Earlier this year, the Inventory Team processed 125 pieces of very precious glassware that were part of the Anthony (Tony) Clayton collection.
As a senior representative with the New Zealand Insurance Company, Tony was stationed in different locations around the world during his career. By the time he had returned to New Zealand in 1973, he had amassed a magnificent collection totalling over 2,000 objects.
The glass tableware originated in Russia. It was designed by architect Ippolit (Hippolyte) Monighetti and made at the Imperial Glass Factory, St Petersburg, in the mid-1860s. It comprises goblets, champagne flutes, vodka glasses, decanters, jugs, bowls and tazze (shallow bowls on pedestals).
We don't know how many pieces of this design were originally manufactured in the banquet setting, but another collection of over 100 pieces identical to Canterbury Museum’s sold for over £900,000 (NZ$ 1.7m) through Bonhams auction house in 2014 – so there is definitely more out there. Another mystery is why the set was made. Its commission was probably linked to one of the imperial palaces.
So how did a collection like this find its way to Canterbury Museum? When he died in 1998, Tony bequeathed his entire collection to Canterbury Museum and his associated notes indicate that he purchased the glassware in India. The former owner was Armenian millionaire J C Galstaun, a horse racing property developer who once hosted King Edward VIII at his Kolkata residence, Nizam Palace.
Tony’s notes also state that Galstaun had acquired the glassware in Paris from a Russian nobleman, well known to him, who had fled to France during the revolution in 1918. Where and by whom the glassware was used between its manufacture in the 1860s and the journey out of Russia in 1918 is unknown at this point.
