Fabergé Statuette on the Block

choi

Eve M Kahn, Forgotten Fabergé Comes Out of the Attic.  New York Times, Oct 4, 2013.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/0 ... t-of-the-attic.html


Note:
(a) The surname Kahn may be north German ("from Low German kane ‘boat’) or Jewish ("one of the many variants of Cohen [Hebrew kohen ‘priest’]")

(b) "Two of the [Fabergé] works, with glittering eyes and thick gray beards, realistically portrayed Imperial Cossack bodyguards. A depiction of Dowager Empress Marie’s servant Alexei A Kudinov remains at Pavlovsk Palace near St Petersburg."
(i) Cossacks
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cossack
(section 1 Etymology)
(ii) Pavlovsk Palace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlovsk_Palace
("built by Paul I of Russia [1754-1801; reign 1796-1801 (murdered by guards); only (legitimate) son of Katherine the Great] in Pavlovsk, near Saint Petersburg. After his death, it became the home of his widow, Maria Feodorovna;" nearby is an English landscape garden with a Chinese kiosk, Chinese bridges)

(c) "A statuette of Empress Alexandra’s bodyguard, Nikolai N Pustynnikov , was long thought lost.
It was actually sitting in an attic in Rhinebeck, N.Y. In the 1930s, a Fabergé collector had acquired it in Manhattan from the dealer and industrialist Armand Hammer. It re-emerged this summer, with original receipts, when a descendant’s estate was cleaned out. Stair Galleries in Hudson, NY, will auction it on Oct 26."
(i) For Empress Alexandra, see Alexandra Feodorovna (Alix of Hesse)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandra_Feodorovna_(Alix_of_Hesse)
(1872-1918; spouse of Nicholas II, the last Emperor of the Russian Empire; Born a granddaughter of Queen Victoria)
(ii) Rhinebeck (village), New York
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinebeck_(village),_New_York(Village of Rhinebeck is the principal community in the town [of the same name])
(iii) History of Rhinebeck. Rhinebeck, New York, undated
http://www.rhinebeck-ny.gov/files/History%20of%20Rhinebeck.pdf
("The land acquired the name Rhinebeck about 1715 when [an earlier Dutch settler Henry] Beekman attracted 35 German Palatine families from the failed English Tar Camps project in the present Germantown area")

* The "Tar Camp" is not a proper name, therefore should not be capitalized. The official names are "East Camp" and "West Camp" where Poor Palatines made tar etc.
* The camps were in upstate New York. "English" because the thirteen colonies were English, not because the caps were in England.
(iv) Frances Marion Platt, From the Rhineland to Rhinebeck.  Hudson Valley Almanac Weekly, Sept 22, 2011.
http://www.hudsonvalleyalmanacwe ... eland-to-rhinebeck/
German Palatines
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Palatines
(Electorate of the Palatinate [1085–1803]; a palatinate administered by a count palatine; sections "Migration to New York" and "servitude")

Quote:

"Queen Anne's government had sympathy for the Protestant Germans and had invited them to * * * work in trade for passage [because refugees had no money or belongings]. Official correspondence in British records shows a total of 13,146 refugees traveled down the Rhine and from Amsterdam to England in the summer of 1709 [and settled in army tents in the fields of London]. * * * The flood of immigration overwhelmed English resources.

"the Poor Palatines were unlike previous migrant groups — skilled, middle-class, religious exiles such as the [French] Huguenots or the Dutch in the 16th century — but rather unskilled rural laborers * * * [The English transported nearly 3,000 in ten ships to New York in 1710--] the largest group of immigrants to enter the colony before the American Revolution

(v) palatine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatine
(a high-level official since Roman times; The term palatinus [Wiki: "Latin adjective palatinus, "relating to the palace", from the noun palatium, 'palace'"] was first used in Ancient Rome for chamberlains of the Emperor due to their association with the Palatine Hill)
(vi) I can not find who named the place Rhinebeck and when--and there is no known place in Germany with that name. However, the "beck" in "Rhinebeck" means "stream." See Dictionary of American Family Names (The north German surname Beck is "from Low German Beke ‘stream’. Compare the High German form Bach 1"). And Rhinebeck's "sister city" is town of Rheinbach (German spelling for the RhRhine river is "Rhein").
(vii) Armand Hammer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armand_Hammer
(1898-1990)
(viii) Hudson, New York
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson,_New_York
(a city; county seat of Columbia County)

(d) Baden-Baden
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baden-Baden
(The German word, Baden, translates as "bathing, to bathe or baths")

Quote: "In 1931, the town of Baden-Baden was officially given its double name, which is the short form for "Baden in Baden" (i.e., Baden in the state of Baden). This was already in common use to distinguish the town from Baden bei Wien ("Baden near Vienna") and Baden, Switzerland.

choi

About "Dowager Empress Marie" in Note (b).

(i) Maria Feodorovna (Dagmar of Denmark)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Feodorovna_(Dagmar_of_Denmark)
(1847-1928; spouse of Emperor Alexander III; Among her children was the last Russian monarch, Emperor Nicholas II, whom she outlived by ten years; her elder sister Alexandra married the future UK King Edward VII)
* Born Marie Sophie Frederikke Dagmar (none of which is a surname), she is of House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, also known as the House of Glücksburg (named after Glücksburg, a town in northernmost Germany).
* Dagmar (given name)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagmar_(given_name)
(derived from Old Norse name (Dagmær), dagr meaning "day," and mær meaning "maid")
* Fyodo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyodor
(Fyodor or Fedor (different transliteration from the same Russian word) or Feodor is the Russian form of the name "Theodore". Fedora is the feminine form)
* Was the surname Feodorovna exclusive to Russian Royalty?  Yahoo Answers, July 19, 2011.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110719010024AAVv8DN
* Theotokos Fyodorovskaya
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theotokos_Fyodorovskaya
(Fyodorovskaya Theotokos, also known as Our Lady of St Theodore and the Black Virgin Mary of Russia is the patron icon of the Romanov family; In Greek, Theotokos means "God-bearer" [ie, mother of God]; Church legends differ as to why the icon was named after Saint Theodore Stratelates [?-319; crucified at city of Heraclea Pontica in Asia Minor; stratelates is a Greek noun meaning "leader of the army"])
* So "theotokos" in Greek is equivalent to "Madonna" in Italian. The Fyodo- part is "Theodore."
* The male given name Theodore is made up Greek theos god + dōron gift.