But before we get to these two sisters, let’s start at the beginning:

 

The Faberges were natives of Picardy in Northern France. They were Huguenots, French Protestants, who found it increasingly difficult to live in their country after the 1685 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (originally signed in 1598 by King Henry IV of France, granting Calvinist Protestants of France substantial rights in an otherwise Catholic nation) after which Louis XIV ordered the destruction of Huguenot churches and the closing of Protestant schools. Which was quickly followed by waves of massacres. Hundreds of thousands of Huguenot families fled France over the next two decades, some to Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, England, and North America. But not to New France, which at the time stretched from Newfoundland to the Canadian prairies, from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico (including the Great Lakes). Non-Catholics were not allowed to settle in New France.

 

So the Faberges migrated east across Europe, changing their name in each temporary landing spot to hide their identity from Fabri/Favri to Fabrier, and other variations. According to the historian Kenneth Snowman (more on him later), there was a goldsmith from Würtemberg named Farbinger who worked in Russia in the 1780s under the patronage of Catherine the Great. How fun to think that a predecessor of Carl Faberge had made jewels for “The Great.” But this was a rumor, an educated guess, never confirmed.

 

That the actual, confirmed relatives of Carl Faberge ultimately settled in Russia is not surprising. Feudal Russia had no middle class, no artisans. There were nobles, who did nothing but party and scheme (I’m exaggerating, but not really—see “The Great,” and “Russian Ark”), and then there were the enslaved people, the Russian peasants. Each vast estate had its own peasant blacksmith, peasant carpenter, seamstress, etc., and none of these artisans were paid for their services. Their bodies, souls, and the fruits of their talents were all properties of their owners. Each owner had their own set of skilled laborers, even entire orchestras of peasant musicians. Once Peter the Great took the throne, he sought to modernize Russia, first by moving the court from Moscow to St. Petersburg, then by importing doctors, scientists, architects, shipbuilders, engineers, and (paid) artisans from all over the Europe. Ever since then, Russia had been the land of opportunity for enterprising foreigners who wanted to make a fresh start.

 

Peter, Carl’s grandfather, was one such enterprising foreigner. Only when he settled his family in the Baltic States and became a Russian subject did he finally feel safe enough to revert to the originally family name of Faberge.

 

Gustav, Carl’s father, was born in 1814 in Estonia. Identified as a Baltic German (his French Huguenot ancestry left behind generations ago), he was apprenticed to the St. Petersburg goldsmiths, Andreas Ferdinand Spiegel (doesn’t sound very Russian), and Johann Wilhelm Keibel (ditto). Gustav qualified as a master goldsmith in 1841 and opened the House of Faberge in St. Petersburg in 1842.

 

 Gustav married the daughter of a Danish artist, they had Carl in 1846, and retired in 1860, leaving the jewelry firm in the hands of his partner, Peter Hiskias Pendin, who was from Finland (which was part of the Russian Empire until after the Revolution). 

 

Young Carl Faberge lived walking distance from the Dresden Castle and its famous Grünes Gewölbe, or Green Vault, a private repository of Saxon treasure turned into a public museum in 1723 by Augustus the Strong. He visited that place frequently. Among the Green Vault’s many Rococo and Classical pieces is “The Bath of Diana,” made by master goldsmith Johann Melchoir Dinglinger, (German, 1664-1731). It is a carved pink chalcedony bowl trimmed in silver filagree, supported by the antlers of a reclining silver stag. A silver hunting dog wearing a gem-studded gold collar (wonder where I get my ideas) lounges on the lip of the bowl, languidly watching his mistress perform her ablutions. What do you suppose was served from such a bowl? Sugared almonds, candied lark tongues?

 

In preparation for Carl taking over the family firm, Gustav sent his son on a Grand Tour of Europe, that included residencies in various arts academies, and apprenticeships with master goldsmiths in Germany, France, and England. Carl’s travels and studies continued until 1872, when he moved back to St. Petersburg and married Augusta Julia Jacobs (of Swedish stock), daughter of the Chief Manager of the Imperial Furniture Workshops.

