When Catherine the Great ordered a 925-piece dinner service in 1773, Wedgwood made perhaps £200 on an outlay of nearly £3,000.
Heralds served thoughout Europe, not only the kings and principal magnates but also the great orders of knighthood such as those of the Garter and the Golden Fleece.
Among the museum's treasures are a handful of pieces from the 744-piece dinner, dessert, tea and coffee service for 60 people, known as the Blue Cameo Service, that Catherine the Great ordered in the late 1770's.
Legend has it that Catherine the Great ordered the change from Odessos (after the Greek hero Odysseus) to a novel, feminine form.Mr King unpicks the biographical, religious and political strands of the following two centuries.
But when Empress Catherine the Great ordered an unprecedented 1000-item dinner service from Wedgwood bearing scenes of English houses and landscapes, Josiah needed the finest white clay in the world.
In 1698, Peter the Great ordered Russian men to shave off their beards, invoking a beard tax not long afterwards, to bring the country into line with its supposedly more modern European neighbours.
When Peter the Great ordered that the Troitse-Sergiyeva bells be made into cannons, each bell resisted him in its own fashion: one disappeared and only later was discovered at the bottom of a pond; two proved impossible to remove from their hooks, then suddenly crashed to the ground.
In order to assure safety for the newly founded city of Saint Petersburg, Peter the Great ordered the Swedish fort to be secured.
Peter the Great ordered that the boat be displayed in the Kremlin in 1722 in honor of the Peace of Nystad.
To be contemporary with the Europeans, Russia's Peter the Great ordered all Russian men to shave off their beards and levied and tax against those who did not.
