BGuthrie Photos: VA -- Richmond -- Virginia Museum of Fine Arts -- Faberge

VA -- Richmond -- Virginia Museum of Fine Arts -- Faberge:

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Description of Subject Matter: Faberge & Related Russian Decorative Arts:
"When you touch or hold a Faberge object, you are in contact with something, coming down to you, not only from the era of the csars, but of an ancestry far more ancient; for it is typical of all the imperial courts there have ever been." -- Sacheverell Sitwell, 1949
Welcome. Peter Carl Faberge's first biographer published the above statement only two years after the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts began exhibiting Russian decorative arts. Sitwell understood the magic that surrounds these eggs, boxes, picture frames, cups, handles, seals, and hardstone figures with lasting appeal -- they let us reach into a past that shines all the more resplendent for its remoteness from everyday life.
Few of us get to hold one of Faberge's imperial Easter gifts, to feel the cool, self-assured enamel surface, to scrutinize the intricacies of the delicate metalwork, to count the rose-cut diamonds or cabochon rubies of seed pearls scattered like grace notes across the rounded, substantial form, and, finally, to pop open the shell and carefully extract the glittering prize. But over the past half-century, thousands of visitors to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts have touched these exquisite pieces with their eyes, owned them in their imaginations.
Now we invite you on a visual treasure hunt. A Faberge imperial Easter egg introduces each of our five themes. You will see about two hundred objets de luxe made by skilled artisans in Faberge's St. Petersburg and Moscow workshops, along with pieces created by other firms working from the early 1880s -- when the Faberge Workshops first gained international prominence -- until 1917, when Faberge closed his doors after the October Revolution.
Sometimes called "The Cellini of the North," Faberge compared favorably with the famed Italian Renaissance jeweler. Even the smallest piece of Faberge rewards scrutiny -- its craftsmanship can engage; its beauty of whimsy, delight. The extraordinary range of Faberge's production, the availability of new archival sources, and a flood of recent publications all sustain the seemingly boundless fascination with Faberge and related Russian decorative arts. It continues undiminished half a century after visitors to our galleries first encountered some of these treasures.
Lillian Thomas Pratt of Fredericksburg, Virginia, collected the majority of these works. She bequeathed her magnificent collection to the museum in 1947. Further gifts have been received over the years from other generous donors. Among our most recent additions are an important group of pieces in the Old-Russian style, given by Jerome and Rita Gans of New York, as well as a rare table and a jeweled silver frame given by the Mars family.
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