A. Kenneth Snowman (1919–2002)

This book has plenty of interesting information in the text, particularly if you're looking for something on the more technical side of things, but it's real value is in the pictures. While sometimes the captions described an interior I wished I could see but couldn't and the scale was often hard to establish, there is still a gluttony of fantastic workmanship to feast your eyes on and seeing these pieces does more to illustrate the material wealth and decadence of Imperialist Russia than any amount of textbook passages or facts and figures could.… (more)

This was my all time favourite in college. I was in love with what Faberge did to amalgamate artisan traditions and metallurgy from Medieval and Baroque times to achieve an advanced cosmopolitan style that captivated the imaginations of Tsars and Tsarinas and nobility for generations. I theorized though how that subjugated the once noble artisan to a systematized 'manufacturing' and retailing process and came to symbolize the tyranny of the bureaucracy against the once mighty and creative individual, contributing to the Marxist/Leninist experiment to fix that problem, and the ironic symbolism of Faberge for a failed narrative of the theocratically ordained imperial monarchy that had to eat its own breakfast after 2 millennia. I wrote my senior thesis on that for Art History. Loved every minute of it.… (more)