Peter Carl Faberge (1846-1920) and his jewellery firm has long been synonymous with the easter eggs he created for the Russian imperial family from the 1880s until 1916. Taking what was a tradition of presenting brightly coloured eggs to each other during Easter, Faberge and his team ended up pushing the boundaries of creativity and technical ability that still elicit wonder to this day.
However, there is more to Faberge than just the easter eggs. He was also a businessman and had the knack for spotting gaps in the market. The son of a jeweller who operated from a shop along St Petersburg’s Bolshaya Morskaya Street, Peter Carl was sent abroad to study and took over the family business in 1872. It was through his volunteering at the Hermitage Museum and participation at the All-Russia Exposition in St Petersburg that brought him to the attention of Tsar Alexander III.
The V&A’s current exhibition Fabergé in London: Romance to Revolution gives us a glimpse into the world of Faberge and his business. It opens with working relationship he develops with the Russian imperial family through the objects they commission or purchase from the firm. Due to his appointment as jeweller to the Imperial Court, this gave Faberge unique access to the Imperial collection that filters into his works, for instance miniature replicas of the crown jewels that were made for the Russian pavilion at the International Exposition in Paris in 1900.
Faberge believed that the value in objects lay not in the materials but in their design and craftsmanship and the second part of the exhibition delves more into the way he ran his business. The firm’s headquarters in Bolshaya Morskaya Street served not only as the family home but also the shop, workrooms, design studio, foundry, staff canteen and break space, even a greenhouse! Every piece made by the firm was a collaborative effort and Faberge ensured that a supportive and familial atmosphere pervaded his firm.
As the title suggests and this being the third time the museum has mounted an exhibition devoted to Faberge, curators, Kieran McCarthy and Hanne Faurby decided to focus on Faberge’s lone branch outside Russia – London. It was his success at the International Exposition in Paris that persuaded him to open an overseas outpost and London was chosen not only due to the familial ties between the British Royal and Russian Imperial families but also due to its location and its reputation as a cosmopolitan city and a hub of global trade. True enough, it was the London branch that drew customers from Western Europe, the United States and even as far away as India and Siam (now Thailand).
Unsurprisingly the London branch’s biggest client were King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. Where they led, the rest of society followed and a trip to the Faberge store in Oxford Street (later Dover Street then finally New Bond Street) became a must. It also became clear that the way to the royal family’s heart was to give them something from Faberge for their birthday or Christmas.
Just as with his Russian clientele, Faberge (via his agent and London branch manager Henry Bainbridge) studied the habits and buying preferences of the British elite. This led to the production of objects and products that appealed to their interests and hobbies such as the creation of boxes that depicted known landmarks such as the Palace of Westminster, cigarette cases emblazoned with racing colours, figurines in the shape of animals and personalities such as a Chelsea Pensioner. The firm also capitalised on Britain’s fascination with Russian culture and art as well as the signing of the Anglo-Russian alliance in 1907 by selling traditional Russian objects & icons with the Faberge touch.
The outbreak of the First World War spelled the death kneel for Faberge & his business. His confections were increasingly being viewed as frivolous and inappropriate; the firm instead turned to making munitions and what became known as “austerity pieces.” Many of the employees were also conscripted and by 1917-1918 with the overthrow of the Romanov dynasty and the rise of the Bolsheviks, the business was nationalised and Faberge was forced to flee Russia, settling in Switzerland where he died in 1920.
The exhibition closes with several of Faberge’s famous eggs on display including those from the Moscow Kremlin Museum. While the exhibition is well laid out and the information is both interesting and informative, what stood out for me are the sections that highlighted Faberge’s signature guilloche enamelling which is demonstrated by a film and the display of a rare surviving sampler used by the firm and the spotlight on Alma Pihl, one of the few women designers working in a major jewellery company at the beginning of the 20th century. It was Pihl who designed two of the easter eggs on display – the Winter Egg, commissioned by Nicholas II for his mother Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna and the Mosaic Egg for Empress Alexandra Feodorovna.
All in all, I would highly recommend a visit to this exhibition, if only to marvel at what Faberge managed to achieve through a combination of talent, business acumen, hard work, luck and being at the right time and the right place. And most importantly, offering us a glimpse into a long-vanished world, the likes of which we will never see again.
Fabergé in London: Romance to Revolution is on at the V&A from 20 November 2021 to 8 May 2022. For more information, see here: https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/faberge
The blogger visited the exhibition on 5 January 2022.
Further reading:
Geza von Habsburg and Marina Lopato (eds.) Faberge: Imperial Jeweller (London, 1994)
Kiera McCarthy. Faberge in London: The British Branch of the Imperial Russian Goldsmith (Suffolk, 2017)
Caroline de Guitaut. Faberge’s Animals: A Royal Farm in Miniature (London, 2010)
Caroline de Guitaut. Faberge in the Royal Collection (London, 2003)
Caroline de Guitaut. Royal Faberge (London, 2011)
Caroline de Guitaut and Stephen Patterson (eds.) Russia: Art, Royalty and the Romanovs (London, 2018)
Kieran McCarthy and Hanne Faurby (eds.) Faberge: Romance to Revolution (London, 2021)
Vladimir Voronchenko (ed.) Fabergé: Treasures of Imperial Russia, Fabergé Museum, St. Petersburg (New York, 2017)
Enough of this Tomfoolery! 