 

When Carl took over the family firm, he was just 26. For the next 10 years he worked under the guidance of his father’s Finnish manager, Peter Pendin, who had himself trained as an optician. All the great Swiss makers of watches and mechanical toys had been opticians. All that minute and meticulous crystal grinding and metal smithery. 

 

In 1882, Peter Pendin died, and Carl took over sole responsibility for running the company. This was also the year the House of Faberge created its first Imperial Easter Egg.

 

During Gustav’s, and even during Carl’s time, the House of Faberge turned out the usual jewelry items such as necklaces, bracelets, rings, tiaras, but very few of these pieces have survived. After the Russian Revolution of 1918, Bolsheviks seized the firm, dismantled whatever was worth dismantling, prying out gems, melting down precious metals. Soviet agents sold ‘buckets of diamonds’ to Western buyers in the ‘Treasures into Tractors’ campaign run by the Ministry of the Antikvariat to fund the modernization of the Soviet Union.

 

Only the Faberge Easter Eggs, (most of the carved animals where in private collections in England), flowerpots, jeweled picture frames, hardstone boxes, and enameled cigarette cases survived the scourge of the dismantlers, their worth as intact objects being greater than the raw value of their materials.

 

I think it would have pleased Carl to know that his favorite pieces survived. He died two years after the Revolution, exiled in Switzerland, heartbroken at the loss of all that he and his family had built. But the ‘bling factor’—the sizes and quality of the stones, the quantity of precious metals, never interested him much. What really stimulated him as a creator was the artistry and whimsy—remember the Bath of Diana in the Green Vaults of the Dresden Castle?

 

So, even before the first Imperial Easter Egg was created, the Moscow outpost of the House of Faberge continued turning out jewels, tea sets, flatware, and other household items, issuing illustrated catalogs complete with prices according to quality of stones, so that the nobility living in the countryside could enjoy Faberge items. 

 

But the St. Petersburg shop, under the direction of Carl himself, turned its attention to ‘objects of fantasy,” which were composed of materials of considerable beauty, but no great intrinsic value. 

 

(My favorite: a brown Agate inkwell carved in the shape of two mushrooms, completely lifelike, spangled with diamond ‘water droplets.’)

 

Here's a wonderfully snooty quote from the 68-year-old Carl Faberge in a 1914 edition of Stoliza y Usadba (Town & Country):

 

“If you compare my things with those of such firms as Tiffany, Boucheron, and Cartier, of course you will find that the value of theirs is greater than mine. As far as they are concerned, it is possible to find a necklace in stock for one and a half million rubles. But of course, those people are merchants, and not artist-jewelers. Expensive things interest me little if the value is merely in so many diamonds and pearls.”

 

There’s a wonderful side story about one of the only surviving Faberge tiaras. It was a magnificent creation of diamonds shaped like arrows with the flights made of large graduated pear-shaped aquamarines. It was ordered by a German prince as a wedding day gift for his bride to be, but he couldn’t decide between the all-diamond version for 10,000 rubles, and the diamond and aquamarine version for 7,500 rubles (he chose the cheaper version, thank goodness, because the ice blue of the aqua is so much prettier, in my opinion). By the time the prince placed the order, Carl Faberge couldn’t fill it in time for the wedding, so the bride wore a family tiara instead. The aquamarine tiara arrived in German later, where it stayed put. Which is a blessing, otherwise it would have been broken down by the Soviets and sold off as individual stones—even the aquamarines, which were huge and perfect.

 

 

Carl Faberge wasn’t interested in costly precious jewels, but he did like colored stones. And there were plenty to choose from, as Russia is rich in minerals: Siberian emeralds, Kalgan gray jasper, Uralian agate, Caucasian malachite, nephrite, serpentine, and other precious and semiprecious gems. He also liked to use moonstones, garnets, peridot, chalcedony, bowenite, rhodonite, quartz, aventurine, lapis, amazonite, obsidian, and most particularly, rock crystal. Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder regarded rock crystal as a hard, temperature stable form of ice found in the highest peaks of the Alps. The word “crystal” comes from the Greek word for “ice.” I’m not sure if all this history influenced Faberge’s interest in using the material. My guess is that he felt drawn to rock crystal because it was pretty, durable, and inexpensive. The humble quartz aligned with his values of eschewing costly bling.

