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22-398: The medieval Georgian monarchs are portrayed on coins, medals, sculptured reliefs, and in frescoes wearing crowns and royal robes, frequently of Byzantine imperial design, and there is also some documentary evidence about some of their regalia. But none of these specimens has come down to us. A crown attributed to the kings of Imereti , in western Georgia, was still preserved in the treasury of

44-686: A constant battleground between Georgian and Ottoman forces for several centuries, resulting in the kingdom's progressive decline due to this ongoing instability.These threats pushed local Georgian rulers to seek closer ties with Tsardom of Russia . In 1649, Imereti sent ambassadors to the Russian royal court and Russia returned favor in 1651. In the presence of Russian ambassadors, Alexander III of Imereti swore an oath of allegiance to Tsar Alexis of Russia . However, internal conflicts among Georgian royalty continued and, although Alexander III briefly managed to control all of Western Georgia, this consolidation

66-551: The Gelati Monastery , in 1896, when it was listed, in an inventory of the treasury, among articles not used for divine service and described as a "royal crown, sewn with gold and silver and adorned with precious stones, seven small crosses decorated with stones of various colours gave it great beauty and glitter." The crown is currently lost. The first modern, Westernized , regalia were made for King Heraclius II , king of Kartli and Kakheti in eastern Georgia, in 1783, on

88-726: The Greater Arms of the Russian Empire of 1882. The Georgian Crown was made of gold, a circlet surmounted by ornaments and closed by eight half-arches on which rested a globe surmounted by a cross. It was adorned with 145 diamonds, 58 rubies, 24 emeralds, and 16 amethysts. In 1922, the Soviet Russian Central Executive Committee decided to return the Georgian Crown as well as some of the antiquities of Georgian provenance from

110-608: The Georgian art historian Natalia Beruchashvili, the crown might have been sold abroad and, eventually, acquired by Henri Deterding , the then-head of the Royal Dutch Shell . After Deterding's death in 1939, the crown became unheard of, but it may remain in a private collection in Europe. The heraldic depiction of the Georgian Crown (" Iberian Crown") is in use in the current coat of arms of Georgia , adopted in 2004. Of

132-546: The Russian museums to the newly sovietized republic of Georgia . On 6 February 1923, the crown was sent to Georgia, where it was kept at the State Museum . On 23 April 1930, however, the Soviet Georgian authorities decided to "utilize" the crown. It might have been sent back to Moscow in compliance with the request from the central Soviet government and subsequently broken up. According to a more recent research by

154-575: The artist Pierre Etienne Theremin and the goldsmith Nathanael Gottlob Licht in St. Petersburg and presented to the Georgian king at a solemn ceremony in Tiflis. After the death of George XII on 28 December 1800, the Imperial manifesto of Paul I of 18 January 1801 and that of his successor, Alexander I , of 12 September 1801, annexed Georgia to the Russian Empire. On 20 February 1801, the Russian military escorted

176-406: The bulat steel used today makes use of a more recently developed technique. The secret of bulat manufacturing had been lost by the beginning of the 19th century. It is known that the process involved dipping the finished weapon into a vat containing a special liquid of which spiny restharrow extract was a part (the plant's name in Russian, stalnik , reflects its historical role), then holding

198-407: The final steel. In bulat, the slow cooling process allowed the cementite to precipitate as micro particles in between ferrite crystals and arrange in random patterns. The color of the carbide is dark while steel is grey. This mixture is what leads to the famous patterning of Damascus steel . Cementite is essentially a ceramic, which accounts for the sharpness of Damascus (and bulat) steel. Cementite

220-524: The male-offspring of this branch came to end, the headship of the House of Bagrationi-Imereti transmitted to Prince Irakli Bagrationi (1925–2013), son of Prince Grigol, the male-line descendant of Prince Bagrat, younger brother of King Solomon I of Imereti (1752–1784). Bulat steel Bulat is a type of steel alloy known in Russia from medieval times; it was regularly mentioned in Russian legends as

242-477: The material of choice for cold steel. The name булат is a Russian transliteration of the Persian word fulad , meaning steel. This type of steel was used by the armies of nomadic peoples. Bulat steel was the main type of steel used for swords in the armies of Genghis Khan . Bulat steel is generally agreed to be a Russian name for wootz steel , the production method of which has been lost for centuries, and

