LITTLE-KNOWN FACTS FROM THE LIFE OF CARL FABERGE
/1846 - 1920/
At present there are two distinctive symbols in jewelry well-known in the West and at the same time related to Russia one way or another.
The first one is the “Russian Cut” and defines the quality of a diamond cut. You can hardly call it a truly global brand because it is not promoted widely enough. It’s not that every consumer of means would insist on having his diamonds cut in Russia. Russian cut diamonds are facing a strong competition from similar merchandise coming from other countries with highly developed diamond cutting industry, such as Holland and Israel.
Another famous brand of a Russian origin is "Faberge". This name is certainly familiar to any educated person around the world. The name of Faberge is so popular firstly due to notorious sales of decorative Easter eggs considered a part of the history by the leading auction houses. However the paradox is that in spite of such hype in mass media only some groups of consumers associate the name "Faberge" solely with jewelry. This is especially true of the USA where Faberge trademark was registered in the 30th of the XX century for a line of perfume.
There is another reason why the name Faberge is not uniquely associated with Russia: at present this brand no longer represents Russian jewelers.
The third reason is that the Russian jeweler Carl Faberge had a European education and was of French-Danish-Estonian-German descent. As a matter of fact he was the head of the German community in St. Petersburg.
However, as he was working all of his life in Russia, he was in fact the founder of the Russian school of jewelry-making based on a very important principle: any item, no matter how cheap, has to be produced with a great taste and serve as a sample of a true workmanship and artistry. The House of Faberge produced a very wide range of items; it didn’t work solely for the elite, but embraced all kinds of consumers. However the quality standards used to manufacture soldier’s cigarette-boxes were the same as those used to craft unique gifts for the royal families.
Our company is selling jewelry by modern Russian manufacturers that have inherited that particular approach and tradition of Faberge.
Have no doubt that both a pair of classical silver earrings sold for $30.00 and a necklace worth $3,000.00 from Kostroma, Moscow or St. Petersburg are made with the same love, care, and attention to detail. This tradition of Carl Faberge continues and makes this name a true symbol of Russian jewelers even in the XXI century.
That’s why the following quotation is the best introduction to our digest of little-known facts from the life of the great jeweler.
So how do you determine the true value of jewelry?
When interviewed by newspaper reporters in 1914 Carl Faberge told them with a feeling of well justified superiority: -“If you compare the items manufactured by my company to those of “Tiffany”, “Boucheron”, and Cartier”, you will most likely find far more precious stones over there. You are likely to find there a ready-made necklace for 1.5MLN rubles (close to $65MLN today). But those are the jewelry dealers, not artists. I have little interest in an expensive item as long as the price is determined solely by great numbers of diamonds or pearls.”
Faberge Style Jewelry by Golden Flamingo
LITTLE-KNOWN FACTS FROM THE LIFE OF CARL FABERGE
/1846 - 1920/
International Business of Faberge
Faberge Store in London did not cater solely to the British clientele. It also served as the center of sales to France, America and the Far East. The representatives of the London branch frequently travelled there. They brought with them the samples, and accepted the orders to be sent to St. Petersburg. Thus the Siamese (Thai) royal family was the most important customer of Faberge in the Far East. Could be that the prince Chakrabon had developed his taste for Faberge during his long stay in St. Petersburg where he graduated from the Page Corps and married a Russian lady.
So what was it that made Faberge store London close down
The British government introduced an amendment to the charter of assay under the pressure from local jewelers concerned with the presence of Faberge in the British market. The amendment required the Russian jewelers to first bring unfinished precious metal items to London for branding, next they had to take the items back to St. Petersburg for finishing touches, and only after that they could bring the finished items to London. This amendment together with the onset of the WWI slowed down sales, hampered deliveries from Russia to England, and finally, in 1915, forced the House of Faberge to close the store in London.
A Good Shot
Carl Fabergé and his brother Agafon Faberge were in the middle of the discussion of the project of still another Easter egg for the royal family the year the heir to the throne was born. Agafon proposed to elaborate on the idea that the heir to the throne had already been appointed chief of the infantry. Carl promptly agreed and added: “Yes. But we’ll have to include dirty diapers in the composition because insofar they are the only proofs of his target practice.”