 

The House of Faberge had just been commissioned to catalog and repair the jewels of the Hermitage Collection (founded by Catherine the Great, an avid collector of intaglio gems (gems that are carved with images such as Roman gods, animals, insects, etc., among other treasures), when something shocking happened: Tsar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881.

 

Called ‘The Liberator Tsar,’ Alexander II had emancipated the serfs twenty years earlier, and tried to ease Russia’s transition into the Industrial Era, but all the reforms were both too little and too late. Things only got worse for the poor. Revolutionary sentiments were sweeping across Europe, coming to a boil in backwards Russia. 

 

On March 13, 1881, when a bomb aimed at his bulletproof carriage failed to kill the Tsar, he got out and decided to travel the rest of the distance home on foot. That’s when another bomb cut him off at the legs. Alexander II was carried into the Winter Palace, where he succumbed to his wounds in the presence of his family, including his son, who was about to become Alexander III, and his daughter-in-law, Maria Feodorovna.

 

She is one of those Danish sisters I mentioned at the beginning of this story.

 

Maria Feodorovna was born Marie Sophie Fredericke Dagmar in the Yellow Palace of Copenhagen on November 26, 1847. 

 

Dagmar, as she was called by her family, was described as ‘sweetly pretty,’ with ‘splendid dark eyes,’ but not said to be as pretty as her older sister, Alexandra. They were princesses, but as their father was not immediately in line for the Danish throne (he had unsuccessfully sought the hand of a young Queen Victoria), and lived mainly on his officer’s salary, Dagmar and Alexandra had to share a bedroom. The family of eight had only— “only”-- six servants. As children they were allowed to walk the streets of Copenhagen, interacting with shopkeepers, sitting at cafes, like normal young people. They were not followed around by palace guards, not forced to travel everywhere in closed carriages, like more important royals had to do.

Dagmar’s favorite time of year was summer, when the family would move to a country residence that was owned by the Crown, lent to their family free of charge. There they had extensive lawns, woods, and orchards to wander. There they grew stone fruit, cucumbers, artichokes, and melons. There were lots of animals around, cows, sheep, chickens, geese, pigs, goats, cats, dogs. Sometimes in the evening, Hans Christian Anderson would come read the children bedtime stories. Yes, Hans Christian Anderson himself would fill their young minds with stories about sentient animals and magical beings.

 

Side note: Hans Christian Anderson was born of humble circumstances, though rumors persist that he was the illegitimate son of King Christian VIII. His (official) father, who had an elementary school education, read the Arabian Nights to his son at bedtime. His mother was an illiterate washerwoman. Anderson was sent to a local school for poor children, then was apprenticed to a weaver. At 14 he moved to Copenhagen to seek employment as an actor. The director of the Royal Danish Theater took a liking to him and sent him to a private grammar school, where he lived in the home of the schoolmaster, who abused him to ‘improve his character.’

 

The first fairy tale Anderson wrote, “The Tallow Candle,” was about a candle that did not feel appreciated. After he wrote several more fairy tales and became famous, the royal family of Denmark had him come to court and read his stories to their children.  

 

The tallow candle was finally appreciated.

 

Back to Dagmar, who was about as much a simple country girl as a royal could be, living a relatively simple life. Then the King died unexpectedly when she was sixteen, a succession crisis ensued, and her father was crowned Christian IX of Denmark. Suddenly, the children of this formerly minor aristocrat became very desirable marriage material.

 

In 1863, Dagmar’s sister, Alexandra, married Queen Victoria’s dissolute eldest son, Albert Edward, the future Edward VII of England. More on her later, as she is the origin of those adorable carved animals.

