ISBN 5-94795-050-2

Alfa-Colour Publishers
2004

The Amber Room has been recreated. A tremendous task that lasted a quarter of a century is completed. Undeniably our attitude towards this ‘double’ of the lost masterpiece is inevitably ambiguous and the debated about the sense of carrying out this bold experiment in restoration will go on for many years. A very convincing answer to this question is provided in our opinion by the entire post-war history of restoration in our city during which many outstanding works of art have been returned from oblivion. It would be hard to find anyone today who would say that it was done in vain. More than twenty years ago, we took upon ourselves the immense responsibility for implementing a restoration project unparallel in the world practice. There followed years of intensive researching for the solution to the incredibly complex problems: artistic, technical and financial. Yet at the same time those years were filled with a special meaning and relevance for those who were involved in the recreation of the Amber Room. Today we can state with satisfaction that that thanks to this work Russia has acquired a unique school of restorers that revived lost crafts and technologies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: artistic amber-carving and the Florentine mosaic technique. The recreated Amber Room has already begun its life as a museum piece. The activities of the Tsarskoselskaya Amber Workshop – to which the present publication is dedicated – have also become an inseparable part of the active, creative existence of our museum.

Ivan Sautov
Director of the Tsarskoye Selo State Museum Preserve