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The often romantic, occasionally tragic, tale of how silver made in China by Russian artisans came to Australia requires a little background history.
After the disgrace of being trounced by Japan in 1904, Russians were appalled at the dismal performance of Nicholas II’s leadership in the Great War (World War I; 1914-1918). The February Revolution (1917) brought about the abdication of the Tzar and the installation of a democratic government under Alexander Kerensky. The bulk of the population welcomed democracy and hoped the change in government would stem the tide which was going against Russia in the unpopular war.
The October Revolution occurred in what the West calls November. The Russian Parliament, the Duma, was disbanded at gunpoint and democracy in Russia ceased. With this revolution members of the nobility, mercantile classes and the intelligencia fled; their homes, factories and shops having been confiscated and nationalised.
Earlier, by 1911, Russian fugitives had arrived in Brisbane, having been exiled to Siberia by the Tzarist régime. They escaped to Brisbane on Japanese vessels. Russians became Brisbane’s fourth largest ethnic group. Ironically, at the time of the February Revolution, many of Brisbane’s Russian community returned to Russia, being anti-Tzarist.
One of these dissidents, Artem Sergeyeff, founded Australia’s first Russian language newspaper in 1912. Sergeyeff, a friend of Lenin, returned to Russia and rose to great power in Soviet Russia, before eventually disappearing in a Gulag. At the same time, an exodus of millions from Russia commenced.
Many fled to the East, down the railway line into the Russian built city of Harbin in Manchuria. Built on land leased from China, Harbin was a Russian city providing a centre for the railway personnel and from which ran a rail spur to the strategically important port. After 1917, this was all that was left of Imperial Russia! Thousands of Russians passed through Harbin on the way to the West. Many went to Canada, where the Tzar’s sister, Grand Duchess Olga, ran a farm. Many went to America. Some came to Australia.
Queensland attracted White Russian officers and members of the aristocracy. Queensland favoured pro-Tzarist émigrés with means. An assisted passage from Dairen ( Harbin’s closest port) could be bought for less than nine pounds (£9/-/). Even Alexander Kerensky settled in Brisbane briefly in the 1940s, with his wife, Nellé. She was the youngest daughter of the Trittons, owners of Queensland’s largest furniture business. A colourful heiress, she fulfilled the 1920s dream and danced with the Prince of Wales. She also published an anthology of verses. They married in the United States in August 1939.
Russian émigrés needed a passport and health papers. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many a passport that gave an émigré entry, was posted back to Harbin and brought yet another Russian to safety. He in turn posted it back… One Russian, lacking a passport, apparently waved a Bolshoi Theatre programme about with style and confidence. This secured acceptance into Australia!
Until the Japanese invasion in 1932 there was a thriving silversmithing industry. Russian paper money was now worthless, and many of the goods the refugees had were not very portable, so they transmuted much of their wealth into silver. This was a traditionally an easy way to move wealth internationally. Some of the refugees had been able to bring large possessions and even furniture by barge, dray or rail. They sold these, reinvesting in highly portable silver cutlery services and other goods. The silversmiths that produced these were refugees themselves from the great firms in Moscow, St Petersburg etc. As the Imperial government had collapsed there were no assay offices to test and hallmark silver. Real hallmarks of any country are the jurisdiction of the government and are therefore stamped into completed articles submitted by the smiths. The Harbin silversmiths had to improvise, and equipped their wares with similar marks to the old hallmarks. These they cast into the silver, a sure indication the silver is not from Russia. The cast-in marks have a dappled appearance, while stamped marks are crisp. The pseudo-hallmark is necessarily incomplete. It still shows the profile of a woman wearing the traditional head dress, the kokoshnik, and the 84 purity stamp, but the Greek letter indicative of the city of assay is missing.
The only mark a silversmith is normally allowed to apply is his maker’s mark, and a few examples of Harbin silver bear these makers’ marks which are also cast in. Other possible non-government marks include retailers’ marks. Faberge, for example would stamp their mark over that of the maker when they bought in a finished object. This standard practice has lead to much confusion, as such contemporary re-stamps are often unjustly suspected to be forgeries. Retailers stamps very rarely appear on Harbin Silver.
When the Japanese invaded Harbin, law and order collapsed, endangering domestic safety. Another wave of Russians fled to Brisbane. Ivan Kaspe, one of the major retailers in Harbin, became a French National. Very occasionally silver with his stamp and in his department store’s box surfaces in Australia. Sadly, his son was kidnapped and killed shortly after the Japanese occupation in 1932.
There is little difference stylistically between the silver produced by these silversmiths before and after the cataclysm. Frequently Harbin silver is polished and gilded on the interior of the spoon bowls and fork tynes, while the rest of the surface is matted, or pounced, rather like the surface on brushed stainless steel. Russian and Harbin silver characteristically retains traces of zinc giving it a slightly greyish cast. Sometimes the designs on Harbin silverware were enriched with gilding in two colour gold: yellow and pink. Harbin silver is usually decorated either in the doomed foliate Art Nouveau style or in the Panslavic (Old Russian) style.
The Panslavic style is the most interesting as it forms one of the cornerstones of the emerging Art Déco style. The aristocracy and their supporters who escaped west developed a strong community in Paris. Here the Ballet Russe, with Diaghilev and Nijinsky, gave the infant Art Deco style violent colour; apple green, silver, black and orange (tango). The Panslavic style gave it arrangements of overlapping geometric forms pierced by lines and arrows. Hence nineteenth century Russian silver is often mistaken for the much later Art Déco.
Coco Chanel promoted Russian embroidery and the use of exotic furs, employing an army of Russian refugees to embroider, and a bevy of statuesque Russian models for their ability to parade luxurious furs unselfconsciously.
The Communist Revolution in China, completed in 1949, stimulated another exodus; over three thousand Russians (and their silver) reached Brisbane. By 1982 the Russian population of Harbin had dwindled to 40. Expatriate Russians often had to adapt to changed social conditions, where the need for vast silver table services was no longer relevant and the silver, though cherished, was used only for Easter, if at all. Hence Imperial Russian and Harbin silver are often in pristine condition. In Queensland many patrician Russians found work on the railways and the meat works. Russians who settled elsewhere had equally strange fates.
In Cannes, Baron Prettwitz read gas meters and Count Sumarokov-Elston collected electricity accounts. Admiral Smirnoff, General Kolchak’s Chief of Staff, made ladies’ hats. In London, Princess Ekaterina Gieorgievna Golitzyna, granddaughter of the Grand Duchess Ekaterina Michaelovna and daughter of the Duke of Melchlenberg-Strelitz, wife of Prince Golitzyn and premier society hostess of St Petersburg did quite well: she and her husband opened an antique shop!