 

In 1864, Dagmar was betrothed to Nicholas, eldest son of Tsar Alexander II. After their initial meeting (prospective couples only got to see portraits of each other before they were officially betrothed), during which Dagmer clearly fell for Nicholas, and vice versa, Nicholas continued his tour of Europe through Italy, contracted encephalitis, and soon died. On his deathbed, he asked Dagmar to promise to marry his younger brother, Alexander. She obeyed, even though she was devastated by his death.

 

When Dagmar married her fiancé’s younger brother in 1864, she became Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna. Though she spoke not a word of Russian, within a few years she mastered the language. She and Alexander seemed to get along well, he was devoted to her, they started having children, and then... her father-in-law was assassinated. Her husband became Alexander III in 1881, and she became Empress of a country that looked like it wanted to tear itself apart. And furthermore, her husband was now a sure target for future assassination attempts.

 

Marrying a prince always comes at a steep cost, isn’t that what Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Little Mermaid” tells us?

 

In her coronation photograph of 1881, Maria Feodorovna looks doomed and lost under a great weight of pearls, her big dark eyes staring into the camera. But she will survive the coming storm. Not so for the other men in her life.

 

 

Four years later, on Easter Sunday, 1885, Alexander III presented Maria Feodorovna with a very special egg. Perhaps as a symbol of rebirth and faith in the future.

 

Now, let’s back up a bit and talk about Easter Eggs. 

 

All Orthodox Slavs exchange eggs at Eastertime, a much bigger holiday than Christmas, but so do other cultures.

 

[from Kenneth Snowman’s magisterial “The Art of Carl Faberge”]

“When the ancient Pagan rites and ceremonies came to be Christianized, the egg, regarded as the manifestation of fertility and the life-force, was quite naturally sublimated into the symbol of the Resurrection, and in the same way, the various spring cults, and festivals in honor of the rebirth of the sun, and therefore life itself, became Easter. Therefore, the custom of exchanging eggs at Eastertime is one that has grown from the most deeply planted roots.

 

France took this up most enthusiastically. Gilded and painted eggs were brought to Louis XIV by courtiers with great pomp and ceremony. Watteau, Boucher, Lancret and other French painters directed their talent toward the painting of eggshells.

Louis XV presented his mistress Madame du Barry with a particularly large egg richly gilded by the court jeweler, concealing a beautifully modeled cupid.

A white enamel egg given to the Prince of Spain contained a small solid gold rooster automaton.

 

So, it was not a complete anomaly that the first Faberge egg, given to the Tsarina with the blessing, “Christ is risen,” plus three kisses on the hand, looked like…an egg.

Here's a description from the Catalogue of Imperial Easter Eggs:

 

“The shell of the Egg is gold, enameled opaque white, and polished to give the effect of a hen’s egg. The two halves are held together by a bayonet fitting; when these are opened, a yellow gold yolk with a dull sandblasted surface is revealed. Inside this yolk, which opens in the same way as the shell, sits a yellow and white tinted gold hen as though in a nest. Each feather is most beautifully engraved, and two cabochon ruby eyes are set in the head; the beak and comb are carried out in red gold. By lifting the head, the hen opens on a hinge at the tail. Originally, the diamond replica of the Imperial Crown was contained within the hen, and when this was opened, a tiny ruby pendant was found hanging inside.”

 

There is an 18^th century egg in the Royal Danish Collection that looks very similar to this egg, except that it’s made of ivory instead of gold and had a ring inside it instead of a pendant. Dagmar would have no doubt known this egg from her childhood.

 

Maria Feodorovna was so delighted by the present that the House of Faberge received the title “Goldsmith by special appointment to the Imperial Crown.” From then on, Carl Faberge had a standing order from the Court to make an annual Easter Egg, requiring only that each egg be unique, and that each have a secret ‘surprise’ inside. 

