14 July – 25 September, 2011
The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia, is one of the outstanding museums of the world for its magnificent palace architecture, recalling the glories of the Romanoff tsars of Russia, and its vast collection. Its glass collection is unsurpassed in quality and quantity, and is justly famed for including superb works of glass that encompass the distinctive forms and techniques of each period from throughout Europe. The more than 2,000 pieces in the glass collection were acquired by generation after generation of the Russian tsars, other members of the imperial family, noblemen, and famous personages from the mid eighteenth century on.
This exhibition presented a select group of 190 pieces to provide an overview of the wonders of the State Hermitage Museum’s glass collection. Venetian glass, which flourished during the Renaissance, Bohemian, English, and Spanish glass, and then glass in the Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles: the exhibition not only traced that history but also introduced rare and precious works being exhibited in Japan for the first time, including glass created in the Russian imperial glassworks and examples of interior décor that cast their splendor on the palaces of the tsars.