The year 2014 is a special year for the House of Fabergé as it marks the 200th birthday of its founder Gustav Fabergé (1814 – 1894). At the same time it is also exactly 120 years ago since he passed away in Dresden, Germany.
Over the past 70 years a staggering amount of books and articles have been published about the Fabergé firm and its most famous member, Carl Fabergé. Sadly, most authors have contributed to a long list of western publications that carelessly repeated the same stories over and over; stories that included gross factual errors.
The source document of most books and articles was the controversial first biography of Carl Fabergé written by H.C. Bainbridge in 1949. Instead of increasing the knowledge on Fabergé, these publications offered not much more than colored illustrations depicting the most lush and famous creations. In the worst cases authors even attributed clear forgeries to Fabergé, and vice versa, considered genuine masterpieces to be made by other jewelers. They thereby harmed the historical and cultural heritage left by the Grand Maitre. So despite the enormous amount of books published on Fabergé, our main heroes, founder Gustav Fabergé and his son Carl Fabergé, remained poorly studied in western literature.
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© 2014 Michel Kamidian (Мишель Камидиан).
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