Provenance
Two silver hoards were discovered around the village of Peshnigort (Пешнигорт) in the Solikamskii County (Соликамский Уезд) of the Perm Governorate (Пермская Губерния) of the Russian Empire.
The first hoard, designated Peshnigort I, was discovered in 1853, when a field was tilled along the left bank of the In’va River (Darkevich 1976, 22). The plowman or landowner quickly sold the vessels composing the hoard. At some point, the Teploukhov family acquired a cup handle and contemporary notes recording the other pieces in the hoard assemblage, which was published in 1901 in the Zapiski Russkogo arkheologicheskogo obshchestvo (Darkevich 1976, T. 19,2; “Zapiski o nakhodke” 1901), and the cup handle included in Smirnov’s Vostochnoe serebro in 1909 (Smirnov 1909, № 125). The notes taken about the hoard state that it included a bucket, the base of a bottle or cup, 2 handled cups, 4 smaller handled cups, a ladle, and 7 torcs (grivnas) (Darkevich 1976, 22-23). Most of the pieces are now lost or untraced; only this ladle (trulla) survives. It was recorded in the collection of M. A. Obolenskii in the 1870s. Then in the 1920s the/a “Antiquariat” in Moscow purchased the ladle. The State Hermitage Museum acquired the ladle from the Antiquariat in 1927, where it still resides (Matsulevich 1929, 6, 65-71, 75; Bank 1977, 285). The ladle’s has the number ω-292.
Anna Titovna Chetina found the second hoard, designated Peshnigort II, with a plate decorated with birds near Peshnigort in 1913. The Archaeological Commission purchased the plate from Chetina for 125 rubles and then sent it to the collection of the Imperial Hermitage Museum in 1914 (Trever and Lukonin 1987, 126). The plate is still housed in the renamed State Hermitage Museum.
Peshnigort is located to the southwest of Kudymkar, presently located in the Kudymkarskii District (Кудымкарский Район), Perm Province/Krai (Пермский Край), Russian Federation.
Inscription & Other Marking Notes
Five control stamps– monograms and busts– on the base of the ladle’s dipper. The stamps date the vessel to the reign of Constans II (641-668) (Dodd 1961, 219).
Technical Notes
silver with gilding / 26.7 cm length x 6.8 cm height x 13.5 cm diameter (dipper) / 875 g weight
Major Eurasian Silver Publications
* Described in an itemized list in V. P. Darkevich, Khudozhestvennyi metall Vostoka VIII-XIII vv.: proizvedeniia vostochnoi torevtiki na territorii evropeiskoi chasti SSSR i Zaural’ia (Moscow: Nauka, 1976), 22.
Additional Bibliography
Bank, Alice V. Byzantine Art in the Collections of Soviet Museums. New York: H. N. Abrams, 1977.
Dodd, Erica Cruikshank. Byzantine Silver Stamps. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1961.
“Zapiski o nakhodke bliz s. Kudymkopskogo okolo der. Peshnigorta serebrianykh veshchei.” Zapiski Russkogo arkheologicheskogo obshchestvo Vol. XII, no. 1-2 (1901).
Image Credits
Featured Image
State Hermitage Museum Website
Page Images
(1) State Hermitage Museum Website
(2-3) Alice V. Bank, Byzantine Art in the Collections of Soviet Museums (New York: H. N. Abrams, 1977), № 85-86.