Fauxbergé (Russian: фальшберже) is a term coined to generally describe items that are faking a higher quality or status and in specific terms relates to the House of Fabergé (Russian: Дом Фаберже), which was a Russian jewellery firm founded in 1842 in Saint Petersburg and nationalised by the Bolsheviks in 1918. The term was first mentioned in a publication by auctioneer and Fabergé book author Archduke Géza of Austria in his article "Fauxbergé" published in Art and Auction in 1994. He also used it during the exhibition "Fabergé in America" in 1996 and subsequently.
Today the term is a part of the expertise vocabulary in the field of Fabergé, used to refer to items that are copies, counterfeits, or pastiches, of historical Fabergé products made between 1885 and 1917.
History of genuine objects
The production of Fabergé objects around 1900 poured out a much vaster number of pieces than the popular perception. The reason for this being that only 50 Imperial Easter Eggs were completed, while general Fabergé objects and jewelry items could exist in high numbers. It is estimated that the Fabergé company produced over a half a million products between 1842 and 1917. With over 500 craftsmen and designers working for the company in its heyday, under Peter Carl Fabergé's 35-year tenure as head of the firm, it is believed that over 200,000 objects -from pins, brooches, bracelets, tiaras, umbrella handles, picture frames, flower studies, presentation boxes, snuff boxes, cigarette cases, clock cases and all sorts of objets d'art- were produced between 1882 and 1917. In its time Fabergé had been the most recognized and most highly valued jewelry brand in the world, surpassing Cartier and others by far.
The company had its flagship store and main workshop in Saint Petersburg (1842). Later four additional branches were added: Moscow (1887), Odessa (1901), London (1903) and Kiev (1906).
In response to a growing demand, apart from his own in-house workshops, Carl Fabergé worked with a number of outer workshops, managed by the so-called workmasters, who were in charge of a team of craftsmen, from jewelers, enamellers, goldsmiths, designers, etc. These semi-independent workshops were specialized in a particular area, e.g. producing frames, silver pieces, carved stone animals, etc. each had its own distinctive style and the workmaster owned his own firm under the Fabergé umbrella, signing their own initials to their creations, along with the Fabergé hallmark. According to Habsburg a sure way to sort out fakes is that Fabergé always used a maximum of two stamps and that most copies show more than two stamps.
Imitators were already a problem during the company's heyday and it is not always possible to distinguish the finer works of the Petersburg jewellers Ivan Britsyn, Alexander Tillander or Karl Hahn from Fabergé's mass output. Other competitors such as Cartier and Tiffany's also started to sell similar objects, and even bought from the same sources. Especially the stone animals, which are never stamped or engraved can be mistaken for Fabergé originals.
Notable figures
Armand Hammer
Armand Hammer was a well known dealer in Fabergé and Fauxbergé. According to Archduke Géza of Austria, Armand's brother Victor Hammer stated Stalin's trade commissar Anastas Mikoyan provided Fabergé hallmarking tools to Armand in order to sell fakes, and Victor stated a 1938 New York sale he ran with Armand, which grossed several million dollars, consisted of both genuine and faked items, with commissions going back to Mikoyan.
Edward Jay Epstein's book Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer also confirms that he used a “set of the signature stamps of the Faberge workshops, so he could doctor unsigned items in the back room” and “was thus able to expand vastly the supply of Faberge”. Next an account describing the process to his mistress:
Alexander Ivanov
In January 2021, an art dealer specialized in Russian art and Fabergé, denounced in an open letter to the director of the Hermitage Museum Mikhail Piotrovsky, and later articles, that the exhibition “Fabergé: Jeweller to the Imperial Court” (25 November 2020 – 14 March 2021) had a number of fakes on display, including five eggs, in order to "legitimize counterfeits and enhance their market-value by exhibiting them in the Hermitage". The scandal was echoed by the international press.