Similar snuff-box - Christie’s, London, auction, November 27-28, 2012, lot 548, sold for the amount of GB£ 49 250.- (~ US$ 78 800.-) Alexander III (1845-1894), Emperor of Russia (1881- 1894), King of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland Bolin, Jeweller of the Court, St. Petersburg Bolin is one of the oldest European jewellery houses, both Swedish and Russian, which has remained since its creation in the same family. The house was founded in St. Petersburg in 1791 by a German jeweller, from Saxony, Andreas Roempler, official supplier of the Imperial Court. On the death of Roempler (1829), the house was taken over by his partner and son-in-law, Gottlieb Ernst Jahn (husband of Sophia Roempler, Andreas’s eldest daughter), who was also a German and remarkable jeweller, who in 1833 hired a young Swedish accountant named Carl Edvard Bolin (1805-1864). Son of a captain of the Swedish merchant marine, who died at sea (1831), C. E. Bolin must leave home to support his large family (his father, Jonas Wilhelm Bolin, leaves eleven children to his death). He tries adventure in Russia where he finds a job as an accountant at Jahn & Roempler. He married, in 1834, Ernestine Catherine Roempler, second daughter of Andreas Roempler, and became the brother-in-law of Gottlieb Ernst Jahn, who quickly associates him with the affair. The house Roempler & Jahn is renamed Jahn & Bolin. In 1836, upon the death of Jahn, Bolin took over the destiny of the company. His younger brother Henrik Conrad Bolin joined him and worked for some time with him, then moved to Moscow where he founded his own jewellery business in 1852. In 1839, Carl Edvard Bolin obtained from Emperor Nicholas I (1796-1855) the envied title of official supplier of the Imperial Court, title remaining in the house until the collapse of the Empire, on this occasion, he is received Bourgeois of St. Petersburg. When he died in 1864, the Bolin house was divided between his two sons, Edvard and Oscar Gustav Friedrich, who both developed their father’s aristocratic clientele. The rivalry between the two largest Russian jewellers and patrons, both of foreign and Protestant origin, is famous. Having arrived in Russia in 1842, Pierre-Carl Fabergé (1846-1920) quickly obtained the title of official supplier of the Imperial Court. Therefore, a competition without mercy but always courteous opposes the two houses, to finish in a fusion that was not realized because of the Revolution and the end of the house Fabergé. The very high quality of Bolin’s creations, the fame of the family and their status as patrons of Russian and foreign artists, lead Emperor Nicholas II (1894-1917) to confirm, in 1912, the hereditary nobility to the prestigious jewellers. Neither Edvard nor Oscar Gustav Friedrich having heirs, they turn to their cousin Wilhelm Andreyevich Bolin, son of Henrik Conrad Bolin and buyer of the Moscow affair. Unfortunately, the war and the debacle of the Russian Empire stop this family reunification, the houses of Moscow and St. Petersburg are seized by the new Bolshevik government. In 1912, Wilhelm A. Bolin founded a summer branch in Bad Homburg (Hessen), an imperial holiday resort in Germany. A Russian and Swedish binational, he settled permanently in the country of his ancestors where he opened a branch in Stockholm in 1916; a new departure from the Bolin house. In line with the more than two-century family tradition, the Bolin are now official suppliers of the Swedish Royal Court. In 2001, the W. A. Bolin house has the honours of the Kremlin, which organizes an exhibition specifically devoted to the Bolin collections of Russia.