The Art Of Faberge

By A Kenneth Snowman
New York Graphic Society Ltd, Greenwich, Connecticut, USA
ISBN 0-8212-0609-5
1953 / 1962

New York Graphic Society writes:

Carl Faberge, goldsmith and jeweler to the Imperial Court of Russia in the years before First World War, was a consummate craftsman, a virtuoso artist in the design and production of exquisite objects. It was his good fortune and ours, comments the author of this magnificently illustrated study of his work, that he was born into an age still able to afford him. When the new Soviet government took over control of private business after the war, Faberge himself is said to have asked, with characteristic lack of ceremony, for ten minutes grace ‘to put on my hat and coat’. He died in Lausanne in 1920, an exile from his country and his work.

The photographs in this volume include a selection from the collection of the Kremlin Museums of the fabulous Imperial Easter Eggs presented each year to Tsarinas, and objects from the British Royal Collections at Sandringham, from other museums, and from the most important private collection in the United States: jewelry, flower studies and animal carvings in semi-precious stones, a dazzling assembly of snuff boxes, cigarette cases, parasol handles, inkwells, clocks and lorgnettes, chess sets and letter openers.