Tea Service and Table
Cat. no. 38
Workmaster: Julius Rappoport (1864-1916)
St. Petersburg, 1896-1908
Silver, ivory, karelian birchwood
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

In 1922 the exiled Victoria Melita, Grand Duchess Kirill of Russia, presented this tea service and table to the California Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. She sent the gift to honor California's casualties from the First World War, writing, "at this moment we cannot build anything in remembrance of our own millions of fallen brave." Victoria's husband, Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich--a cousin of the slain Czar Nicholas II--proclaimed himself head of the imperial house of Romanov that same year.

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