Bell Push (c. 1895–1915): Art, History and Details

Bell Push (c. 1895–1915) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is House of Fabergé (Russian, 1842–1918).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This bell push sat on a dressing table in a wealthy household to summon a servant during the Gilded Age around 1900. Life "below stairs" wasn't as easy as movies and television have portrayed it. Servants could be summoned at all hours of the day and night, interrupting their work, and causing disruption at the whim of the wealthy owners or their guests. The House of Fabergé became the most celebrated Russian supplier of such luxury goods as servant bell pushes. As court jeweler to the Russian imperial family, the Fabergé firm created jewels and luxurious accessories both for the tsar and the Russian state as well as other European royalty and aristocrats.

Object facts

• Title: Bell Push
• Date: c. 1895–1915
• Creator attribution: House of Fabergé (Russian, 1842–1918)
• Culture: Russia, St. Petersburg
• Type: Miscellaneous
• Technique: silver gilt, enamel, bowenite, cabochon sapphire
• Dimensions: Diameter: 3.5 x 5.8 cm (1 3/8 x 2 5/16 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1966.472

A detail from the museum

The advent of electricity in the 1880s made systems of buttons and bell pushes to call servants more efficient than the old lever and pully system within the wall that often broke with a vigorous tug.

Collection credit

The India Early Minshall Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Hawley, Henry H. Fabergé and His Contemporaries: The India Early Minshall Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1967.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.