting," competing with more traditional forms of art. By the 18th century, the advancements in technology and craft, and the increase in patrons' wealth and demand allowed mosaic art to be be rapidly produced and commercialized. Private ateliers sprang up and began to produce mosaic work to supply the Grand Tourists of the 18th and 19th centuries with trophies, including tabletops like the present piece, to be taken back to England. The view of St. Peter's Basilica in the center of this top is strikingly similar to the one on a table in The Gilbert Collection, London. The present table's gilt-brass and ebonized base, which in true Regency fashion adapts classical elements like zoomorphic feet and a triform base, would have been specially constructed for displaying the top.