Background on Fabergé's First Egg

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Carl Fabergé was born in 1846, four years after his father, Gustav, opened a jewelry business in a St. Petersburg basement.

The Art of Carl Fabergé  |  Kenneth Snowman  |  1952

Above is a bracelet by Gustav Fabergé. While Gustav's designs were not remarkable, Gustav was successful enough to send Carl to good schools in Russia, and artistic training in Dresden (where Gustav eventually retired) and Frankfurt. Carl also visited England long enough to learn English.

Louis XV snuff box  |  christies.com

Gustav Fabergé then treated Carl to a Grand Tour of Europe, which included exposure to Florentine enamelers and goldsmiths, and to the treasures of the Louvre and Versailles, where Carl was bewitched by all that was Baroque.

In 1870, Gustav retired and Carl Fabergé, age 24, took over the business. 1870 also happened to be the year that the Tsar's favored jeweler closed his doors, leaving an opening for someone new.

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Carl Fabergé almost immediately moved the family business to a ground floor across the street. Then, in consultation with his father and brother, Agathon (who remained one of his best designers), Fabergé decided to include jeweled objets d'art in the company line. This momentous decision seems like a no-brainer in retrospect, but at the time, the production of such pieces had the potential to be less profitable.

Above is the first Fabergé Easter Egg, made in 1884 by Carl and Agathon. A white enameled egg opens to reveal a golden yolk, which in turn reveals a golden hen. A ruby heart dangles inside the hen. The egg was an Easter gift from Tsar Alexander III to his wife, Marie Feodorovna, and it must have caused much delight. For more than 30 years, Fabergé made Easter eggs for Marie Feodorovna and her daughter-in-law, Tsarina Alexandra, wife of Nicholas II.

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Marie Feodorovna's sister was also named Alexandra — Queen Alexandra of England. Doubtlessly Tsarina Marie communicated her delight to her sister, and soon Fabergé was supplying eggs for King Edward VII of England to give to Queen Alexandra as birthday gifts. Above are the two sisters in old age, Queen Alexandra on the left and Dowager Empress Marie on the right.

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Incidentally, the movie Hugo has drawn attention to the amazing mechanical toys of the 18th and 19th centuries, toys that also fascinated Fabergé. When he was studying in Dresden, he often visited such toys at the Green Vaults Museum.

The Art of Carl Fabergé  |  Kenneth Snowman  |  1952

Fabergé created a number of moving objets d'art, including this toy of Catherine the Great in a sedan chair. When the chair is wound with a key, the standing figures move smoothly in unison. We know that this was created for the French or English market because it is signed "FABERGE" in English.

My Tenuous Connection to Marie Antoinette

This lovely painting of a young Marie Antoinette comes from the blog of Catherine Delors, who writes extensively on the life and times of the tragic queen. For more information about the painting, and to explore Catherine's fine blog, click here.

We're still intrigued, sometimes morbidly so, by Marie Antoinette's spiraling life, by the tumultuous time in which she lived, and even by those who crossed her path in good times or bad.

One such person was an ancestor of mine, Abraham-Louis Breguet (1747-1823), considered by many to be the greatest watchmaker of all time.

Abraham-Louis Breguet

Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were enthusiasts of Breguet (pronounced Bray-gay) because in their time, he revolutionized everything that had to do with watches and timekeeping. Breguet's inventions made watches shock-proof, balanced and self-winding (perpétuelles). Breguet developed the tourbillon, which allowed watches to counter the effects of gravity. He invented gongs for repeating watches, the Breguet key (which could only be turned in one direction), and the very first wristwatch (designed for Queen Caroline Murat of Naples).

Other patrons included George Washington, Talleyrand, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Tsar Alexander I of Russia, King George III, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Dumas, Queen Victoria and Sir Winston Churchill. At the Battle of Waterloo, both Napoleon and Wellington were wearing Breguet watches.

Sotheby Parke Bernet

Besides taking the mechanics of watchmaking to new heights, Abraham-Louis Breguet was responsible for a new aesthetics — the high-tech look of his time — and a look which is still very contemporary. Breguet's attention to detail included guilloche faces and his distinctive watch hand design, a trademark of the company to this day. The above image is a carriage clock sold in 1826. It's an eight-day clock and calendar that repeats on the quarter hour.