“Our Heavenly Father … etc”
Hastiness of Carl Faberge had pretty amusing consequences at times. The prayer had to be engraved on the back of an icon. Carl made a sketch for the insignia starting with "Our Heavenly Father”, and then added “etc”. And that’s exactly what the engraver copied instead of the full text of the prayer. Carl remarked to that innovation: “How come our preachers didn’t think of such a simple way to cut the time of the service?”
Team Spirit
When Carl Faberge himself was taking a specific order and client’s instructions he was frequently distracted and sometimes he soon forgot the details. Then he turned to all of his employees seeking whoever was closest to him at the time of his conversation with the customer and was amazed that one of his employees could stand nearby and still didn not remembers a thing. Therefore the employees of Faberge used to say that the person responsible for the order is the one who stands close by, rather than the one who takes the order.
Who is going to criticize you unless you do it yourself?
Whenever an original drawing was not at hand, it was quite difficult to tell amid a multitude of items which designer was the author of a certain item. Whenever Carl Faberge came across a disappointing item he took his time mocking that unknown author. Sometimes it happened that he himself turned out to be the author of that disappointment. Whenever he was facing his own sketch brought to him as a proof, he used to say with a guilty smile: “You see! Who is going to criticize you unless you do it yourself?”
Faberge School of Jewelry
One member of the royal family was very interested in the craft of jewelry making and wanted to learn it. He asked Carl Faberge to make him the list of all the necessary tools and equipment for his studio. The old master trusted to complete the list had a great sense of humor. His list of the instruments that consisted of hammers, chisels, and engraving tools, also included “a flat belt of sufficient thickness.” When asked about the use of the belt in jewelry, the old man replied: “Your Highness, this is the first and the most essential tool. So far no student had ever learned the art of jewelry without it”.
The Smuggler - Princess
Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna was a royal family member known for her patronage of foreign jewelers. They enjoyed her powerful protection to sell their items country-wide bypassing custom fees and assays. It looks a bit like a prototype of the modern Russia? Doesn’t it? But here is the difference: Carl Faberge and some other jewelers of St. Petersburg managed to prove the illegal antics and cover-ups at the highest level. They managed to ban the sales of the contraband jewelry and legal processing fees had to be paid on all items. It’s noteworthy that nobody suffered as a consequence for exposing the illegal activities of the princess, none of the indignant jewelers was killed in a dark alley, and their businesses didn’t suffer any repercussions from the royal family. It was quite the opposite.
Big Business Paradox
At one point an industrialist from Ukraine, a sugar mill owner worth 21MLN gold rubles (about $1.1BLN in current prices) by the name of Koenig complained to Faberge while bargaining for a necklace that: “Every year keeps bringing in losses”. Carl Faberge replied: “Yes, yes. It’s truly so. Every year brings us losses, but strangely enough these losses make us rich”.
Faberge Style Jewelry by Golden Flamingo
LITTLE-KNOWN FACTS FROM THE LIFE OF CARL FABERGE
/1846 - 1920/
Nothing human was alien to him ... or adulterous escapades of the great jeweler
When 56 years old Carl Faberge, the owner of the famous Russian jewelry manufacturing company, was in Paris in 1902 he desperately fell in love with a 21 year old cabaret singer Joanna Amalia Kribel, a native of Czechia. He was reasonable enough not to divorce his wife Augusta Bogdanovna, a wonderful lady and the mother of their 4 children, but he didn’t give up Amalia either. Our hero found a truly artistic solution to his dilemma. He started spending about 3 months in business trips around Europe every year. Mademoiselle Kribel brightened the days while the lone salesman was the road. She was free for the rest of the year. However sometimes she visited St. Petersburg where she had no hesitation showing off her Faberge jewelry from the stages of the places of entertainment of the Russian capital.
