Set of Six Russian Silver-Gilt and Cloisonné Enamel Fruit Forks and Knives
Probably Antip Kuzmichev, Moscow, 1887, retailed by Tiffany & Co.
Each enameled with varicolored flowers, scrolling foliage and geometric motifs, the terminal with a turquoise rosette, monogrammed CAB for Cornelia A. Barculo. Length of fork 6 1/2 inches (16.5 cm.), length of knife 8 1/2 inches (21.6 cm.).

Provenance:
Cornelia A. Barculo (1812-1901).
Then by descent.

Cornelia A. Barculo, née Talman, was born in 1812 in New York to John Hubbell Talman and Sarah Somerindyke. The Somerindyke family owned a large tract of farm land on the west side of Manhattan, which included what is now part of the Upper West Side, a strip of Central Park and the land on which Lincoln Center and Columbus Circle are now located.

Cornelia was married to Seward Barculo in 1834 and, following his death in 1854, to Winthrop Atwill in 1862. A noted art collector, Cornelia Barculo Atwill purchased the acclaimed Magnolia Vase by Tiffany & Co., the centerpiece of the company's display at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The Magnolia Vase was among numerous works of art which she later bequeathed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, including sculpture and Favrile glass by Louis Comfort Tiffany. Mrs. Atwill owned another important Tiffany & Co. silver and enamel exposition vase, also made for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. The vase was sold Christie's, New York, January 20, 2005, lot 72.

A number of the Russian silver and enamel objects offered in the present auction were purchased by Cornelia Barculo Atwill at Tiffany & Co., which retailed enamels by Russian silversmiths in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.