The Amber Room at Tsarskoe Syolo in Russia, the state in 1940
The Amber Room
In 1701 the King of Prussia Friedrich the 1st Hohenzollern decided to have a curiosity: a room with walls covered with amber. The idea and project came from Andreas Schülter from Gdansk, an architect and interior designer, working since 1694 in Berlin. In 1907 Gottfried Wolffram, a master amber craftsman, was invited from Copenhagen to work for the King of Prussia and during the following six yesrs he prepared the amber cover for one wall. However, in 1707 Schülter and Wolffram were fired and the new royal designer Eosander von Goethe employed two master craftsmen from Gdansk, Gottfried Turau and and Ernst Schacht. The prepared parts of the room were taken to the Charlottenburg Palace. Nevertheless, the Schülter's project was almost finished till 1713, when, after the death of Friedrich the 1st his heir the King Friedrich Wilhelm the 1st ordered to cease immediately the work. The finished parts were packed and brought to The Armoury in Berlin.
The cover should consist of eight plates 3.69 m high and and 1.5 m wide, eight pilasters, four corners, ground course and mould. The cover was planned to be completed by mirrors. The plates were the of the amber mosaic, in part on the bottom side engraved and lined with gold foil.
In 1917 the King Friedrich Wilhelm the 1st gave the whole prepared parts of The Amber Room to the Russian Emperor Peter the 1st as a diplomatic gift. Though the quality and beauty of the masterpiece was admired by the people in St. Petersburg (Russia) who saw it, The Amber Room was not mounted in one interior till 1943. That year the Russian Empress Elisabeth the 1st let the Italian designer Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli to place the amber cover in one of the rooms of The Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. Rastrelli modified the whole cover in the typical Rococco style. The Amber Room was first open in 1746 in The Winter Palace, where it was housed till 1755; that year it was moved to the summer residence of the Russian Emperors at Tsarskoe Syolo.
The interior in the Tsarskoe Syolo palace had dimensions 10 by 10 by 7.8 m, thus only three walls were decorated with the amber cover and the lacking parts were completed by mirrors and mosaics of the Ural and Caucasian decorative stones. The ceiling was beautifully painted and the floor was covered by mosaic of the most valuable wood species. During the construction of The Amber Room at Tsarskoe Syolo, five master amber craftsmen from Krolewiec (Koenigsberg) in Prussia were employed at the place: Friedrich Roggenbucke, Johann Roggenbucke, Johann Welpendorf, Clemens Friede and Heinrich Wilhelm Friede. Some of their furnishing masterpieces are presently in the collection of the Catherine Palace at Tsarskoe Syolo, being the only known parts of The Amber Room which survived the World War II.
The Amber Room was finished in 70-ties of the 18th century and in that shape it existed almost 200 years. It underwent several preservations with the most extensive one supervised by Karl Esch from Riga in 1830 - 1833. In 1942 Germans took The Amber Room from Tsarskoe Syolo and mounted it in the castle of Krolewiec (Koenigsberg). However, the danger of the British bombing in the summer of 1944 forced Germans to disassemble The Amber Room and to pack it in boxes; as late as in April 1945 it was still in the Koenigsberg castle, but further vicissitudes of The Amber Room remain unknown. Despite extensive search no trace of the missing amber treasure has been found. Most probably the boxes with The Amber Room burned down during the fire of the Krolewiec castle in April 1945.
Reportedly, since late seventies of the 20th century the reconstruction of The Amber Room has been carried on at Tsarskoe Syolo (later renamed Pushkino) under the supervision of Alexander Zhuravlow.The picture from "Amber in art", E. Mierzwinska, Malbork 1998, the text on the basis of the same publication.
