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Hermitage opens exhibit dedicated to Carl Faberge

The opening of the exhibition "Faberge - Jeweler of the Imperial Court" took place on online; the exposition will be available to visitors from November 25 to March 14

ST.PETERSBURG, November 24. / TASS /. An exhibition to honor the legendary jeweller Carl Faberge has been put together by the State Hermitage, with the assistance from Russian and German museums, has opened in the Armorial Hall of the Winter Palace on Tuesday.

The opening of the exhibition "Faberge - Jeweler of the Imperial Court" took place on online; the exposition will be available to visitors from November 25 to March 14. "We will see here many things that were not yet within the walls of the Winter Palace in the post-war period, while before that they were once here. Faberge as an imperial jeweler, a supplier of the imperial court, as a person who worked in the Hermitage and gained his jewelry skills from work as a restorer with the Hermitage collection of jewels, appears in new collections, including our Hermitage royal collection, two imperial collections from Pavlovsk and Peterhof, and three new private museums representing the Faberg· collection - the Faberge Museum in Baden-Baden (Germany), the Russian National Museum in Moscow and The Museum of Christian Culture in St. Petersburg," said Mikhail Piotrovsky, the head of the Hermitage Museum, at the opening of the exhibition.

The exposition includes gift and personal belongings of royal family made by the Faberge firm - tiaras, brooches, bracelets, household items and interior items that were located in living quarters in the imperial residences, products intended for diplomatic gifts. At the exhibition you can see a miniature copy of the imperial regalia, made by Faberge for the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900. There are also works of the famous "imperial" series of Easter eggs, which began in 1885 with an Easter gift from Alexander III to his wife, Empress Maria Feodorovna.

Court jeweler

Peter Karl Gustavovich Faberge was born in St. Petersburg in 1846. Starting in 1866 he visited the Imperial Hermitage's Treasure Gallery, studying and restoring jewelry of old masters. Since 1874, Faberge began to supply products from his own workshop and in 1885 he received the title of "Supplier of the court of his imperial majesty", and a few years later the title of the court jeweler of the imperial court. In 1918, Carl Faberge left Russia for good.

In 1902, the Imperial Hermitage contributed to the organization of the first personal exhibition of a jeweler in St. Petersburg, which brought on Faberge's great success. The products of his company gained worldwide fame in the 20th century. In 1993, the exhibition "Faberge - Court Jeweler" was presented in the St. George Hall of the Winter Palace, and later held in Paris and London.