Tsarskoe Selo has completed the restoration of two chandeliers and three lanterns for the Corner Drawing Room, and the Small and Large Library Halls in the Alexander Palace.

One of the chandeliers will grace the Corner Drawing Room. It is a thirty-candle chandelier of ruby-coloured ​​glass, originating from the historical collection of the Alexander Palace where a pair of them graced the later-demolished Concert Hall by Giacomo Quarenghi in the east wing. During the early twentieth-century renovations, one of the chandeliers was moved to Empress Alexandra’s Corner Drawing Room (it is now preserved at the Pavlovsk Museum). The second one was used to decorate the Mirror Study in Empress Catherine II's private rooms of in the Zubov Wing of the Catherine Palace. This elegant chandelier will return to the Alexander Palace. Its deep red glass parts will perfectly match the soft pink tint of the imitation marble walls, the polychrome carpet with terracotta main colours and the re-created pale coral window curtains in the Corner Drawing Room.

The other restored chandelier for eight candles is from our Museum's historical collection. Decorated with a crowning cobalt vase sprouting a fountain of almond-shaped pendants, it will go to the Small Library Hall.

The coloured glass on both chandeliers is a typical feature of Russian 1790s lighting fixtures. Earlier pendant lamps used in the palace were lanterns with a conical body of glass in a gilt-bronze mount and a set of crystal garlands with pendants. Candles were placed inside the glass body, which reliably protected the flame from constant drafts.

Originally the Dining Room, the Large Library Hall had three big six-candle lanterns from 1796 until 1941 (now they light up the Lobby of the Pavlovsk Palace). The restored Large Library Hall will have three eighteenth-century lanterns, one of which is from our historical collection and the other two purchased.

The highly professional restoration work lasted four months and was carried out by St. Petersburg's Yuzhakova Studio with the participation of masters Alexei Gvozdev, Vyacheslav Gizimchuk and Dmitry Rosenthal. They removed all kinds of dirt from the light fixtures, restored the crystal pendants, re-created the lost glass and bronze parts, applied galvanic gilding and installed new electrical wiring. One of the lanterns was almost completely re-created, with the only authentic piece being a late eighteenth-century glass body from a pendant or table lamp which has been stored in the Museum's reserves for years.