How Faberge Jewelry House Lives Today: Constructivism, Family Legends and an Airplane for Presentations

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Carl Faberge's creations are kept in museums and private collections around the world. But how does the jewelry house itself, created by the great master, live now, what role do the heirs of Faberge play in its development, and is it now connected with Russia? After almost a hundred years of silence and oblivion, Fabergé has resumed its work under the leadership of Katharina Flor - and is ready to offer the world new masterpieces …

Katharina Flor took over the reins of Fabergé in 2009, and over a decade of work has transformed it from a dusty antique jewelry house into a contemporary, contemporary brand - without compromising on tradition. "We cannot be just a jewelry brand!" - she says in an interview. Faberge's creations are part of the world cultural heritage, the history of the country and the era, and work on the renovation of the jewelry house began with a thorough study of archives, historical evidence and family legends …

Officially, the brand belongs to the consortium of investment companies Pallinghurst Resources LLP, Katharina Flor is the creative director. She is collaborating with the descendants of Carl Faberge - his great-great-granddaughter Tatiana, who, at the age of eighty-two, is actively engaged in preserving and promoting the heritage of the great master, and Sarah Faberge, Tatiana's cousin, who is directly involved in designing jewelry. She is a professional jewelry designer herself, her works are kept in the collections of Elizabeth Taylor, Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev. Sarah Faberge's son, along with his beloved, took part as a model in advertising campaigns for the revived brand.

Katarina Flor graduated from a high fashion school in Switzerland and worked for a long time as a journalist and editor for major glossy magazines. Having no specialized jewelry education, she started looking for craftsmen. But who would dare to continue the work of Faberge himself? The list was endless - but none seemed to Catharine and the Fabergé heirs quite suitable. And then Tatiana remembered that a few years ago, in London, she saw the unusual works of some little-known jeweler … Praise him Frederic Zaavi, and when he was invited to work at Fabergé, he decided it was a joke.

While working for Fabergé, Zaavi adapted the motives of the works of Carl Faberge himself for new jewelry, was inspired by the Russian seasons, paintings by Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov and other Russian avant-garde artists, Bazhov's fairy tales and Bilibin's illustrations. The Constructivist collections were inspired by a sketch of a cigarette case found in the archives, clearly inspired by artistic experiments of the early 20th century. It turned out that in those turbulent years, the jewelry house experimented with strict geometry - however, these works are almost unknown to a wide audience.

Frederic Zaavi passed away after a serious illness at the age of forty-eight, and this was a loss for the entire jewelry industry - but especially for Catharina Flor and Faberge. The question arose of who from the jewelry world could again take on such responsibility. Katarina Flor grew up in Canada, but she lived in Russia for several years and does not get tired of confessing her love for Moscow, Russian music, painting and even cuisine. In addition, her father was closely associated with Russia, who took part as a consultant to the Soviet space program, and she herself worked as the editor-in-chief of Russian Vogue in the post-perestroika times, at the dawn of Russian gloss. Therefore, it is not surprising that today the new products of the brand are being designed by a Russian jeweler - Natalya Shugaeva, a native of the city of Togliatti and a graduate of the British college St. Martin's. When Katarina, seeing her work at one of the jewelry competitions, invited the girl to work, she replied: “Of course, but I entered the Royal College of Art and can come after I graduate.” And Mrs. Flor vowed to wait - after all, Natalia's talent was worth it. Together they developed the most "Russian" collections in the brand's recent history.

And, of course, not without the iconic Faberge eggs. Flor nurtured this idea for a long time and at first met only misunderstanding. "Nobody will carry eggs around their necks, this is stupid!" - they told her. However, the new collection exploded in a matter of seconds, and the delicate egg-shaped pendants are now Fabergé's most popular product. Each of the pendants is figuratively associated with one of the twelve months, and a Russian proverb corresponds to each. Natalia Shugaeva used Russian traditional technologies of colored enamel in this collection. Katarina Flor dreams of embodying the principles of old mechanics, automatons and winding watches in new collections, which means that more and more sophisticated and original solutions should be expected.

The Solyanka Treasures collection is also connected with the history of the jewelry house - once the sugar tycoon Pavel Kharitonenko hid his collection of jewelry in a mansion on Solyanka, walled up in a wall. In this collection, the brand, perhaps, most clearly refers to its historical past.

Today Fabergé not only release new collections that are relatively affordable for the mass consumer, but also work to order - they are trusted by customers from all over the world. Katarina Flor reports that their most valuable clients are owners of large businesses from India, Africa and the Middle East, because wealthy women are much more free, independent and inventive in their choice of jewelry than men. The royal family of Great Britain did not stand aside either. The craftsmen with whom the brand works - jewelers, enamellers, gemologists, cutters - are also scattered all over the world, although preference is given to workshops in Paris and Geneva. New collections are presented in a very unusual way - for example, aboard a VistaJet aircraft, brightly colored for the occasion. Interactive web apps showcasing new collections, non-trivial commercials, unusually stylized footage and innovative shapes - with all due respect to the tradition of the home! - this is the present and, perhaps, the future of Fabergé.