Bob Atchison Thanked for returning books to the Alexander Palace Museum

[Forum Admin]

http://eng.tzar.ru/info/newsarchive?id=3239
Tsarskoye Selo State Museum Preserve, News  15.10.2013:

Mr. Robert Atchison, an American art collector and benefactor to Tsarskoye Selo, has donated some unique items from his personal holdings to the Rare Books Collection of our Museum.

Mr. Atchison is known as a great connoisseur of the history of the Alexander Palace and the creator of a very popular web site entitled Alexander Palace Time Machine.


The most precious of the donated items bears a unique super-bookplate of Grand Duchess Alexandra Georgivna (1870–1891), née Princess Alexandra of Greece, the mother of Grand Duke Dmitri whose life was the theme of our recent exhibition. Published in Paris in 1885, the book of dark morocco is De Nicopolis à Olympie, lettres à un ami by Demetrius Vikelas (or Bikélas; 1835–1908), a Greek businessman, writer and the first president of the International Olympic Committee. Its bookplate, a gold-embossed monogram “AG” placed under the Russian imperial crown, has been previously unknown to specialists  and had no reference.  

One more book, Geneviève: histoire d'une servant by Alphonse de Lamartine (1790–1869), has a bookplate of Grand Duke Alexander Nikolayevich – an engraved monogram “AN” under the sunbeam-circled imperial crown, and the typed inscription Bibliothèque de Tsarsrkoe-Selo". Published in 1851 in Paris, it was sold from the Alexander Palace in the 1930s and went to the West.


The two other calico-bound books are On desert altars of the early 1900s by Norma Lorimer and The millionaire girl, and other stories of 1908 by Eliza Margaret J. Humphreys a.k.a. Rita, the author of Peg the Rake. Mr. Atchison purchased them at auctions after he learned from archive materials that those novels were read by the family members of the last Russian Tsar.

[TimM]

It's good that Bob has helped return these items to the AP Museum.

[Michael HR]

Wonderful to see things being returned.

[rgt9w]

A very generous gift and a wonderful addition to the museum's holdings.

[Forum Admin]

Another thank you to Bob Atchison for donating a large portion of his original photograph and book collection to the Alexander Palace:

http://eng.tzar.ru/info/info-events/title/?id=3250


 Mr. Robert Atchison, a benefactor from Austin (Texas, US) and Art Patron of the Tsarskoye Selo Friends Society, has donated unique items from his personal collection to our museum.

Over 130 photographs and photocards depicting the family of Nicholas II of Russia are grouped by the following sections: 'Nicholas II', 'Alexandra Fiodorovna' (see picture below, right), 'Grand Duchesses' (see Olga below, center), and 'Tsarevich Alexei' (below left).

Most of the items are unique and rarely seen in Russia. The materials from Mr. Atchison’s collection will grace our future exhibitions on the imperial family and the history of Tsarskoye Selo.  Mr. Atchison’s new donations to our rare book collection are ten volumes in Russian, English, German and French. They include:

    Maneuvers in the South West in 1890, an album of drawings by Nikolai Samokish published by the Imperial Court Supplier A. Ilyin in 1980-91 (see below left);
    The Russian Year Book 1914, an annual London edition on Russia, containing detailed facts and statistics about the Russian Empire’s economy, trade, transport and finances on the eve of the First World War (below, center);
    Memoirs of Queen Victoria’s daughter Princess Helena of the United Kingdom dedicated to Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse and mother to the last empress of Russia (below right).