 

The next egg, or what we now think of as the next egg, called the Resurrection Egg, was a much more elaborate affair. It’s history and provenance are a perfect example of the convoluted stories of the Faberge eggs:

 

The Resurrection Egg is the only egg that explicitly references Easter: three gold figures—Christ rising from his tomb, flanked by two, lavender-winged angels—standing on a grassy mound –green enamel—encircled by rose-cut diamonds. The entire scene is encased in a transparent rock crystal egg, balanced on gold plinth decorated with diamonds and pearls.

 

As it does not have an inventory number, some people think it was the secret surprise inside the Renaissance Egg, a large white enamel and jewel encrusted egg, which perfectly follows the contours of the Resurrection Egg.

 

Alexander III was billed 4,750 rubles for the Renaissance Egg. It was confiscated by the Russian Provisional Government in 1917, sold to Armand Hammer (named “Lenin’s chosen capitalist”) sometime in the 30s along with 9 other eggs for 1,500 rubles.

 

The egg then passed through several wealthy hands, was offered to the Metropolitan Museum, but the museum stated it was not interested in “Edwardian decorative trivia.” The egg was then sold to Manhattan antique shop, La Vieille Russie, then purchased by Malcolm Forbes for his collection in 1965. The Forbes Collection was sold to Russian Oligarch Viktor Vekselberg in 2004 for almost $100 million for his Faberge Museum in St. Petersburg.  

 

Eleven eggs were made for Alexander III before his death in 1894 (kidney disease, not assassination).

When his son, Nicholas II, ascended the Russian throne, he vowed to emulate his father in every way, including the Faberge eggs. So, now there were two Imperial Eggs made annually, one for his wife, Empress Alexandra, and one for his widowed mother, Maria Feodorovna.

 

Side note: When their son Alexander was born and started suffering from hemophilia, rubies were no longer allowed to be used in the Easter Eggs, nor any other Imperial items, the color of rubies being too close to blood.

 

Fifty-seven Imperial Eggs were made by the House of Faberge before the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Faberge also made eggs for the Yusupov family (Felix Yusupov was part of the plot to assassinate Rasputin), and a number of other wealthy people, including Frau Nobel, whose husband was the nephew of Alfred Nobel (the Swedish chemist who invented dynamite, and whose name graces the Nobel Prize).

 

The Nobel family leads us to one of my favorite Imperial Easter Eggs: The Winter Egg of 1913, created by a young woman named Alma Pihl.

 

Emanuel Nobel, nephew of Alfred Nobel, came into the Faberge atelier in St. Petersburg one day in 1912 and placed an order for 40 small pieces of jewelry to be given to the wives of business associates. These jewels could not be considered bribes, so they couldn’t be too expensive, and they had to be totally new designs, not something from the normal Faberge catalogue. And they also had to be made with genuine materials, so if you broke them up, the pieces would have little or no intrinsic value. And it all had to be done in a hurry.

 

This unenviable task fell to a woman.

 

Alma Pihl (15 November 1888 Moscow – 15 July 1976 Helsinki) was the granddaughter of August Holström (a Finn), Faberge’s head jeweler, and the niece of Faberge jewelry designer, Hilma Alina Holdström. Wikipedia calls her a self-trained designer, but she did graduate from the St. Petersburg Stieglitz State Academy of Art and Design, and she did have all those relatives working for Faberge, so…

 

The 22-year-old Alma Pihl was stumped by the Nobel commission. Staring out the workshop window at the wintery streets of St. Petersburg, she noticed hoar frost forming on the glass due to her breath. And that’s when she came up with her brilliant idea: snowflakes. She would make brooches in the shape of snowflakes, using rock crystal and a platinum/silver alloy scattered with small rose cut diamonds. Elegant, unique, crafted from relatively inexpensive materials (tiny diamonds, ultra-thin alloy frames, mostly etched crystal).

 

They were a huge success.

 

So successful that she was invited to design the next Imperial Egg, which became the fabled Winter Easter Egg of 1913. (By then, Alexander III had died—kidney failure--and his son, Nicholas II ascended the throne with his ill-fated bride, Alexandra (niece of Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, who carried the ancestral hemophilia.) 

