Peter the Great's Own Axe

This small axe, according to the catalogue, belonged to Peter I himself. It was made in Moscow at the end of the 17th century, in the years when the young tsar became seriously absorbed in shipbuilding and took up carpentry himself.

As a young man Peter founded his first shipyard for building vessels on Lake Pleshcheyevo near Pereslavl. And during the Grand Embassy of 1697–1698, travelling through Europe incognito, he worked as a carpenter at the shipyards of the East India Company, where the ship "Peter and Paul" was built with his participation.

The iron head, with a curved cutting edge and a butt shaped like an anvil, is fitted onto a curved apple-wood handle 36.5 cm long and secured with a metal expanding wedge. The axe is mounted in a gilded frame on a velvet backing. On the plaque beneath it is an engraved inscription in pre-reform spelling, "Axe of Emperor Peter I", followed by a note that it was always kept on his vereyka, as a fast sailing or rowing boat was called, which was preserved in the cottage of Peter the Great on the Petersburg Side.