CASED 14-PIECE DESSERT SERVICE
Bread/pastry knife, pie spade, serving spoon, sauce ladle, cheese slice, pastry slice, 2 sliced fruit forks, 2 sweetmeat forks, 2 larger sweetmeat forks, 2 lemon squeezers; silver, silver-gilt
L. of cake spade 9 inches
 
WORKMASTER: Unidentified

DATE: 1899–1908

PLACE: Moscow

MARKS OR SIGNATURE: On each piece: 88, kokoshnik head facing left, the Cyrillic initials I.L., for Ivan Lebedkin; K. FABERGÉ, in Cyrillic, in an oblong punch surmounted by a double-headed imperial eagle.
 
PROVENANCE: André Ruznikov, Palo Alto, California.
 
REFERENCE: Geza von Habsburg, Fabergé, Imperial Craftsman and His World, Booth-Clibborn Editions, exhibition catalogue, London, 2000, fig. 131, illustrated, 97.
 
EXHIBITION: Fabergé, Imperial Craftsman and His World, Stockholm, Sweden, 2000, catalogue number 131.

This elegant service remains in its period fitted oak case, the lid lined in padded ivory satin stamped with the Imperial Warrant surmounting Fabergé/St. Petersburg/Moscow, Odessa.
 
The decorative vocabulary of crossed palm fronds, a displayed swan and a pair of interlaced cornucopiae were inspired by the First Empire style instigated by Emperor Napoléon I (r. 1804–1814) of France. Patrician Russian taste had admired neoclassical design since the eighteenth century. When the Russian army defeated the invading forces of Napoléon I in 1812, the French First Empire style was appropriated by educated Russians as a symbol of Russian might and the emergence of a fervent Russian national identity as a major European power. First Empire designs thus remained popular in imperial Russia from the early nineteenth century until the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917. In keeping with European practice, there was not the myriad of silver patterns available in the United States; instead, one could have a flatware service in the Louis XV or XVI styles or one might select a First Empire-inspired pattern such as that seen here. There were slight variations on these themes, but a wide variety of flatware patterns was simply not available.
 
The bulk of Fabergé’s silver production emanated from Moscow for very good reasons. That city had been the center of Russian silver manufacture since the sixteenth century; the industry was therefore already well organized, offered a ready availability of a large skilled work force and had a salary structure about twenty percent lower than that of St. Petersburg. Fabergé’s silver production in Moscow was located in the San Galli House at 4 Bolshoi Kiselni Lane under the direction of Michael M. Chepurnov. It was a complex facility, with one division producing raised services and hollow wares and another producing such cast pieces as sculpture, clocks, candlestick and candelabra. Eight craftsmen were employed for the express purpose of engraving monograms and armorials. Unlike Fabergé’s St. Petersburg silver, that of Moscow did not bear workmaster’s initials. Thus, today’s collector, connoisseur and scholar of Fabergé’s Moscow silver do not know the identity of its creator. What is likely is that a French-inspired service such as this was probably made either for sale in the more Europeanized locale of St. Petersburg or for a client with pro-western sympathies.
 
The service is hallmarked throughout with the double-headed eagle indicating an Imperial Warrant; Tsar Alexander III bestowed this upon the House of Fabergé in 1884. On each piece, this Imperial Warrant mark appears over the hallmark of K. FABERGÉ in Cyrillic letters.
 
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