Over the past two weeks, I’ve been immersed in the Russian jewelry scene because I’m writing a story about Russian jewelers for the International Herald Tribune’s Dec. 13th watch and jewelry section. It’s a subject close to my heart: I was born in St. Petersburg and emigrated to the United States in 1978, when my parents decided to join the exodus of Jews seeking asylum in the West. Like most Soviet citizens, we didn’t have any jewelry — there simply wasn’t any to buy. So when I returned to Russia in 2004 to attend a month-long writing program in my hometown, and simultaneously research a series of articles about the Russian diamond trade, it came as something of a surprise to learn that Russia lays claim to one of the world’s most important jewelry traditions.
I suppose I could have named Peter Carl Fabergé, the master jeweler from St. Petersburg who created all those imperial eggs for the czars before the Bolsheviks stormed the country in 1917. But beyond some foggy notion of his contribution to Russia’s storied past, I had no idea that what I remembered as the grim and gray Soviet Union had once been home to such opulence. Then I went to the Hermitage.
(Truth be told, I’d already been to the grand museum, a complex of six buildings including the former residence of the czars, though I’d gotten no further than the front entrance. It was the 2004 summer solstice, the shortest and whitest night of them all, and Paul McCartney was playing a concert in Palace Square. With the sun blazing at 9 pm, I danced to old Beatles songs with two drunk Russian men who couldn’t seem to get past the fact that I was an Amerikanka. All I really remembered of the night was Sir Paul singing “Back in the U.S.S. R.” and the surreal lavender light reflecting off the windows of the Winter Palace.)
When I finally visited the museum’s stately jewelry galleries a couple weeks later with my friend Alexei Davidov, then a marketing director for Kristall Smolensk, Russia’s largest diamond manufacturer, the riches on display gave me a jolt of national pride (the Russians do it better!).
In this day and age, when the news is (or was) filled with stories about Russians oligarchs casually plunking down millions of dollars for gaudy diamond-encrusted status symbols, the incredible legacy of Fabergé and his contemporaries seems to have been forgotten by the West.
Now a cohort of talented jewelers is trying to change that. The first firm that comes to mind is Moscow’s Jewellery Theatre, founded 10 years ago by Irina Dorofeeva and Maxim Voznesensky. As exhibitors at the Baselworld luxury fair, they’re known to international buyers for their avant-garde jewels, which have the magical charm of a fairy tale. The Atlantika earrings shown below, for example, wouldn’t look out of place on the chiseled profile of an ice princess.
Further south, in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, Lobortas & Karpova has perfected the art of enameling that was brought to ancient Rus from Byzantium, while in central Russia’s Kostroma region, considered the cradle of the Russian jewelry industry, operate companies like Platina, representing the vanguard of Russian jewelry manufacturing.
Which is to say nothing of the Russian jewelry diaspora, and the scores of émigré jewelers (I'm a fan of Belarus-born, Brooklyn-based Lena Sklyut) who’ve brought a uniquely Slavic style to their adopted communities. So while India, France and other countries with a more explicit connection to jewelry than Russia get all the attention, don’t count out the Russkies. The same sensibilities that inspired their soulful contributions to world literature, music and art are alive and well in the jewelry sphere. The West may think of them as far-out, but in Russia, they're simply considered "klassnaya."
I love it Victoria! You are an amazing writer!!
Posted by: Michelle | November 21, 2008 at 12:06 PM