 

But the Winter Egg designed my Alma Pihl was given not to Empress Alexandra, but to Dagmar/Maria Feodorovna. It was made, like the brooches, primarily of rock crystal, platinum, gold, small diamonds, and demantoid garnets. The miniature surprise inside the transparent egg was a basket of wood anemones made from quartz and green garnets. 

 

In 1913, it cost 24,700 rubles to create. The Winter Egg left Russia after the Revolution, was sold at auction in Geneva for $5.6 million, then again in 2002 for $9.6 million (reportedly to the Emir of Qatar). In 2022, U. S. Task Force “Klepto-Capture,” hunting the assets of Putin-supporters after the invasion of Ukraine, reportedly found the Winter Egg while seizing the yacht Amadea off the coast of Fiji, which belonged to Oligarch Suleyman Kerimov (representative of the Republic of Dagustan). 

 

Alma Pihl also left Russia after the Revolution. She got a job as an art teacher in a secondary school in Finland, lived a quiet, humble life, and never once spoke of her time at Faberge.

 

Now let’s track the origins of those adorable carved stone animals.

 

As I mentioned before, Dagmar’s sister, Alexandra of Denmark married Albert Edward in 1863, second child and eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. In 1901, upon the death of his mother, he became King-Emperor Edward II (simultaneously King of England and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India). She became Queen-Empress Alexandra.

 

Queen Victoria chose Alexandra because she was sweet, pretty, and humble. And this was a good thing, because her husband, Albert Edward, who was called “Bertie” by members of his family, while being a good-natured socialite, was a rather shallow person. Queen Victoria made a point of keeping her son away from all political decisions. And he was not the best husband. He had at least 55 mistresses during his marriage, including the actress, Sarah Bernhardt. Soon after their marriage, Alexandra spent most of her time in the country, at Sandringham House, which is a 20,000 acre working farm. There she lived the sort of pastoral life she had enjoyed as a girl in the summertime.

 

It was on a visit to Russia that King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra first saw objects of fantasy on display at the House of Faberge. From that day on, “something from Faberge” became annual gifts to Alexandra on all the important gift-giving dates. Most of those gifts were carved stone replicas of the animals living on the grounds of Sandringham House.

 

“In 1907 King Edward VII made the single most important contribution to the royal collection of Faberge. He commissioned hardstone sculptures of favorite dogs and horses kept by him and his wife, Queen Alexandra, at their Sandringham residence. Gradually the project was extended to include a whole range of domestic, farm and wild animals found on the Norfolk estate. It was by far the largest order ever placed through Faberge’s London branch (opened specifically to cater to these new British clients).

 

On receiving the commission, Faberge sent his best sculptors to the Sandringham Estate to make preparatory wax models. After approval from the King, these were dispatched to St. Petersburg where lapidaries and workmasters began production. Most of the animals cost in the region of 50 pounds sterling and were sold at the London branch over a period of 5 years.

 

In 1903, King Edward VII was presented with a Norfolk terrier, Caesar, who quickly became his favorite dog. He accompanied the King almost everywhere, including France and Germany. 

 

 

Faberge modelled Caesar in chalcedony, a milky variety of quartz, and gave him polished ruby eyes to hint as his mischievous personality. Caesar’s gold and enamel collar included an inscription: “I belong to the King.” 

 

 

When the King died in 1910, Caesar walked behind the coffin as part of the funeral procession. Today he is immortalized in stone in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, sitting at the foot of his master’s tomb.

More than 100 of the Faberge animals in the Royal Collection can be directly linked to the Sandringham commission. Many are identifiable portraits, including the dogs Caesar and Sandringham Lucy, and the horses Persimmon, Iron Duke, and Field Marshall. Models of farm breeds indigenous to Norfolk – such as turkey, sheep, pigeon – can also be linked to the commission, as well as some more exotic figures – such as a bear kept on the Estate.