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264-558: The occasion of his acceptance the protectorate of the Russian Empire in the Treaty of Georgievsk . These were a crown and other "symbols of investiture" commissioned by the tsarina Catherine II from Louis David Duval, a court jeweler. These items were carried away by the Iranian ruler Agha Muhammad Khan on his sack of Heraclius' capital of Tiflis (Tbilisi) in 1795 and have since been lost. Only pictorial depictions survive, such as on

286-540: The remaining Georgian regalia, the bulat steel sword, adorned with various gems, was lost without any trace after the 1917 revolution. Only George XII's scepter survived in the collection of the Kremlin's Armoury owing to an erroneous assumption—on account of its depiction of a Russian double-headed eagle —that it belonged to the tsar Paul I himself. Kingdom of Imereti The Kingdom of Imereti ( Georgian : იმერეთის სამეფო , romanized : imeretis samepo )

308-639: The reverse of a medal, commemorative of the Treaty of Georgievsk, produced by Timofey Ivanov of the Saint Petersburg Mint in 1790. George XII, Heraclius II's son and successor, received new regalia from the tsar Paul I of Russia once he filed—as demanded by Paul in his congratulatory letter of 23 August 1798—a formal request for the recognition as a new king in November 1798. The new jewels—a crown, scepter, and sword—were promptly manufactured by

330-501: The royal regalia from Tiflis to St. Petersburg. In 1811, Alexander I had these items deposited as part of the Russian sovereign's regalia in the Kremlin's Armoury, where they remained kept until after the Russian Revolution of 1917 . In the Russian imperial heraldry, the Georgian Crown ( Russian : Грузинская корона ) was depicted on the coat of arms of Tiflis as well as on that of the titular Kingdom of Georgia as part of

352-475: The same quality steels for far less money. Carbon steel consists of two components: pure iron , in the form of ferrite , and cementite or iron carbide, a compound of iron and carbon . Cementite is very hard and brittle; its hardness is about 640 by the Brinell hardness test , whereas ferrite is only 200. The amount of the carbon and the cooling regimen determine the crystalline and chemical composition of

374-507: The sword aloft while galloping on a horse, allowing it to dry and harden against the wind. Pavel Anosov eventually managed to duplicate the qualities of that metal in 1838, when he completed ten years of study into the nature of Damascus steel swords . Anosov had entered the Saint Petersburg Mine Cadet School in 1810, where a Damascus steel sword was stored in a display case. He became enchanted with

396-453: The sword, and was filled with stories of them slashing through their European counterparts. In November 1817, he was sent to the factories of Zlatoust mining region in the southern Urals , where he was soon promoted to the inspector of the "weapon decoration department". Here he again came into contact with Damascus steel of European origin (which was in fact pattern welded steel, and not at all similar ), but quickly found that this steel

418-559: The time that Imereti was a vassal state, the Mingrelia , Abkhazia and Guria princedoms declared their independence from Imereti and established their own governments. Since Solomon II of Imereti had no sons, he proclaimed Prince Constantine, son of king David II of Imereti, and his male-line senior descendants as heirs to the throne of the Kingdom of Imereti. After the death of Hereditary Prince Constantine (III) (1898–1978), because

440-639: Was a Georgian monarchy established in 1455 by a member of the house of Bagrationi when the Kingdom of Georgia was dissolved into rival kingdoms . Before that time, Imereti was considered a separate kingdom within the Kingdom of Georgia, of which a cadet branch of the Bagrationi royal family held the crown. The realm was conquered by George V the Brilliant and once again united with the east Kingdom of Georgia. From 1455 onward, however, Imereti became

462-520: Was quite inferior to the original forged in the Middle East from wootz steel from India. Anosov had been working with various quenching techniques, and decided to attempt to duplicate Damascus steel with quenching . He eventually developed a methodology that greatly increased the hardness of his steels. Bulat became popular in cannon manufacturing, until the Bessemer process was able to make

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484-476: Was short lived. By the time of his death in 1660, Western Georgia was still in a state of flux. In this chaotic period, Archil of Imereti was enthroned and deposed several times. His efforts to secure assistance from Russia and, later, Pope Innocent XII proved unsuccessful and he was finally exiled to Russia. Under pressure from Pavel Tsitsianov , in 1804 Solomon II of Imereti accepted Russian Imperial suzerainty, only to be deposed entirely in 1810. During

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