To Ya. A. Korneyev, September 1887. Moscow.

This is a brief note from September 1887, when Chekhov was living in Moscow and already a rising figure in the capital’s literary and artistic circles. Yakov Alekseyevich Korneyev was an acquaintance to whom Chekhov is sending a small gift: a decorative plate painted with a picture of Korneyev’s own houses, the work of an unnamed art student ("studiozom") in Chekhov’s circle – quite possibly one of his artist friends or his brother Nikolai, himself trained at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture.

The note is a single sentence of substance, followed by the signature and year – the kind of short, practical card that accompanied countless small exchanges of gifts and favors among Chekhov’s wide acquaintance in this period. It has no literary content beyond its charm as a domestic gesture, but it is a useful record of Chekhov’s social world in mid-1880s Moscow, and of the casual traffic in small commissioned artworks among his friends.