Ludmila Budrina
Ekaterinburg Museum of Fine Art, Russia
There weren’t only Imperial Easter eggs and elegant flowers which made Fabergé workshop so famous. Production of stonecutting figures, made in the technique of volume mosaic, was very popular at the same time.
For a long time the invention of this technique was attributed to Fabergé. However, it would be fair to remember many monuments, created at the end of the Italian Renaissance in the workshop of Great Duke of Medici and by its followers from German states in the time of the Baroque style.
Again the interest to this very expensive, but so attractive technical method arose in the last quarter of the 19th century. Along with Fabergé workshop in Saint Petersburg, where between 1908 and 1916 about fifty figures were made, there was another atelier which belonged to Alexis Denissov-Uralsky where craftsmen created some polychrome stone sculptures.
At the same moment, European artists started to produce volume mosaic. For instance, in Italy there was Paolo Ricci at Opificio delle pietre dure (Florence) who made three figures in this technique between 1873 and 1881. In France (Paris), we should note Auguste Alfred Vaudet who created a bust of Ajax (1881), and the mosaic relief “Vers l’inconnu” (1902) by Emile Felix Gaulard.
It is interesting to mention that one more French artist — Georges Henri Lemaire — started to produce the volume mosaic figures at the end of the 19th century. His numerous sculptures are dated between 1892 and 1914.
All mentioned artists took part in the most important international and Universal exhibitions. It enables us to talk about revival of technique of volume stone mosaic not only as Russian, but also as a European movement in the decorative arts of the beginning of the 20th century.