The State Hermitage Museum is carrying out a staged inquiry into the background of pieces in the exhibition "Faberge - Jeweller of the Imperial Court."
A press conference was given by A.N. Ivanov, General Director of the Faberge Museum in Baden-Baden, at the end of January. He presented documents on the exhibits loaned from his museum. This month the head of the Laboratory for the Restoration of Jewellery in the Hermitage, I.K. Malkiel, will give a talk on ‘Hermitage studies in the technology of old jewellery." The annual conference on "Jewellery Art and Material Culture" is scheduled for the beginning of March with one session, dedicated to the memory of M.N. Lopato, devoted to papers on the legacy of Faberge. In parallel, the Hermitage is undertaking special research on the exhibits lent to the Hermitage from private collectors and museums. This will result in unusually detailed catalogue descriptions.
This is a continuation of the Hermitage’s desire to study and present the historical and cultural phenomenon of the House of Faberge, the 19th century imperial jeweller. It is governed by the principle: “It's time to show the new collections in the Winter Palace”. In 1993, following the end of the Soviet regime, the Hermitage held its first large international Faberge exhibition featuring the Forbes collection from America. This was followed by an exhibition of the collection of John Traina and other private owners and then by the collection of Easter eggs from the Link of Times Foundation. Recently, the “Carl Faberge Memorial Rooms” were created in the Hermitage’s General Staff Building containing new additions to the Hermitage collection and a hall for the presentation of private collections. Many of the items presented in the current exhibition were shown there. It was time to present the new collections - already exhibited several times in other museums - in the context of the Hermitage exhibits and the Hermitage halls. It will be followed by an exhibition on the restoration of the masterpieces of our antique jewellery collection - which Carl Faberge was responsible for in his day.
The Hermitage considers exhibitions to be one of the ways of presenting its research and stimulating discussion - about attribution among other things. In the past we have dealt with many problem areas in this way - the problematic posthumous castings of Degas bronzes, the paintings from the ‘circle’ of Rubens, Raphael and Leonardo, with Khorasan bronzes, with Sogdian silver, etc. This approach requires research and knowledge, on one hand, and a certain amount of courage on the other – which is always present in the Hermitage.
There are many features of the exhibition "Faberge - Jeweller of the Imperial Court" that are interesting beyond the debate over attribution. That the House of Faberge produced military and medical products at the start of the First World War is little known and a range of them are exhibited for the first time. Many new details of the history of the Soviet government's sales of jewellery abroad are highlighted, as is the subsequent epic of speculation, imitation and forgery. The exhibition raises a new question about whether the Imperial family refrained from ordering Easter gifts during the Russo-Japanese war, as well as about the protocol and sources for making miniature portraits of members of the royal family. These and many other questions are put forward for discussion by the Hermitage in its usual style.
The Hermitage notes that a London antiques dealer has loudly criticised the exhibition in letters addressed to the museum and scientific community, as well as the press. His reasons for doing this are best known to himself.
The Hermitage hopes that our exhibition will help to clarify for the public the difference in approach between a museum and a dealer. The first is interested in research for its own sake, the second is interested in business. We hope that we have alerted new museums to take care whom they do business with when searching for new acquisitions.
