Made by acknowledged jewellery and silverware firm The House of Bolin (also known as W.A. Bolin) is one of the oldest firms specialising in jewellery and silverware that remains in the hands of its founding family. The firm exists today as Jewellers and Silversmiths to HM the King of Sweden.
Size app.: 12 cm (4,7 in) diameter. Pretty Good. Crack, repair, wear. Please study good resolution images for overall cosmetic condition. In person actual item may appear darker or brighter than in our pictures, strictly depending on sufficient light in your environment. Weight of app. 348 gram is going to measure some 1 kg volume weight packed for shipment.
The firm's archives once dated as far back as 1796, and its founder, the German-born jeweller Andreas Roempler, was established in St. Petersburg as early as 1790. In the registers of the German colony of this city he is called Master of Diamonds. He became a manufacturing jeweller of the Court by 1796 and functioned as official Appraiser to the Russian Imperial Court starting in 1823. Bolin rapidly became the most important jeweller in St. Petersburg. At the peak of his activity, he supplied more to the Imperial Court than all other jewellers put together. Towards the end of the nineteenth century some of the leading Paris houses, in particular Boucheron, established themselves in Russia, and were granted commissions. From the 1890s, Bolin's main competitor was Fabergé, and although the Bolins continued to make most of the large pieces of jewellery for the Court, Fabergé surpassed Bolin in numbers and possibly also in turnover. The total invoiced was 339,400 roubles. Vasily Bolin, like his father, kept his Swedish citizenship. In 1904 he purchased a property in the south of Sweden which he visited each summer together with his family. Showing foresight, he opened a branch office in Bad Homburg in Germany in 1912 - a spa visited by the Tsar and his family. Shortly before WWI, Vasily Bolin had decided to open shop in Germany, but remained stuck there when the war broke out, and while transiting in Stockholm to try to reach St-Petersburg, he made an agreement with a banker to open a shop in the city. The company's stocks in Germany were transferred in Sweden. None of the archives of the Bolin firm have, as yet, been found. A number of invoices from Bolin to the Imperial Court have been discovered in the Imperial Archives in St. Petersburg. There may be more and research has been initiated to locate both them and Bolin's own records. During the Bolshevik overthrow, account books were confiscated, Bolin jewellery owners were tracked and the gems were stolen as war chest. Some Bolin pieces belonging to royal members were put in a safe place in the Swedish embassy in St-Petersburg, and later transferred to Stockholm where it was hidden in the Foreign Ministry’s storage rooms, and forgotten until 2008 when the ministry moved its archives. Maria Pavlovna died in 1920 and never told her family about the jewels in Stockholm. The firm exists today as Jewellers and Silversmiths to HM King Carl XVI Gustav. Bolin created the engagement ring worn by Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden prior to her 2010 wedding with Prince Daniel. The Vladimir Tiara: After the revolution, British diplomats helped recover some of the Russian Court jewelry, and the Vladimir Tiara, a diamond diadem with large pearl pendants that originally belonged to Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovn was bought by Queen Mary, wife to King George V, in 1921. (see last pic).
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