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a couple of questions to the AP Forum at large:
RE: the famous "display" cases the grand duchesses & ladies of the court had in their bedrooms & dressing rooms to hold & display their famous jewelry.
1.) we've all read of their existence & some references to their appearance, but has anyone of us ever SEEN one? i have a photo of Ksenia Aleksandrovna's bedroom in Ai-Todor, which shows, i believe, a corner of one. sadly, that photo has been floating around somewhere in my photobucket albums for several years now, unlabeled & i have not been able to find it so far. it's in there somewhere. at any rate, does anyone else have any images which show these famous yet vague cases in situ? or any images at all?
2.) where are they? what happened to them? why aren't they in evidence...anywhere?! i would imagine many, or even most, were destroyed, but i can't imagine that ALL were destroyed! and even if only a few survived, why haven't we seen them?
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3.) what did they actually look like? allowing for minor variations for the individual, did they all follow the same basic build -- like the court dresses? or were they as wildly varied & individualistic as those who owned them?
SIDE-QUESTION: recall hearing, many years back, that the Yusupov Palace had rebuilt/restored/whatever the walk-in vault that Feliks Feliksovitch had built for Irina Aleksandrovna, in which there were display cases for her jewels. does anyone know if this restoration actually took place? better still, does anyone have any images of it?
y'all would absolutely make my day if there are photos! :-)
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