Rock cystal paper folder, Fabergé, St Petersburg, Russia, 1900, with wooden case and note

Rock crystal paper folder with red gold mount in the form of a bow-knot with pendant drop set with one brilliant-cut diamond and four rose-cut diamonds set in silver applied to a broad band of laurel chased in green gold.

Rectangular case of holly wood. Base lined in cream velvet fitted to receive the letter opener. The silk inside the lid stamped in gold with the imperial Russian eagle, K. FABERGÉ in Cyrillic letters, and Moscow and St. Petersburg in Cyrillic letters

Rectangular note with pencil inscription mounted in a glazed frame

Accepted under the Cultural Gifts Scheme by HM Government from Nicholas Snowman and allocated to the Victoria and Albert Museum, 2017

Given by the Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna to Margaret Hardcastle Jackson, Christmas, 1900
Published by A.Kenneth Snowman, Carl Fabergé: Goldsmith to the Imperial Court of Russia, London, 1979, p. 137
Kenneth Snowman described the paper folder as 'an eloquent example of Carl Fabergé igniting a bright spark of pleasure between people, a function to which he appears to have dedicated his life'.
Exhibited and published: Fabergé Hofjuwelier der Zaren, Munich, 1986-7, no. 204
Exhibited and published: Fabergé: Imperial Jeweller, Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, V&A, London, 1993-4, no. 137
On loan to the V&A from 2003 until a Cultural Gift from Nicholas Snowman, 2017

This is one of twelve objects presented from the Kenneth and Sallie Snowman Collection by their son, Nicholas. Eleven were given in 2017 under the Cultural Gifts Scheme administered by HM Government. The twelfth, a ring with a cameo of Elizabeth I, was given through the Art Fund in 2016.

Kenneth Snowman (1919-2002) was described on his death by Terence Mullaly as ‘one of the last leading representatives of the London art market’s golden age’. His father, Emanuel Snowman, married the daughter of Morris Wartski, a pedlar in North Wales whose talents made him the owner of a Rolls-Royce with shops in Bangor and Mostyn Street, Llandudno, the ‘golden half-mile’ which was said to boast more royal warrants than anywhere outside London. In 1927 Emanuel made his first purchases of works of art sold by the Soviet Government, the foundation of Wartski’s pre-eminence as an international dealer in Fabergé. Kenneth remembered seeing them laid out on the mantelpiece and bookshelves of the morning room of their house in Hampstead. Aiming at first to be an artist, Kenneth studied at the Byam Shaw School of Art, and earned a fee in 1939 through his illustrations, drawn more from Gray’s Anatomy than from life, for the best-selling Technique of Sex written by Elliot Philipp under the pseudonym of Anthony Havil. He exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Paris Salon, but a bazaar at which Sallie Moghi-Levkine (1919-95) presided over the tombola had introduced him to the love of his life and in due course the need to find a more reliable income. He joined the family firm and, making full use of Sallie’s Russian, brought to Fabergé scholarship a new energy and authority.

In an interval at the Royal Opera House on 7 January 1976 he sketched out for Sir Roy Strong a plan for the Fabergé exhibition he curated at the V&A to celebrate the Silver Jubilee, a legendary success which had 150,000 visitors queuing down the Brompton Road, brought the hot-dog sellers over from the Science Museum, and inspired exhibitions across Europe and North America. Wartski became famous for its scholarship, exhibitions and books. Kenneth Snowman’s eminence as an authority on Fabergé carried him into a short story by Ian Fleming, The Property of a Lady, later incorporated in the plot of the film Octopussy. James Bond ‘looked Mr Snowman straight in the eyes’ and said “Will you give me a hand?”.

Kenneth Snowman wrote with even greater affection and no less authority on gold boxes. Eighteenth-Century Gold Boxes of Europe, first published in 1966, was revised in 1990. One of the great influences on Fabergé’s work was Johann Christian Neuber (1736-1808), court goldsmith at Dresden, and two examples of his work are included in Nicholas Snowman’s gift.

Given by the Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna to her English governess with a note ‘For dear Miss Jackson with loving X-mas wishes from Alix 1900’. Margaret Hardcastle Jackson was admired for her advanced ideas on the education of women and a mainstay of the childhood of Alix of Hesse following the death of her mother, Alice, in 1879 when Alix was barely six. Margaret made monthly reports to Queen Victoria on her granddaughter’s progress. After she retired, Margaret and Alix, later the Tsarina Alexandra, correspondended by letter, making this Christmas gift particularly appropriate.

Fabergé is famous for the enamelled and jewelled objects he made for Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra. He took over his father’s business in St Petersburg in 1872 and later he also established a flourishing London branch. In 1900 he won a gold medal at the Paris Exhibition. Fabergé’s carved hardstone figures and the superb quality of his enamelling influenced even the great French jewellery houses.

M.2:1,2,3-2017