#Exhibit of the Month

The history of silverware goes back over 5,000 years, but only in the 3rd millennium BC, in Mesopotamia and Anatolia, the first pieces of processed silver were made. From there, the art of working with silver spread to Persia and to Europe, where already in Roman and Greek antiquity it reached a high level of skill. Many of the techniques used then, such as casting, embossing and engraving, are still used today.

The National Museum of History of Moldova possesses a rich collection of silver items, which in a special way reflects the everyday life of people of the 18th-20th centuries. The typological range of objects that make up the collection includes both secular and ecclesiastical silverware: fruit vases, bonbonnieres, cutlery, tea and coffee preparation and serving sets, salt-cellars, handbags, snuffboxes and cigarette cases, candelabra, as well as icon cases, chalices, pectoral crosses, candlesticks, and so on.

Products of renowned jewelers, such as Fabergé, Khlebnikov, Sazikov in Russia, Elkington in England, Christofle in France or Norblin and Fraget in Poland stand out for their special quality and luxury. A significant item in the museum's silverware collection is the teapot on a stand with a spirit lamp (bouillotte), made in the Christofle workshop in France.

The Christofle workshop was founded in Paris in 1830 by Charles Christofle. The workshop, which was the court supplier of the Emperor of France Napoleon III, the Emperor of Mexico and the Tsar of Russia, created decorative and household pieces of rare beauty. It was also highly appreciated by the Royal House of Romania, which granted the workshop a supplier patent. In 1842, Charles Christofle bought a patent for electroplating, a technique that involved first coating a metal base with copper and then with nickel and silver. It was this technique that allowed him to mass-produce silver tea sets, which were very popular at the time. Tea, brought to Europe in 1610 by the East India Company, was an expensive commodity that gradually gained popularity. The oldest preserved teapots, dating from the 1670s, were small. As tea gained popularity, larger teapots began to be produced, shaped to match the fashion of the time.

According to Christofle catalogs, the model was produced in 1868 and fascinates with its elegance and refinement. The teapot has a complex design including a pear-shaped container, the surface of which is ornamented with guilloché in the Louis XVI style of the late 1780s. In the upper and lower parts of the body it is decorated with a border with tulips on protrusions, and in the center, it has an escutcheon with an engraved double frame. The teapot is equipped with a folding basket-like handle decorated with triple rings, and a lid with a knob. There are two rivets on the teapot for attaching it to the stand. A spirit lamp with a straight handle and a device for lifting the wick is fixed in the middle of the stand. The item has the Christofle stamp and is made of nickel silver.

The teapot on a stand with a spirit lamp, made in the Christofle workshop, harmoniously combines the value of a unique object and a sample of a large industrial series.

Dimensions: H.: 43 cm; W.: 24 cm.

Virtual Tour

Exhibitions

„UNDER THE ALIEN SKIES: Lithuanian people in Soviet hard labor camps and exile in 1940-1958”

October 17-31, 2017

On Tuesday, September 17th, 2017, at 15:00 hours, at the National Museum of History of Moldova was opened the exhibition „UNDER THE ALIEN SKIES: Lithuanian people in Soviet hard labor camps and exile in 1940-1958". The exhibition is organized by the Museum of Genocide Victims from the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania.

The event was organized by the National Museum of History of Moldova in cooperation with the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania to the Republic of Moldova through the State Program "Recovery and Historical Valorization of the Memory of Victims of the Totalitarian-Communist Regime in the Moldavian SSR in 1940-1953".

At the opening ceremony, moderated by the general director of the National Museum of History of Moldova, Eugen Sava, took the floor: Gheorghe Postică, Deputy Minister of Education, Culture and Research of the Republic of Moldova; Andrei Didenko, Adviser at the Lithuanian Embassy in Chisinau; Eugenijus Peikštenis, director of the Museum of Genocide Victims; Prof. univ. dr. hab. Anatol Petrencu, director of the State Program "Recovery and historical valorization of the memory of the victims of the totalitarian-communist regime in MSSR during the years 1940-1941 and 1944-1953"; Dr. Ludmila Cojocaru, project director of the State Program.

The aim of the exhibition is to tell the citizens of Europe, especially the young generation, about the crimes committed by the Soviet totalitarian regime on the territory of Lithuania. The exhibition was made with documents and materials from the Museums of Genocide Victims, the Special Archive and the Central State Archives of Lithuania from Vilnius, the Lithuanian National Museum, the Museum of Deportations, Exile and Resistance in Kaunas, the Alka Museum from Žemaitia Region and the Regional Museum of Tauragė.

The exhibits tell us about the organization of deportations, arrests with political substrates, the unbearable life of deportees and prisoners in the camps, working and living conditions. The 20 stands, arranged according to the thematic principle, reflect the most diverse aspects of the daily life of deportees and political prisoners: food, clothing, faith, etc. They reveal the differences in living conditions of exiled people compared to political prisoners in the camps. The emotion transmitted by images, letters, and documents related to the conditions of the political prisoners is increased by the motifs of barbed wire, which is obsessively repeated on the stands.

The exhibition was presented for the first time on June 21, 2011, at a meeting in the Parliament of Europe, with the title "Present and Past, Face to Face". That event was dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the beginning of deportations in Lithuania. Subsequently, the exhibition was presented in Poland, France and the United Kingdom, also in several cities and institutions in Lithuania.