Raphael service oyster dishes – £18,000 at Tennants.
Inspired by an exhibition marking the 400th anniversary of Raphael’s birth in 1883, Alexander III (1845-94) commissioned a porcelain dinner service for use in the Catherine Palace of Tsarskoe Selo, writes Roland Arkell.
The Raphael service was the most important produced at the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory in the period and a project so complex the 50 place settings were not completed until 1903. Each piece, centred by medallions painted en grisaille, carried a large gilt and red imperial cypher of the reigning emperor to the reverse.