In museum practice there are often cases that make one look at objects in storage in a completely different way, because the process of studying collections never ends, and sometimes the most fascinating discoveries occur quite unexpectedly. Such an event happened just recently.
According to Irina Korotkova, collections curator of the Alexandrovskaya Sloboda museum-reserve: 'The study of an object that had been listed as a "stand for printed publications" and dated to the 19th century began in 2019, and we had doubts about the correctness of its attribution. Since the object's elements were heavily worn and had numerous chips, and the wood was dried out, in 2023 the "stand" was sent for restoration to the All-Russian Art and Scientific Restoration Center named after Academician I.E. Grabar, where, with the help of O.A. Kochemazov, it acquired a fully exhibition-worthy appearance. The painstaking study of the object continued. A conference at the State Historical Museum and a presentation by N.V. Ugleva, head of the Wood and Furniture Department of the State Historical Museum (GIM), helped. A hypothesis arose that our "stand for printed publications" was in fact a chair. We consulted colleagues, and recently Natalia Vladimirovna Ugleva presented an expert opinion in which she gave a detailed description of the object, outlined the manufacturing technology, and set out the constructive and decorative solutions. The body of evidence allows us to conclude that this chair belongs to the curule type, made in the 15th – early 16th century by Russian craftsmen (since its material is birch) in the Italian Renaissance tradition. Such furniture was used in the households of noble secular and ecclesiastical persons both in interiors and on various campaigns and travels. These chairs survived the centuries because they were multifunctional and of high quality. Nevertheless, today even in museum collections they are extremely rare.'
Such a conclusion was a great joy. But why curule? It turns out that in Ancient Rome there was the office of the curule aedile, hence the name of the folding chair that servants carried for its owner and set up when needed. Over time it became an attribute of authority and a sign of the high rank of its bearer.
'The structural and decorative design of the chair is built on the intersection of rectangular blocks, themselves composed of parallel slats fastened at the top and bottom. At the intersection is the seat, also made of slats joined with wooden (!) pegs, which attests to the object's centuries-old age. As mentioned above, nowadays such artifacts are extremely rare and, without doubt, with the new attribution and after restoration this chair has acquired the status of a rarity in our collection,' said Elena Zhilkina, chief curator of the Alexandrovskaya Sloboda museum-reserve.
It is hard to say for whom Russian craftsmen made such an unusually shaped chair in the 16th century. At least the Italian influence and the impact of the Renaissance on the architecture of Alexandrovskaya Sloboda are well known, so perhaps the chair's form was also borrowed. In any case, in the painting by the well-known 19th-century artist Y.O. Tomashevsky, 'The Village of Aleksandrovskoye, 1565, the church schism, Ivan the Terrible, Malyuta Skuratov and the princes with Archimandrite Levky and Metropolitan Athanasius beg the tsar to return to Moscow to the throne,' a curule chair is depicted in the foreground on the right. And it is hardly a coincidence.