One should note that the Germans and the Austrians started recruiting adventurous and good-looking actresses a long time before the war. They were making meticulous preparations in case of the coming war to naturalize them in different ways in Russia and in the other countries planning to use them as spies.
The status quo that suited Carl had in no way suit Amalia because, as it became obvious later on, she was supposed to marry a subject of the Russian Empire, and the family man Carl Faberge had no such plans whatsoever. So in 1912 she unexpectedly married an illiterate 75-year-old Georgian prince Karaman Tsitsianov from the village of Satsibeli, whom she left without any regrets the day after the wedding never to come back. As an important outcome of this quick-paced operation she changed her German surname to another one, less exotic for Russia, she acquired the title of a princess, and, certainly, she also got herself a Russian citizenship.
At the onset of the hostilities in 1914 Madame Tsitsianov was in Germany. At that time she appealed to her famous lover, with whom she never broke up, asking him to help her settle in Russia. That was a rather difficult task. The war brought over a crackdown on individuals with German surnames. Faberge himself was teetering on the edge of deportation to Siberia, and it made him transfer his part of the shares in the company to his trusted employees with Russian names. Asking favors for a former Austrian subject could be risky under such circumstances. But Carl, as a real gentleman, did not flinch and used his connections with the Tsar's (Royal) Court to help his flame move to St. Petersburg. There she moved in the “European” Hotel alongside with the top brass of the Russian army and senior officers of the allied military missions. The reference attached to her police file states that she was paying 18 rubles / night for her room (about $800.00 in today's prices).
An additional information may be found in the report of the Police Department dated March 24, 1916: “A certain Princess Joanna - Amalia Tsitsianov (nee Kribel), aka Nina Barkis, 32 years old, Roman Catholic is staying in the hotel since April 1915. She attracts attention with her opulent lifestyle and her visits to Finland. According to the information collected on Tsitsianov from delicate but reliable sources she is a former Austrian citizen ... She is fluent in English, French, German and Russian (with a Polish accent) languages, and she comes across as a very astute and careful woman ... At present time she is allegedly cohabiting with the famous industrialist - jeweler Faberge and, despite this, is being constantly visited by other individuals, and such meetings are shrouded by her in a special secrecy. For some reason the manager of the “European” Hotel, Mr. Wolfliesberg is trying to cover up the private life and the relations of Tsitsianov. This gives grounds for the conclusion that the administration of the “European” Hotel that sympathizes with individuals of German origin is assisting Tsitsianov, who is apparently engaged in espionage ...”
We’ve never managed to find any photographs of Amalia. All we’ve got is her description made in 1915 by the detectives in charge of the surveillance.
LITTLE-KNOWN FACTS FROM THE LIFE OF CARL FABERGE
/1846 - 1920/
On April 26, 1916 Amalia was arrested. As one would expect, she denied everything under interrogations, and in the meantime her lover (who was 70 at that time) started soliciting on her behalf using his connections in the highest echelons of Russian government. (Not that it helped much… and Amalia was exiled to Siberia after all).
Here is the report of the chief of counterintelligence department to his supervisor:
“One should also note that Mr. Faberge himself, who was vouching for the loyalty of Tsitsianov during questioning, is not the person whose statements could be taken with due confidence by the military authorities... In any case, the fact of Tsitsianov’s cohabitation with Faberge does not speak in favor of her reliability, so none of his statements about Tsitsianov should be taken into account.” That was it. Even his direct appeals to the Tsar and the Tsarina did not help.
After the deportation of Tsitsianov to Siberia the lovers never met. Several years later she returned to Austria. As for him, he was completely stripped of his possessions by the Soviet security officers and by certain employees of the Swiss Embassy. (He lost overnight approximately $500MLN in today’s prices, which doesn’t include the value of the real estate owned by him). He had to overcome extreme difficulties in order to get out of Russia with his life. Eventually he got to Switzerland via Latvia and Germany. There he died on September, 1920 with his wife and son Eugene at his side.
Carl Faberge with his wife Avgusta and son Eugene. Lausanne, Switzerland, July, 1920 . Last photo before death.
