by Kieran McCarthy.
Royalty, Aristocrats, American heiresses, exiled Russian Grand Dukes, Randlords, Maharajas, Socialites and Financiers with newly made fortunes flocked to Fabergé in London to buy gifts for each other. The Imperial Russian Goldsmith’s London branch was the only one outside of Russia and its jewelled and enamelled contents were as popular there as they were in St. Petersburg or Moscow.
Using previously unreferenced sources and a newly discovered archive of papers relating to Fabergé in London, Kieran McCarthy studies the branch’s structure, customers and exclusive stock. The book will be of interest to enthusiasts of the decorative arts, the social history of the Edwardian Golden Age and especially of European Royalty. Fabergé’s works were and continue to be intimately associated with the British Royal Family. For Violet Trefusis, daughter of King Edward VII’s mistress Mrs. Keppel and lover of Vita Sackville-West, a Fabergé cigarette case was the emblem of Royalty, as symbolical as the ‘bookies’ cigar’, or the ‘ostler’s straw’.
A Fabergé clock bought from the firm’s London branch, by Grand Duke Mikhail Mikhailovich on 5th June 1914.
£55
Second Edition.
Kieran McCarthy FSA is joint managing director of Wartski. He is on the advisory board of the Fabergé Museum in St.Petersburg, is a freeman of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths’ and a fellow of the Gemmological Association. He has written and lectured extensively about Carl Fabergé. He advises collectors and institutions on Fabergé’s work and revealed the rediscovery of one of the lost Imperial Fabergé Easter Eggs. in 2021 he curated Fabergé in London: Romance to Revolution an exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum, based on his research in this book.