Four identical armchairs and a console belong to one state furniture set and used to be in the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg before being moved to His Imperial Majesty’s Study in Massandra. The set was commissioned in 1827 by Empress Dowager Maria Feodorovna, widow of Emperor Paul I and mother of Emperors Alexander I and Nicholas I. It was built in the workshop of Vasily Strom based on a design by Auguste de Montferrand. De Montferrand was a Classicist architect famous for building Saint Isaac’s Cathedral and Alexander column in Saint Petersburg. In his younger years, he was a pupil of French Classicist architects and interior decorators Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine, who had a deep impact on his taste for complex decoration.

De Montferrand designed a series of furniture sets for the Empress’s rooms in the Winter Palace, opting for the abundance of gilding on his items. Gold plate either covered the item completely, or just some carved details on a precious veneer. It is known that Vasily Strom, a cabinet-maker from Saint Petersburg, was charged with making de Montferrand’s furniture ‘of foreign maple and gilding’ from 1827 to 1829.

Empress Dowager passed away in November of 1828, however, her furniture set was still kept in the Winter palace. According to de Montferrand’s inventory list, the set consisted of “two corner sofas 320 cm (10.5 ft) long, two small settees, sixteen armchairs, six chairs, two corner tables, two smaller tables, two undertables, two small coffee tables, one screen, one firewood box, one fireside set”. Altogether the set consisted of 37 items and was originally held in the Jasper Room of the Winter Palace. It can be seen in a watercolor by G. Chernetsov done in 1833.