Yes, fabulous pieces of Art or fabulous pieces of Kitsch. In my opinion ordered by a pathetic short sighted Emperor, nicknamed Nicholas the Bloody, out of touch with his people. Eggs worth a million....
Dear Oel, in my humble opinion most of overpriced and aesthetically mediocre Russian cloisonné is Kitsch. Please, visit my post in ``General questions’’: Namikawa Sosuke wireless cloisonné. Although ``De gustibus non est disputandum``, I think that is real art of cloisonné.
Kitsch!? Are you serious? Kitsch is mas-production of more or less low quality over decorated (cheap) crap. Is this crap...well maybe over decorated but certainly not crap? Nonetheless, thanks for an interesting link.
Thank you for the link. As a jeweler I can appreciate the workmanship that went into those pieces. I find them quite exquisite understanding the limitations of the time.
Btw.good to know: there are genuine Faberge punch sets lingering around. Armand Hammer was buying paintings from The Hermitage museum and eggs were given to him as a token of goodwill. Later he exploited the widespread mania of collecting Faberge and ``trafficked in fake Imperial Faberge eggs and fraudulent "Romanoff treasures" , that he authenticated as genuine with an official Faberge stamp. `` ``Hammer had had his own set of Fabergé stamps to stamp on items``. Reference: DOSSIER: The Secret History of Armand Hammer by Edward Jay Epstein (Random House; 1996; ISBN 0-679-44802-0)
The egg on the brink of being melted down for scrap in the U.S. had been the third made: Tsar Alexander III's 1887 Easter gift to his wife, Tsarina Maria Feodorovna. Intrinsic value; McCarthy said the man had overestimated the value of the egg's materials -- which were worth about what he'd paid for it -- but underestimated its value as a work of art. http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/20/world ... erial-egg/
Yes, heard of that.I am a bit suspicious,though. What's the easiest way to avoid proven provenance and authenticity? Flea market find! An egg was sold in Switzerland decades ago and when the owner wanted to sell it with the same auction house in New York they said it was fake. Let`s start searching for Rembrandt in the attic.