Fabergé And The Russian Crafts Tradition: An Empire’s Legacy

Karla Klein Albertson | Antiques and the Arts Weekly | 30th January 2018

Peter Carl Fabergé was part of a crafts tradition going back centuries. Tsarist patronage of the arts was partly intended as a demonstration of national prowess – and Fabergé eggs do nothing if not that. Bolshevik ambitions were, of course, far more muscular and, after 1917, some of these exquisite objects came to Europe in the arms of emigres. No longer symbolic they are now merely objects of “otherworldly beauty”.