Existing comment:
Faberge at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts:
A selection of objects from the firm of Faberge is on view in this gallery. Between 1933 and 1946, Lillian Thomas Pratt assembled a collection of over 400 Russian decorative arts objects, including about 170 by Faberge. Born in Philadelphia in 1876, she married General Motors executive John Lee Pratt in 1917, the year the Romanov dynasty fell. In 1933, Lillian Pratt purchased a gilded-silver and mother-of-pearl form -- the first object of her Russian art collection -- at Lord & Taylor department store in New York City. After retirement in 1937, the Pratts lived in historic Chatham Manor, across the Rappahannock River from Fredericksburg, Virginia. Lillian Pratt bequeathed her collection of Faberge and Russian decorative arts to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts at her death in 1947. |