HISTORICAL DICTIONARY A–Z - Russia: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present - page 145

F

Fabergé, Karl Gustavovich (1846-1920)
(Karl Peter)
jeweler
Designer of the world-famous bejeweled Easter
eggs made for the Russian imperial family from
the 1880s to 1917. Fabergé was born in St.
Petersburg into a family of French Huguenot ori-
gin that had settled in the Russian Empire. They
entered the jewelry business in 1842 when
Fabergé's father, Gustave Fabergé, opened a
small shop in St. Petersburg. Karl Fabergé
learned his craft at Dresden, Frankfurt-on-Main,
Italy, and Paris, before taking over the family
business in 1870. He developed a reputation for
brilliant jewelry designs that used rock crystals
and semiprecious marbles with diamonds and
precious metals. Fabergé expanded the possibili-

ties of jewelry by integrating the new trends of
the Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau move-
ments into his designs and by making not just
the jewel, but the boxes they came in, a work of
art. His achievements were first recognized at
the Pan-Russian Exhibition in Moscow (1882),
where he won a gold medal and in 1885 when
he became the court jeweler to the ROMANOV
DYNASTY . Although he made numerous decora-
tions and official gifts for the court, Fabergé's
fame rests on the splendid Easter eggs that he
made for the families of the last two czars, begin-
ning in 1885. The first egg, which he made for
Alexander's Danish wife, contained a jeweled
hen from the Danish collection. Under ALEXAN -
DER III he made one Easter egg every year for the
czar's wife, and under NICHOLAS II , he made two,

Richly decorated and highly ornate Fabergé eggs, pictured as part of a Russian art exhibition (Hulton/Archive)