Goldsmith to Royalty
Peter Carl Faberge, Goldsmith and Jeweller to the Russian Imperial Court and Principal Crowned Heads of Europe. By Henry Charles Bainbridge. (Batsford. ,C7 7s. Od.) WHEN the subject of this biography died in exile in Switzerland in 1920, his artistic significance was not generally recognised. Sitter then his reputation has steadily risen. The reason for this is that the wares of the firm of Faberge had always been intended for the wealthiest class of customers and the best of its work had hitherto remained in Russia. Since then Faberge's customers outside Russia have mostly died, and their collections have in many cases been dispersed, whilst as a result of the revolution the huge accumulation of pieces made for the Russian imperial family and nobility his been thrown on the market.
It is thirty years since the Bolshevists closed down the firm of Faberge, so that death has already thinned out the ranks of those who once knew the inner working of the firm. It is therefore fortunate that the task of biographer has been undertaken by Mr. Bainbridge, who was for long the firm's London .agent and whose recollections have been reinforced by those of the son of his subject, M. Agathon Faberge. The firm's books have presumably been destroyed, and Faberge himself never bothered about any posthumous fame.
How did Faberge acquire the reputation which he built up in Russia, and in what did his greatness consist ? Mr. Bainbridge confesses that his hero's participation in the manufacture of most of the work sold by the firm is generally uncertain and was hardly ever more than supervisory. His imperial clients, indeed, got work from his own designs, and he doubtless served many of his other important clients likewise. His genius appears really to have con- sisted in picking his master-craftsmen and in keeping them up to the mark by vetting their designs and the work of their journeymen- When it is understood that the firm came to have seven hundred employees and establishments in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Odessa and London, it will be realised that the name of Faberge could hardly be more than a hall-mark denoting quality.
Peter Carl Faberge was born in 1846, and in 1870 took over the management of the unimportant goldsmith's business in St Peters- burg which had been started by his father,,who had, however, retired ten years previously and left a manager in charge. About the young Faberge's technical qualifications Mr. Bainbridge is hazy. It is known that he got some of his education in Paris, and it is presume,' that it must have included some sort of apprenticeship in the craft of the goldsmith. At any rate under his guidance the firm went steadily ahead, and by the beginning of the present century all pre-eminent amongst the goldsmiths' businesses of St. Petersburg. By this time it had abandoned the manufacture of jewellery for rt. sonal adornment, and specialised in plate, bijotaerie and objets d'art in semi-precious stones, sometimes mounted in gold with preciou-, stones. What Mr. Bainbridge shows us of the Faberge plate is not impressive, and perhaps the artist's European outlook and Protestant upbringing militated against the production of satisfactory ikons. No " style Faberge " was ever developed, for his firm specialised in the adapting of the styles of the past (but mainly of the eighteenth century) to the needs or fancies of the present. Thus cigarette- boxes and card-cases were made with the form and with the decora- tion of Louis XV and Louis XVI snuff-boxes and ituis. This was, of course, when his clients expected something professedly useful. Often they were content with a sheer ornament, a miniature grand piano in enamelled gold or a rock-crystal vase holding a spray forget-me-nots which his craftsmen learnt to reproduce with fiendish realism in turquoises with gold stalks and nephrite leaves. Faberge's powers of invention and of direction were excelled by his skill as a salesman. He obtained a reputation amongst the ruoA exalted in rank and the most wealthy of being able to prochke a gift appropriate .for every occasion. Thus in 1883 he suggested that Alexander III should give the Tsarina an Easter egg with a surprise in it—not a very original idea—and this developed into a custom which lasted until the fall of the Tsars. He knew, in fact, how to make himself indispensable and to direct his customers' taste just as he did that of his master-craftsmen. Sometimes, indeed, clients got out of hand, and one wonders whether the artist in Faberge really derived any satisfaction from the reproductions in semi-precious stones of the favourite animals at Sandringham, the idea of which initiated in the firm's animal caricatures, but in which all the latter's good-humoured vitality got lost.
Mr. Bainbridge has arranged his work carefully, but unfortunately the sound basic construction is obscured by the inclusion of a quantity of irrelevant matter. This is the more to be regretted because the book is full of interesting and amusing anecdotes about that golden age of high society which came to an end in 1914, and the picture of the artist is very sympathetically drawn fuough rather uncriticaL The illustrations arc excellent. CHARLES Osssx.
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