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Breguet's most famous watch was one he created for Marie Antoinette, and today it's known simply as "The Marie Antoinette." This handsome piece was designed to include every conceivable watch function known at the time, and was not completed until years after the queen's death. Today it is valued at $30 million.

Breguet made numerous marine chronometers, and in 1815 was named official chronometer maker to the French navy. He was admitted to the Academy of Sciences in 1816, was awarded the Chevalier of the Legion of Honor by Louis XVIII in 1819, and in 1888, 65 years after his death, Breguet's name was one of 72 inscribed on the Eiffel Tower.

I'll end this posting with a little family story. My grandfather Breguet was a psychiatrist, and when I was about five, he gave me a cheap alarm clock to play with. "Go ahead and do anything you want with it," he said. "You can even open it up and take it apart." Many years later I remembered getting the clock, and I realized that he was of course trying to determine whether an aptitude for horology could be genetic. I told the story to my mother, and she said, "Oh, yes, he gave me a clock when I was that age, too."

We must have disappointed him sorely because we both dutifully took apart our clocks, and then seeing piles of loose parts, moved on to more gratifying entertainment!

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Before the Spirograph

© Mark D. Ruffner, 2011

I was noticing that my readers seem to enjoy looking at my posting on guilloche, and that got me thinking about our fascination with spirals, and a favorite American toy — the Spirograph!

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If you were of a certain age in 1967, the biggest Christmas present of the year was Kenner's Spirograph. By fitting together a variety of plastic pieces, one could make an endless combination of guilloche patterns, or spirals. Kenner also sold a deluxe model, with many more pieces and the possibility of even more fun creations.

I missed out on the Spirograph because I was well beyond the age of those kids on the box cover; actually I was already away from home.

But in the 1950s, I played with the precursor of the Spirograph — the Magic Designer!

I still have it, box and all.

No plastic here — this was a designing machine! All the parts were metal, and the Magic Designer had the look of an engineering instrument. It came with its own neato paper die cuts for drawing. I still have a supply of those, too.

Below is information on the disc envelope for reordering. Note that the 6¢ postage would have been extra, for special handling!

The Magic Designer was a hugely popular Christmas present in its own time, and I should know. The Christmas morning I received mine, I didn't get much time to play with it because my father and grandfather were having all the fun!

Today I enjoy creating mandalas, which occasionally appear spiral-like. I created the header of this posting on the computer. It's a better tool for such designs, but I wouldn't be surprised if the ultimate Spirograph is yet to come.

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Guilloche and Fabergé

In my last post, I showed a sample of Asher B. Durand's banknote engraving. In the top middle of that specimen sheet, you'll see a rosette. It's an example of guilloche, which is the wonderful pattern of parallel intertwined lines that we all associate with currency security.

This is a detail of a Swiss banknote from the 1970s. Isn't it wonderful? Designers of European currency positively exult in guilloche.

 

Now, here's a different kind of guilloche. The term also applies to the engraving of the pattern on metal, usually then enameled in the style of Peter Carl Fabergé. In fact, the word comes from Guillot, the engineer who invented the guilloche engraving machine.

When his wealthy patrons would commission an enameled piece from Fabergé, he would show them this chart of guilloche chips, to help them make decisions. Imagine the delight of such choices! This is an illustration from The Art of Carl Fabergé, by A. Kenneth Snowman. While writing his excellent book sixty years ago, Snowman corresponded with and interviewed Fabergé's sons, and also surviving Fabergé craftsmen.

This is a pillbox from my own collection. I bought it while I was in high school, and shortly after reading Snowman's book. When I saw this in an antique shop, I realized that it was a fine design and probably as close as I'd get to owning a Fabergé creation. I based that not just on the flawless enameling, but also because the lid is seamless. If you study Fabergé's work, you'll find that he excelled at hiding hinges and clasps. Many of his eggs opened with the press of a jeweled button. Here, I've placed the pillbox on top of a portrait of Fabergé, though in fact the box is English silver.

And finally, for my architect friends, guilloche also refers to this particular design of intertwined ribbons, which is often found in Greek and Roman architectural detailing.