Feminism in Russia - Passport magazine

Editor’s Choice
Fabergé
treasures
in the Kremlin
Museum
Alevtina Kalinina
The beginning of the 20th century saw the birth of artistic
firms producing high-quality jewellery that we still admire and
crave for. Almost simultaneously in Europe and America, Tiffany,
Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Bulgari, Patek Philippe emerged.
The industrial revolution on the one hand with its machines
which made electric gold plating possible, and with the middle
classes’ growing purchasing power, all helped to encourage
jewellery manufacture at least in quantitive terms. And the
quality didn’t really suffer either thanks to the artistic genius of
the jewellers who appeared during this epoch.
Charles Lewis Tiffany, for example, introduced the famous
Tiffany diamond-setting process in England, and the English
standard of sterling silver, which became a leader in jewellery
production in America. In France, Alfred Cartier’s speciality
was in fine platinum settings to highlight the purest precious
stones. His firm supplied jewels to the king of Portugal and
Prince of Wales. Another example is René Lalique with his
love of semi-precious stones and even glass jewellery that his
contemporaries compared to Renaissance creations.
The firm of Peter Carl Fabergé was one of the oldest of
its kind in the world. It was founded in St Petersburg. Karl
Gustavovich Fabergé, son of an established jeweller in Russia,
was educated in fine arts in Germany, Italy, France and
England. Having inherited his father’s business at the age
of twenty four in 1870 he began to manufacture not only
conventional jewellery, but also objects of fantasy—using a
huge variety of precious and semiprecious metals and gems
such as gold, silver, malachite, jade, lapis lazuli and others.
The range of the styles he favoured was impressive. He had
a liking for the Louis XVI style, but he also made objects in
the styles of the Italian Renaissance, Rococo or Old Russian
mixing Baroque and Byzantine in one. Another specialty of
Fabergé was enamelling.
A great virtuoso in styles, techniques and textures, Karl
Gustovich won prize after prize at the Pan-Russian exhibitions
1882 in Moscow, and the Universal Exposition in Paris
in 1900, gaining a real reputation among the European and
in particular Russian royalty. His workshop was famous for
his exquisite flowers, bibelots, animals and above all his imperial
Easter eggs—the delight of several Russian emperors
and their kinship in Europe over the span of several decades.
Emperor Alexander III commissioned the first of the eggs
April 2011
for Tsarina Maria in 1884. His son, Nicholas II, continued the
tradition, and placed an order for Fabergé to create Easter
presents every year for his mother and Tsarina Alexandra.
For Christel McCanless, a co-author with Will Lowes of the
book Fabergé Eggs: a Retrospective Encyclopedia, published
in 2001, many of Fabergé items and eggs in particular “have
wonderful historical associations” which makes their story
more intriguing with all the unsurpassed workmanship embodied
in them.
It is known that between 1885 and 1917, 66 eggs were manufactured
in total. Each was unique in design and in concept,
with exquisite miniatures craved into them, some functioned
as clocks. The Hen Egg, the very first order by Alexander III,
was crafted from gold. The white-enamel shell opens to reveal
a gold-yellow yolk that in turn reveals a multi-coloured
tiny hen to hide another surprise inside: a diamond replica
of the Imperial Crown and a small ruby pendant. According
to the Fabergé tradition, not even the Tsar would know what
the eggs would be made from and what surprises they would
contain. It took a long time to produce some of the miniatures.
The Coronation Egg contains an exact replica of the Tsar’s coronation
coach. The 1900 Egg was made to commemorate the
completion of the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway
and contained a miniature model of the railway. The latter
took over a year to make.
The last two eggs on which the Fabergé masters were
working in 1917 were the Karelian Birch Egg and the
Blue Constellation Egg. They were not finished and their
whereabouts are unknown. The year of 1917 with its October
Revolution was the last year for Fabergé and his family
in Russia. The main shop in St Petersburg (Petrograd then)
was closed and the whole enterprise was nationalized.
The Bolsheviks spared the Fabergé family their lives but
actually deprived them of their joy for life. Karl Gustovich,
having reached Switzerland, could not suffer his loss
and forced emigration and actually died of a heart attack
several years later in Lausanne. His sons tried to keep the
tradition alive, but lacking both employees and resources,
they failed.
The Soviet State accumulated a lot of Fabergé pieces
after the Revolution and sold them to foreign buyers by
weight when they especially desperately needed foreign
currency. There is no consensus of opinion as to how many