PETER KARL FABERGE (1846-1920)

Desk clock of circular form, the belt in gold with white enamel net. The body in translucent anise green enamel on a gold background with hemmed guilloche pattern (slight accidents), circle of fine pearls. On the back, ivory plate with gold screws, silver hinge support, silver mechanism case engraved "Heg. zab.", white enamel dial (small accidents), Arabic numerals, gold added hands, gold winding mechanism. Title hallmark: 56, Saint Petersburg Title hallmark for stand: 88, Saint Petersburg Master goldsmith's hallmark: Mikhaïl Perkhine (1860-1903) Goldsmith's hallmark: Fabergé. Fabergé House, Russia, Saint Petersburg, circa 1896. Gross weight: 226 grams. Diameter: 8.5 cm. In 1884, the House of Fabergé obtained the "privilege of supplier to the Court" of the Romanovs. Its success soon extended beyond Russia to the courts of England, Sweden and Norway. The workshop, which numbered about twenty around 1880, grew to four hundred and fifty-five workers in 1896, while the company opened branches in Moscow, Odessa, Kiev and even London in 1903. The elegance of the forms is imposed at the same time as a decoration at the same time refined and discrete which, very often, calls upon ancestral techniques given to the taste of the day. Thus, gold gives way to silver, precious stones to semi-precious stones and flowers to enamelled decoration, sometimes cloisonné, sometimes champlevé or illuminated, all in colours more original than the others. The superb translucent apple green of this desk clock, with its hemmed motif and circles of fine pearls, bears witness to this. Karl Fabergé supervised each creation, and it was only after he had validated the project that the craftsmen could begin production under the direction of the head of the workshop, in this case, between 1886 and 1903 in St Petersburg, the Russian Mikhail Evlampievitch Perkhine.