ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Tatiana Fedorovna Fabergé is a great‐granddaughter of Carl Fabergé. She studied jewellery design in Paris and in Geneva in L’Ecole d'art appliqués. Tatiana Fabergé has written a number of articles and nine monographs dedicated to Great Fabergé. In 1992, she published the Memoirs of Frants Birbaum. The text by Carl Faberge’s Swiss head master craftsman was quickly pillaged by a handful of ‘Fabergé experts’. In 1997, Christie’s published The Fabergé Imperial Easter Eggs with Valentin Skurlov and Lynette Proler. It is now considered the reference for the Easter gifts made by Tsars Alexander III and Nicholas II.

Eric-Alain Kohler

made a considerable research on Frants Birbaum. 

This research led him to collaborate with Tatiana Fabergé and Valentin Skurlov from 1992.

Valentin Vasilievich Skurlov  is regarded as a major Fabergé scholar and author of more than one hundred publications on Fabergé. In the Academy of Sciences, he discovered a manuscript dated 1919 written by Frants Birbaum, Fabergé’s head master from 1893 to 1918.  Valentin Skurlov was among the first researchers to look into the Soviet secret archives in Saint Petersburg and Moscow. He came across masses of new documents related to Fabergé and the firm’s clientele.  During the 1990s, Valentin Skurlov gathered documents on proven Imperial and non‐Imperial Fabergé Easter eggs. The Fabergé Imperial Easter Eggs was published by Christie’s in 1997.

Valentin Skurlov and Tatiana Fabergé have set up a database of Fabergé artefacts based on their inventory numbers, archival documents, invoices and other proven information. Over 35,000 pieces out of ca. 250,000 artefacts have been authenticated. Auction houses, dealers, museums and private collectors alike can use this database.

[PICTURE OF ENAMEL SAMPLES]

Carl Fabergé enamel guilloché chart of numbered samples. 

Carl Fabergé, 1894, St Perersburg.