Faberge, Carl

Peter Karl Faberge was born in St. Petersburg on May 30, 1846, a Russian German by birth. His father, Gustav Faberge , came from a German family of French roots and was originally from Estonia , and his mother, Charlotte Jungstedt, was the daughter of a Danish artist. In 1842, Faberge Sr. founded a jewelry company in St. Petersburg.

Karl Faberge traveled to Europe and initially studied in Dresden , and then began to master jewelry from the Frankfurt master Joseph Friedmann. After that he returned to Russia. At the age of 24 in 1870, he took his father's company into his own hands.

In 1882, at the All-Russian Art and Industrial Exhibition in Moscow, the products of his company attracted the attention of Emperor Alexander III . Peter Karl received the patronage of the royal family and the title of “Jeweler of His Imperial Majesty and Jeweler of the Imperial Hermitage”.

Faberge company was famous in Europe. Many relatives of the imperial family in the UK, Denmark, Greece and Bulgaria received items as gifts. In 1900, in Paris, Faberge received the title of “master of the Paris Guild of Jewelers”, and he was also awarded the Order of the Legion of Honor .

In the years 1899-1900. in the center of St. Petersburg, the main building of the Faberge firm is being constructed according to the project of the architect Karl Schmidt , the cousin of the jeweler. On the ground floors there is a shop and workshops. The rest of the building was occupied by the living rooms of the Faberge family.

After the establishment of Soviet power , Faberge factories and shops in Petrograd, Moscow and Odessa were nationalized . In Petrograd, almost all reserves of precious metals, stones, and finished goods fell into the hands of the Bolsheviks, for which no compensation was paid to the owners. Only a small fraction of the products that Eugene Faberge had been able to export to Finland shortly before could be saved from nationalization. Subsequently, the Bolsheviks freely disposed of confiscated property - for example, Emanuel Snowman from the Wartski trading house recalled that from 1925 to 1939 he regularly purchased a large number of Faberge items from the Soviet state sales agent, including six Easter eggs , right in the location of the former Petrograd store of Carl Faberge on Bolshaya Morskaya, 24 ^[1] .

In September 1918, fearing arrest , Karl Faberge illegally left Petrograd, under the guise of a courier of one of the foreign embassies, and by train went abroad - to Riga . Soon after, he had to flee further to the West - to Germany. He settled in Berlin, but the revolution also began there. Faberge had to move to Frankfurt, then to Homburg and Wiesbaden , where he finally stopped ^[1] .

Carl Faberge never recovered after the shocking revolutionary events of him . At this time, he often repeated: "There is no more life." In May 1920, he became ill with a heart. When his health improved somewhat, his family transported him to the vicinity of Lake Geneva , known for their healthy climate. He died in the city of Lausanne in Switzerland on the morning of September 24, 1920, having smoked a cigarette shortly before his death ^{[1] [4]} . He was buried at the Grand Jas Cemetery in Cannes .

Faberge, Evgeny Karlovich (05/29/1874 - 1960) - The eldest son of Karl Gustavovich Faberge, a talented jewelry artist and portrait painter, studied at Petrischul from 1887 to 1892 and at the jewelry department of the University of Hanau in Germany, as well as with S. Seidenberg and J. Ollilla in Helsinki. In 1897, he worked as an expert at an exhibition in Stockholm. In 1900, he was awarded the officer badge of the Academy of Arts and the Bulgarian Order of St. Alexander for an exhibition in Paris. From 1894 he worked at his father’s company, from 1898 to 1918 he and his father and brother Agafon Karlovich were the actual head of the company in St. Petersburg. In 1923 he emigrated to Paris, where he founded the company Faberge & Co. with his brother.

Faberge, Agafon Karlovich (01.24.1876 - 1951) - The son of Karl Gustavovich Faberge, studied in Petrishula from 1887 to 1892 and at the commercial department of the Wiedemann gymnasium . In May 1895, the father entered the business, since 1898 an expert at the Diamond Room of the Winter Palace, an appraiser of the Loan Fund, an appraiser of His Imperial Majesty by proxy of his father. In the 1900-1910s, together with his father and brother Yevgeny Karlovich, he managed the affairs of the company. Following the results of the 1900 exhibition in Paris, he was awarded a gold medal. He was unjustly accused by his father of stealing money, after which their relationship ended and he did not leave Russia with his family (only many years later the family friend himself admitted the theft). Since 1922 he was appointed authorized by Gokhran and an appraiser. In 1927, together with his wife Maria Borzova, he crossed the border with Finland on the ice of the Gulf of Finland, after having forwarded money and valuables through acquaintances and friends, which were enough for a short while, and much was stolen. He found himself in extreme poverty. Settled in a bought and rebuilt four-story house in Helsinki. He lived by selling part of his richest collection of stamps. ^[5]

Faberge, Alexander Karlovich (12/17/1877 - 1952) - The son of Karl Gustavovich Faberge, studied at Petrischul from 1887 to 1895 and at the school of Baron Stieglitz, then at Cacheau in Geneva. The head and artist of the Moscow branch of the company, in 1919 he was appointed an expert of the People's Commissariat of Education. He emigrated to Paris, where he worked for Faberge & Co.

Faberge, Nikolai Karlovich (05/09/1884 - 1939) - The son of Karl Gustavovich Faberge. A graduate of Petrishule , studied from 1894 to 1902. Jewelry artist, studied with American artist Sergeant in England. Since 1906, he lived in England, worked in the London branch of Faberge.

Carl Faberge and the jewelers of his company created the first jewelry egg in 1885 ^[6] . It was ordered by Tsar Alexander III as an Easter surprise for his wife Maria Fedorovna . The so-called “Chicken” egg is coated on the outside with white, imitating shell, enamel, and inside, in the “yolk” of matte gold, is a chicken made of colored gold. Inside the chicken, in turn, is hidden a small ruby ​​crown (cf. the tradition of folding dolls ) - later lost ^[2] .

The idea of ​​such jewelry was not original:

Faberge Easter Egg was supposed to be a free interpretation of an egg made at the beginning of the XVIII century, 3 copies of which are known today. They are: in the Rosenborg castle ( Copenhagen ); in the Museum of Art History ( Vienna ) and in a private collection (previously - in the art gallery " Green Arches ", Dresden ). In all the mentioned specimens of eggs, a chicken is hidden, by opening which you can find the crown, and in it - the ring. It is believed that the emperor wanted to please his wife with a surprise that would remind her of a well-known product from the Danish royal treasury ^[7] .

The empress was so fascinated by the gift that Faberge, who had turned into a court jeweler, received an order to make an egg every year; the product should be unique and contain some kind of surprise, this was the only condition. The next emperor, Nicholas II , preserved this tradition, each spring giving, in turn, two eggs - one to Maria Fedorovna, her widowed mother, and the second to Alexandra Fedorovna , the new empress.

Making each egg took almost a year. As soon as the sketch was approved, a whole team of jewelers of the company took up the work, the names of some of them were preserved (so to say that the author of all the eggs himself should not be Carl Faberge himself). The contribution of master Mikhail Perkhin is especially great. Also mentioned are August Holstrom , Henryk Wigstrom , Eric Collin , etc. ^[8] .

A series of imperial eggs was so famous that Faberge produced several products for private customers (about 15 are known). Among them stands a series of seven eggs donated by goldmaker Alexander Ferdinandovich Kelch to his wife. The remaining eight known Faberge eggs were made to order for Felix Yusupov , nephew of Alfred Nobel , the Rothschilds , the Duchess of Marlborough and unidentified persons. They are not as luxurious as imperial ones, and are not original, often repeating the type invented for royal gifts.

Perhaps for private individuals some more products were made, but they were never documented (unlike the tsar’s eggs), which leaves some freedom for skillful falsifiers . An example of an unexpected discovery is the “Rothschild egg” put up for sale in autumn 2007, which was ordered by representatives of the clan at Faberge and kept among family property for a century without being advertised.

Among other works by Faberge is a unique still life of 1905, which is a stone on which the “ gentleman's set” is laid: fried eggs, a faceted glass with unfinished vodka, an appetizer and an undressed cigarette. Despite the apparent simplicity, the still life is made of the most expensive materials: the brick is carved from jasper , the squirrel from white stone, the yolk from amber , the newspaper, the fish appetizer and the fly from silver, the glass and its contents are made from crystal , and the cigarette butt from crystal and quartz . ^[9]

Faberge produced not only expensive "toys for the rich", but also things designed for consumers with an average income. It is known that at one of the company's factories in 1914 copper cups were produced. ^[10]

• Order of St. Stanislav 2nd and 3rd degrees
• Order of St. 2nd degree Anna
• gold medal on the Stanislavsky ribbon (for the exhibition of 1882 in Moscow)
• Order of Civil Merit (Bulgaria)
• Order of the Legion of Honor (1900; France).

• In St. Petersburg there is Charles Faberge Square .
• On November 19, 2013, the Faberge Museum was opened in St. Petersburg in the Naryshkin-Shuvalov Palace .
• In Kiev there is a memorial plaque in honor of the famous jeweler.
• In Odessa, on the building of the Passage hotel , where Karl Faberge jewelry salon was located in the fashionable shopping arcade before the Bolshevik revolution, a memorial plaque was installed.
• In Baden-Baden there is the first Faberge Museum in the world, fully dedicated to the work of a jeweler's company.
• Moscow has a college of arts and crafts named after Carl Faberge

• Henry Charles Bainbridge. Peter Carl Faberge. Goldsmith and Jeweler to the Russian Imperial Court. His Life and Work. - 3-rd. - GB, Bugay, Suffolk: Spring Books, 1968 .-- 168 p.

• Faberge and Imperial Easter Eggs
• Faberge Museum in Baden-Baden [1]
• Artyom Krechetnikov. Jeweler of His Imperial Majesty (Russian) . Russian service of the BBC (May 27, 2011). Date of treatment May 27, 2011. Archived on August 28, 2011.
• Faberge Dynasty: Brief Biographies (Neopr.) . Russian National Museum. Date of treatment October 22, 2012.
• Fabergé, Peter Carl (1846-1920) in the Baltisches Biographisches Lexikon Digital (German) Dictionary