Made in St Petersburg c.1840 for Prince Anatole Demidoff, owner of the malachite mine in the Urals, it was later shown at the Great Exhibition and acquired in 1880 for Cliffe Castle by the Victorian textile manufacturer and shipping magnate, Henry Isaac Butterfield.
The collections at the house were broken up in 1950 when the fireplace was moved first to Thoresby Hall in Nottinghamshire and then to Butterfields, a house built on the grounds of the estate by heiress and yachtswomen Lady Rozelle Raynes (1925-2015) in the 1980s.
Lady Raynes left several hundred items to Cliffe Castle Museum in her will including family portraits, drawings of the house and the grand continental furnishings that were the taste of her forebears.
Some are already on public display while others will be added to the collection after conservation.
More modest items were sold by Golding Young and Mawyer in Lincoln in February. A full report of the sale appears in this week's ATG print publication.
