Tula is an industrial city in Russia, most famous for its production of applied arts in the 18th and early 19th centuries. The craftsmen of Tula became renowned for their production of objects in steel following Peter the Great’s relocation of the Imperial State Armoury to the town in 1712. The workshops of Tula began to manufacture domestic objects in steel soon after moving to the town, adapting the experience and techniques acquired in the creation of fine quality arms. The master craftsmen of the town worked either in the imperial workshops, from where they could also undertake their own commissions, or in private manufactories, such as those of Demidov, Nikita Mosolov and Feodor Batashov. The output ranged from furniture to decorative boxes and down to items as small as buckles and buttons.
Tula State Arms Museum, which includes the Imperial Factory's early output.
A steel encrusted center table circa 1780-85 from the Tula Imperial Armory, now in the Metropolitan Museum, “belongs to a small group of furniture embellished with silver inlay, ornamental etching, and gilded applications that summarizes nearly all the techniques practiced by the Tula craftsmen.” The steel beads, or “heads,” are cut like diamonds, and the polished faceted surfaces certainly sparkle as such.
Russian steel-mounted center table in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
One object in the Carlton Hobbs collection almost certain to have come from a Tula manufactory is a steel casket with firing mechanism. The austere linear exterior of the piece conceals a series of complex mechanisms, locks and switches which culminate in the pair of hidden pistols designed to fire when the box is opened incorrectly. If the box is locked, the lid will open to 20o before triggering a mechanism which releases the two spring loaded end ribs to the front of the exterior thus revealing the barrels of the two pistols which are set within the sides of the box. If loaded the pistols will then fire on the unwitting intruder.
Unusual steel casket with firing lock mechanism. Carlton Hobbs LLC.
The radical nature of the design compliments other decorative objects in steel produced by the Tula factory. The Russian aesthetic of the box is further enhanced by the fan shaped sides of the domed lid which are redolent of the architectural designs of Charles Cameron, court architect to Catherine the Great and contemporary of Robert Adam, with whom he shares many characteristics. The casket was featured in an online article from Popular Mechanics, as well as Dvice.
Interior of steel casket.
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