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Of some 250,000 Fabergé pieces extant, not one was actually made by the master. His genius, while he presided over more than 500 artisans, was to impart an aesthetic that, for all the opulence of the materials, was by and large controlled and even understated.
Inevitably, a few of these more artless trinkets stray into kitsch. But for the most part, suggests A. Kenneth Snowman, jeweler by appointment to the royal family and guest curator for the Cooper-Hewitt exhibition, they should be judged by the affable spirit in which [they] were originally created—an uncomplicated desire to give pleasure, albeit within the framework of an efficiently organized business house." Another scholar, Sir Roy Strong of London's Victoria and Albert Museum, observes that Fabergé's work "was almost the last expression of court art within the European tradition, which brings with it a passionate conviction of the importance of craftsmanship and inventiveness of design, aligned to a celebration of the virtues of wit and fantasy applied to everyday objects that still has a relevance to the design of today." —By Michael Demarest.
Reported by Kathryn Jackson Fallon/ New York