An Enamelled and Silver-gilt Mounted Wooden Photograph Frame by Carl Fabergé
St Petersburg, 1896-1908
its amaranth wood body containing a rectangular aperture covered with curved glass held within a ribbon tied reeded border, surmounted by an opalescent oyster coloured enamel panel behind an Empire style motif, of two swans flanking a laurel wreath and joined by a festoon, supported on a hinge strut, that closes flush to the back of the frame.
Workmaster: Anders Nevalainen
Inventory Number: 18777
Height: 18cm
Width: 11.5cm
Provenance:
The family of James H. Hill, who was a railroad pioneer in America in the early 1900’s and known as ‘The Empire builder’. Hill is referenced in the Great Gatsby, if Gatsby had survived he would have become like Hill, according to his father.
Fabergé supplied pieces incorporating over twenty varieties of indigenous Russian and tropical woods. His premises at 24 Bolshaya Morskaya in St. Peterburg housed a carpentry workshop dedicated to producing the wooden elements of his works. The last never finished Imperial Easter Egg of 1917 destined to be given by Emperor Nicholas II to his mother the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna was to be made of Karelian birch.