The leading supplier of table silver, bronze articles and jeweled haberdashery in St. Petersburg was the English Shop, founded in 1815 and purchased in 1829 by the merchants Nichols and Plinke. It remained in business until 1898. In the mid-1830s, the company, which worked with the masters in silver Carl Jogann Tegelsten, S. Arndt and A. Tobinkov, supplied the imperial court with superb tableware sets. Emperor Nicholas I (1825–1855) gave each of his children an enormous silver tableware set as a wedding present. Some of the objects from the set that formed part of the dowry of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna (1822–1892) are on display at the Fabergé Museum: a pair of wine decanters made by Carl Jogann Tegelsten (1798–1852) dated 1840, as well as seasoning shakers and tureens on trays cast by Henrik August Lång. All the objects feature the Grand Duchess’s initials in Russian engraved as two intertwining letters.
Work on Olga Nikolaevna’s dowry began just before her 18th birthday, several years before she entered matrimony. It included implements for a mobile church, among them furs, furniture, carriages, porcelain, glass, bedsheets and much else. Together with the jewelry, the silver tableware set made up the most valuable part of the dowry. The set consisted of nearly 500 items. Olga Nikolaevna’s wedding to Prince Charles of Württemberg took place on 1 July 1846. The large-scale celebration was held in Peterhof, the summer residence of the Russian emperors. The newlyweds took the dowry with them to Württemberg, and in the early 20th century the set was divided amongst museums and private collections. Twelve items from the set are currently in the Peterhof State Museum-Reserve.