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

Bulldog (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:

In creating luxurious accessories for a desk or tabletop, the House of Fabergé often used native hardstones such as multicolored agate and jasper, green nephrite, pink rhodonite, quartz, and rock crystal found in the Ural Mountains of western Russia. By paying careful attention to the unique colors and textures of the stones, Fabergé and his craftsmen brought them to life, turning smoky quartz into this figure of a seated bulldog, for example. The use of native materials also promoted Russian nationalism, which appealed greatly to the tsar and his family.

Object facts

• Title: Bulldog
• Date: c. 1895–1915
• Creator attribution: House of Fabergé (Russian, 1842–1918)
• Culture: Russia, St. Petersburg
• Type: Miscellaneous
• Technique: amethystine quartz, diamonds
• Dimensions: Overall: 4.4 x 5.1 x 3.5 cm (1 3/4 x 2 x 1 3/8 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1966.450

A detail from the museum

Fabergé's lapidaries carefully chose the stones to resemble the color and texture of the figure they were sculpting. The smoky quartz used for this bulldog was polished to resemble his dark shiny coat.

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.
• Fabergé, Peter Carl, and Deborah E. Horowitz. The Fabergé Menagerie. London: Philip Wilson Pub, 2003.
• Harrison, Stephen, Emmanuel Ducamp, and Jeannine J. Falino. Artistic Luxury: Fabergé Tiffany Lalique. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art in association with New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.

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.