Bright Ideas In The (Lapidary) Works

July 17 2009, 4:03pm

While the art of crafting furniture and decorative objects from hardstones was already highly developed in Western Europe during the Renaissance, it was not until the mid-18th century, when St. Petersburg was being built, that the Russian lapidary arts began to flourish. In 1721, Peter the Great (1672-1725) founded the first imperial Russian lapidary at Peterhof, near St. Petersburg. “Under the monarchs who ruled Russia from the 1730s to the 1750s, the factory established itself as one of the leading creators of luxury goods in Eastern Europe,”1 with marbles and semiprecious stones brought to St. Petersburg from all corners of the Empire and beyond.