The Life of Empress Alexandra: Alexandra's Maple Drawing Room

Sources for information and most photos:

http://www.alexanderpalace.org/palace/maple.html

https://thealexanderpalace.fandom.com/wiki/The_Maple_Drawing_Room

https://vk.com/lastromanovs

https://tsarnicholas.org/2019/08/31/photos-of-the-reconstruction-of-the-historic-interiors-of-the-alexander-palace/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/149552988@N02/

https://vk.com/stavros_spb

http://www.bibliotekar.ru/rusPavlovsk/12.htm

https://deletant.livejournal.com/187115.html

http://geglov2.narod.ru/Foto/Aleks_p/Aleks_p_f_002_05_06.htm

https://anashina.com/russkij-zhiloj-interer-xix-nachala-xx-vekov/#_1870-1900

https://tsarselo.ru/yenciklopedija-carskogo-sela/istorija-carskogo-sela-v-licah/perelomov-pavel-ivanovich-ok-1901-1964.html

https://www.spb-guide.ru/page_20146.htm

http://gorod-812.ru/chto-myi-uvidim-v-aleksandrovskom-dvortse-etim-letom/

https://www.flatproject.ru/interior-design/interior/interery-bolshogo-gatchinskogo-dvorca-centralnyj-korpus.html

https://institutspb.ru/articles/tekuschaya-restavraciya-aleksandrovskogo-dvorca

https://www.liveinternet.ru/users/galina_savko/post150214238/

https://alrina.livejournal.com/62915.html

Alexandra's brother, Grand Duke Ernst of Hesse, was the one who inspired her love for the Art Nouveau style, which began and quickly became popular in the 1890s. In Germany, Denmark and other Germanic countries it was known as Jugendstil, in America, the United Kingdom and France as Art Nouveau, and in Russia as Style Moderne. Ernst loved the arts and wanted to make Darmstadt an "Artist's Colony", where the decorative and building arts were brought together in a world's fair type of environment. The greatest artists of the time participated, such as Peter Behrens and other developers of the Art Nouveau style. Nicholas and Alexandra visited these exhibitions. Alexandra liked modern things, and when she saw the examples of art and decor on display, she was in love. She bought many things at the Artist's Colony, such as vases and furniture, but Nicholas did not like the Art Nouveau style, especially in its more extreme tones.

Ernst was a frequent visitor to the Alexander Palace, and he must have given his sister a lot of advice about decorating. He and Alexandra had been very close since childhood, and next to her husband, he was her most trusted friend and confidant. Ernst was also the only person whose advice Alexandra was willing to listen to, and she silently and grudgingly resisted the recommendations of her older sisters, which she often found to be condescending. In 1902, Alexandra told him that she and Nicholas planned to expand their living space at the palace and that she and Meltzer wanted to design the space in the Jugendstil style. The plans were for two large rooms to be built on the main floor with more children's rooms above. One of the main rooms would be a comfortable sitting room for Alexandra, and it was called the Maple Room because of the use of maple wood throughout the room.

The Maple Room was a large, spacious and charming room, full of light, the most famous Art Nouveau interior in Russia. In Russian it is called Кленовая Гостиная. The walls were painted a warm, dusty pink colour. The walls were decorated with carved and moulded white plaster trellises of German cabbage roses that climbed and wrapped around a pale green circle in the center of a high ceiling. Around the room a high, overhanging curved cornice concealed hidden electric lamps that cast soft, indirect reflected light over the room from the while ceiling. This was one of the earliest uses of what is now a commonplace lighting technique.

The carved plaster cabbage roses were also seen in carefully carved wood on a great maplewood balcony that covered the entire room from one wall to the other. The balcony was curved at the top and inset with leaded glass panels. Lacy bronze lamps with art glass shades hung from its supports. A staircase with carved railings lead from the right corner to the top of the balcony, from which direct access to a mezzanine level over the corridor connected to Nicholas's New Study.

Beneath the balcony were two cozy sitting areas separated by a fireplace set with ceramic tiles. Alexandra had an Art Nouveau style chaise longue under the balcony next to the window, right behind large planters where fragrant flowers were placed. On the other side of the fireplace was a sitting area for the children, where they could work or play while their mother read or did needlework. Above the banquettes were shelves for small vases and collectibles.

Bearskin rugs lay on top of grey-green castor carpet that was sewn in strips. The bearskin rugs were left over from the old Concert Hall, which had been demolished to make way for the Maple Room and the New Study. The children often played with the bearskin rugs when they were little.

The Maple Room had four very tall, curved windows. A portiere hung over the entrance doors to the Pallisander Room, and another door was a maple wood paneled arched double door that gave access to the east wing's ground floor corridor. These doors had a beautiful coloured transom in between the arch and the doors.

