She recalled in later years finding silver chalices tarnished beyond recognition, being sold by weight, and heaps of church vestments in the neglected back rooms of commission shops and state storerooms. Surprising discoveries were still to be found, however, and Post purchased a number of porcelain, silver, enameled, and liturgical objects. As a result, the state-sponsored sales in the Soviet Union were winding down as the Davies arrived. American businessman Armand Hammer and his brother Victor acquired enormous numbers of these Russian treasures and, in the early 1930s, began to sell them in American department stores and later in their New York gallery. Soviet Salesįrom the 1920s, the Soviet Union had been selling off many of the art treasures it had confiscated from the church, the imperial family, and the aristocracy in an effort to fund the new government’s industrialization plan. Finding the imperial porcelain, silver, enamels, and glass perfectly suited to her taste for the beautiful and finely crafted, Post laid the foundation for a lifetime of collecting-ultimately assembling the largest collection of Russian imperial art outside of Russia. A New PassionĪlready a seasoned collector of French decorative arts, Post became a pioneer collector of Russian art while living in the Soviet Union with her third husband, ambassador to the Soviet Union Joseph E. Such was the curiosity offered by her social circles when Marjorie Merriweather Post returned home from the Soviet Union with firsthand accounts and an intriguing collection of icons, chalices, porcelain, and silver drinking vessels from the virtually unknown land, encouraging her to expand her collection and share it with the public. How captivating art and liturgical objects brought back from the far-away country must have seemed to Americans for whom the Soviet Union remained a great mystery. Imagine it’s wartime Washington, the Soviet Union has become an American ally, but talk of the Cold War is starting.
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