I typically am not a fan of any historical Russian art so listening to this lunchtime lecture was similar to doing a curiosity page for an artist I hate. Faberge eggs started when Nicholas II gave an egg as an Easter gift to his wife Alexandra the Feodorovna in 1903. The faberge firm presented a bill to Tsar Nicholas II for 9,760 rubles (an average wage earner would have had to work fo r296 years to afford this egg).
Faberge's work masters used four different colors of gold and many diamonds, rubies, rocks, and crystals. Inside the egg is an object made of gold with a large sapphire. Lilian Thomas Pratt bought the egg when it was in the hands of Alexander Shaffer, he was asking for 10 times the price than he paid for it. One of the faberge eggs was recently bought by someone from the US Midwest for 14 thousand dollars. McCarthy, an antique dealer, bought the egg for 33 million dollars from the buyer. The others (7) are still missing. Gustav Faberge opened a workshop under the name of faberge in a cellar. Karl Berge grew up learning how to work with gold, silver, and jewels from his fathers Finnish work master. He returned to St.Petersburg and continues to learn the family business. He then began a line of gold jewelry that was inspired by archaeological artifacts. Feodorovna purchased a pair of cuff links, the first imperial purchase from Faberge (one of veryyy many). Faberge built a 5 story building that developed many objects and gift boxes for each individual item. He never actually made anything himself, and none of the 5,000 things he made were the same. While I don't really like this style of art, I can appreciate the work and value of the pieces. The thing I found most interesting was the gap between Faberge and the work itself. His fame and fortune is beyond compare but he never actually made his own pieces. Almost everyone can recognize his name but what about the names of the workers who made the pieces? He is more of a businessman than an artist, but I want to know more about how that link worked. Did he workers get just compensation? Overall it was very interesting to hear about all the Russian history and how important Faberge's (or should I his workers') work played such an important role in the royal realm of Russia.
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I set up the background of my piece, and decided I'm going to focus on building foreground on this piece. I took inspiration from my last AbEx piece and used similar colors, and I'm using the piece on the left as inspiration. I'm not super excited about this piece but I'm hoping its successful
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Julianne
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