The centerpiece of the room was a built-in maplewood cabinet in the left corner closest to the Pallisander Room. In the original design for the Maple Room, this space was designed for a corner heating stove. It was Alexandra's idea to discard the stove, which would not be needed since this part of the palace already had central heating, and she had a part in the design of the cabinet. Here she stored the beautiful Fabergé eggs that Nicholas gave her as Easter gifts almost every year. The cabinet was high up and hard to reach, so it was perfect for storing these delicate and fragile objects. It rose above a curved cozy corner covered in Darmstadt fabrics, a favourite place for the family to have tea. Along the backs of the curved sofa was a wide ledge where many of Alexandra's favourite things were displayed. In a glass and silver cabinet placed so that light would shine on it, Alexandra kept animal figurines carved from hardstones. Alongside the cabinet were vases of flowers, bronzes and other small things.

All of Alexandra's private rooms had a spot of special sentimental family value to her, where she placed things of personal importance. This "sanctification" of certain spaces in her rooms symbolised the paramount place that family had in her life, and showed how her relationship with family entertwined with her relationship with God. On either side of the maplewood cabinet Alexandra kept her favourite pictures of her family: four pastel portraits of her daughters and a portrait of her husband in naval uniform, painted by the German painter Kaulbach.

The Maple Room also had many sculptures, among them busts on plinths of Alexei and Ernst, a lifesize marble sculpture of the infant Tatiana, and gilt bronze Art Nouveau works. Religious themed bronze figurines depicted veiled women or praying women. Other works in marble and bronze follow eclectic themes, parts of an unplanned collection that was grown through years of personal tastes and foreign travel. There were other works of art in the room, such as pastel paintings by Kaulbach of Alexandra's sister the Grand Duchess Elisaveta and a portrait of Ernst by Adolf Beyer painted in 1906, as well as watercolours by the Russian artists Elizabeth Bem and Solomko. Alongside them were prints of sentimental works that Alexandra liked, but that her critics said were in bad taste.

The maple wood used in the room was a special kind that had to be immersed in water for seven years in order to be shaped into the serpentine style of Art Nouveau.

The huge windows in the room were hung with rich Darmstadt fabrics in a goldish hued pattern and delicate lace curtains. A door in one of the windows led outside to Alexandra's famous iron balcony, which was one of many balconies attached to the palace. This one was built by Danini in 1895 as part of the remodelling of the Alexander Palace in preparation for Nicholas and Alexandra coming to live there. The balcony was a favourite place for Alexandra and her family to spend time, even in winter. Meals and tea were often served there on tables laid with flowers on fine tablecloths with china, silver and crystal. Hand-inscribed menus on heavily engraved stock with the emblem of the Imperial double-headed eagle on it were placed at each setting. Heavy curtains decorated with a Greek fret pattern were hung between the column of the balcony to provide protection from sun or bad weather. During the First World War, electric lighting was installed on the balcony so the family could remain there at night. The wicker furniture often used on the balcony was made by injured soldiers.

Photos taken in the Maple Room:

(above photos courtesy of Ilya Grigoryev and White Grand Duchess.)

The Maple Room itself:

After the Imperial family left the Alexander Palace for the final time in 1917, autochrome (early colour) photographs of the palace's interiors were taken, including the Maple Room.

Above photo colour adjusted:

The palace functioned as a museum until World War Two, and after that, on Stalin's orders, the interiors were destroyed, and later on the palace was then used as a naval training base. But in 1991, the Soviet Union fell, and in the following years, the Alexander Palace was reopened and again used as a museum dedicated to the Romanovs. Despite the curators' best efforts, the interiors could not be entirely or accurately reconstructed due to lack of adequate funding, and the Maple Room and other interiors barely resembled their former selves. The room had also been divided into two rooms in the 1950s.

Some of the items and furniture from the Maple Room are kept at the Pavlovsk Palace:

(photos courtesy of Shawn Kailian on Pinterest.)

(above photos courtesy of deletant on Livejournal.)

(above photos courtesy of anashina.com)

(photos courtesy of alrina on Livejournal)

But everything changed when, in 2015, the Alexander Palace was closed to the public for a bigger and better restoration, as the proper funding had finally been allocated. The plan is to reconstruct the private rooms of Nicholas and Alexandra in exact detail to make them look as much as possible as they did at the time of their departure over 100 years earlier. The firms that have been entrusted to carry out this much-appreciated and longed-for restoration are Stavros, ArtCorpus Interiors and Studio44, and they often share progress photos of the reconstruction on social media. Because of said funding, the reopening dates have been delayed several times, but at the time of writing the palace is expected to be reopened to the public in 2020.

The progress of restoration of the Maple Room: