I have always enjoyed visiting museums, whatever the weather. Over time, I have learnt to distinguish between good and bad artists, boring and fascinating work, and ambitious and sensitive design. In the process, I developed my own taste and clear preferences.
In the beginning, I was still easily inspired on my forays through museums and churches, found everything wonderful and took every exhibition catalogue with me and kept it. Over the years, these moments became rarer, but when they occur, they remain deeply engraved in my memory.
The Fabergé Museum in Baden-Baden is an ode to craftsmanship and a tribute to beauty. Aesthetics, perfection and craftsmanship are united here with luxury in a special way. This formula has created unique pieces that, with their quality and personality, have become the ultimate objects you want to own.
Located in the heart of the city, the small museum tells the story of Peter Carl Fabergé’s life and work. In a city where everyday life is traditionally characterised by nature, art and culture, visitors can experience the cosmos surrounding Fabergé, and his view of the aristocratic and industrial society of the time against the backdrop of history.
Peter Carl Fabergé’s ancestors, French Huguenots, left their homeland after Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes (protection of the Huguenots). Their journey eventually took them to St. Petersburg. There, his father was trained as a goldsmith and then joined the renowned Keibel company, a goldsmith and jeweller to the Russian tsars. He eventually opened his own business and started a family. Peter Carl was born, the first of two sons.
Peter Carl studied at the Dresden School of Arts and Crafts, and his curiosity and quest for perfection led him on an intensive eight-year educational journey through Europe to learn the jewellery business. Master goldsmiths in several of the most important jewellery manufacturing centres, including London, Paris, Antwerp, Frankfurt, Nuremberg, Rome and Florence, were his teachers. His training was supplemented by additional lessons in applied arts and trade, while he continued to study the masterpieces in the museums tirelessly.
Returning to St. Petersburg, he devoted himself to the repair and restoration of precious masterpieces in the Hermitage, the court museum of Catherine the Great. This work opened the door to forgotten techniques of antique goldsmithing and awakened his particular interest in French snuffboxes – small, exquisite works of art.
The Fabergé company was awarded a gold medal and the St Stanislaus Medal at the 1882 Pan-Russian Exhibition of Industry and Crafts in Moscow, marking a milestone in its existence. Tsar Alexander III set an imperial example by ordering the company’s masterpieces to be exhibited in the Hermitage Museum to showcase some of the finest Russian craftsmanship. This imperial wish aroused great interest in the company among the aristocratic elite at the Romanov court and beyond.
Tsar Alexander commissioned Peter Carl Fabergé to make an Easter egg to be presented to his Empress Maria Fedorovna as a gift. The finished egg had an outer “shell” of gold, which opened to reveal a golden “yolk”, which opened itself to reveal a golden chicken, which also opened to reveal a replica of the imperial crown, from which a tiny ruby egg was suspended. A stunning piece of personal visual art. The Tsar was so pleased with the result that in 1887 he instituted the Romanov tradition of ordering a new Easter egg every year. Carl Fabergé was given complete freedom of design, provided that each precious object contained a surprise. Alexander’s successor Nicholas II continued the tradition and commissioned two eggs each year: one for his wife, Empress Alexandra Fedorovna, and one for his mother, the Dowager Empress. The tradition was maintained until the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.
The international breakthrough came in 1900, when Peter Carl represented Russia at the Paris World Exhibition. Awarded with a gold medal and a knighthood of the Legion of Honour for himself, his sons and his chief designer, Fabergé became synonymous for luxury and innovation. The workshop grew rapidly, and the Fabergé family was no longer ‘just’ the official court jeweller to the Tsar, but his creations attracted the attention of European royalty and an international clientele.
On a single day in 1898, he received the kings and queens of Norway and Greece, as well as the British Queen Alexandra, Princess of Denmark by birth and Princess of Wales by marriage to Queen Victoria and Albert’s eldest son Edward VII, and later Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, and Empress of India. She was known for her elegance and her influence on the fashion of her time. In 1903, Fabergé opened his first branch outside Russia – fittingly, in London. This anchored the luxury house in the British market, finding favour with members of the royal family and the aristocracy. The Queen Mother and Queen Elizabeth II were both known to be admirers of these exquisite works of art.
But the allure of Fabergé extended beyond royalty and the upper classes – now the likes of the nouveau riche of Wall Street and other financial centres, along with American heiresses, flocked to Fabergé to exchange lavish gifts unlike any others, in a dazzling display of opulence that merged the realms of power and fortune.
The graceful style of modern goldsmiths like Bolin, Boucheron, and Cartier, who once worked for Fabergé, still fascinates people today. Fabergé was not just a craftsman who kept old traditions alive, but also someone who honoured the past as a source of inspiration for the present and future, using it to create modern elegance and new ideas.
The museum not “only” presents extraordinary works of art, but also the beauty and dignity of everyday life. The hard labour of the rural population reminds us how precious and respectful the appreciation of the simple and everyday can be.
Because in the beginning there was the egg.
Exile and Death
The October Revolution of 1917 made it impossible to continue the business. Fabergé was stripped of everything, and his factories and businesses were nationalised.
In 1918, he was forced to flee to Finland and later to Wiesbaden. His life’s work was destroyed, the stress of which caused a dramatic deterioration of his health. Fabergé died in Lausanne, Switzerland, and was buried with his wife Augusta at the Cimetière du Grand Jas in Cannes, a place worthy of honouring such an extraordinary life.
Beatrice Ephrussi de Rothschild gave her brother’s future wife an extraordinary engagement present: a Fabergé egg with a delicate clockwork and a diamond-studded miniature cockerel. The egg found its way to the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg in 2014, where it can be admired today, having spent almost a decade in Baden-Baden.
Fabergé eggs are still among the most precious and sought-after objets d’art in the world today. Many of these masterpieces have been scattered around the globe over the years.
Mr. Wiktor Wekselberg has created another Fabergé Museum in Saint Petersburg, in the cradle of Russian splendour. I hope to visit this museum one day – come with us!
CONTACT DETAILS
Fabergé Museum
Sophienstraße 30
76530 Baden-Baden
Germany
Tel: +49 72219 70890
All photos courtesy and © Martin David; published with the kind permission of the Fabergé Museum
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