Purveyors of Luxury

At the Cleveland Museum of Art there are two small rooms with collections from two designers of decorative arts whose names became synonymous with luxury... Louis Comfort Tiffany and Peter Carl Fabergé.

Tiffany was the design director for the jewelry store that his father had established in New York City in 1837.  Tiffany, however, is best known, not for jewelry, but for his stained glass and decorative glassware which became America's major contribution to the Art Nouveau movement of the late 1800s and early 1900s.

This stained glass window designed by Tiffany comes from the drawing room of a Cleveland mansion which was built in 1908.  The house was demolished in 1930, but fortunately the window was saved and donated to the museum.

Tiffany & Company became well known for its stained glass lampshades.  This floor lamp from the early 1900s has a dragonfly shade.

Tiffany also designed what he called "Favrile" glassware.  He created various iridescent effects by blending colored, molten glass with metallic oxides.

 

At the same time another designer was creating luxury goods on the other side of the Atlantic.  Peter Carl Fabergé came from a long line of French jewelers.  The family eventually settled in St. Petersburg, Russia.  When Peter Carl took over the business after his father's death in 1882, he expanded from jewelry to decorative arts using precious metals and gemstones.  He received a special appointment from the Russian Imperial Court.

The cigar box, the icon of Our Lady of Kazan, and part of a coffee and tea set are all made of gilt silver and enamel.

This Kremlin Tower clock is made of rhodonite, silver, enamel, emeralds and sapphires.

This jug is made of silver and cut glass, and the bowl is made of silver.

The miniature furniture is made with gold, enamel, rubies and diamonds.  The chair to the right is actually a "bathroom chair" or bidet.  Hmmm... that's seems the height of extravagance... a miniature, gold bidet for one's doll house!

An amethyst pendant and a cloak clasp made of enamel, silver and aquamarines.

The House of Fabergé is most famous for the jeweled Easter eggs which were given as gifts by the Russian aristocracy, and by the Czar himself.  

This Easter egg came with a surprise inside... the crown and the ruby shown beneath it.  Gold, enamel, lapis lazuli, pearls, diamonds and rubies went into this creation.

There are only 46 surviving imperial eggs, those given as gifts by the Czar to his family.  Cleveland has one of them.  This was made in 1915 during World War I, and thus, is less ostentatious than most.  The white enamel egg is decorated with red enamel crosses on each side and miniatures of two of Czar Nicholas's daughters, Olga and Tatiana, who volunteered with the Red Cross during the war.

Within three years, Czar Nicholas, his wife and children, would be dead, victims of the Russian Revolution.  Peter Carl Fabergé would move to Paris and reestablish his business there.