Imperial Barometer (1900–1901): Art, History and Details

Imperial Barometer (1900–1901) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Johan Viktor Aarne (Finnish, 1863–1934); House of Fabergé (Russian, 1842–1918).

The work and its context

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

After obtaining the official warrant to supply objects for the imperial household and the Russian state in 1885, the House of Fabergé became the shop of choice for members of the royal family when purchasing appropriate gifts for the tsar who had everything. Records of these purchases reveal that in 1901 the tsar's brother, Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich (1878-1918), bought a barometer in the neoclassical style made from palisander wood just a few days before his brother's 33rd birthday. The description of that barometer matches the one now in this collection and is likely the same object.

Object facts

• Title: Imperial Barometer
• Date: 1900–1901
• Creator attribution: Johan Viktor Aarne (Finnish, 1863–1934); House of Fabergé (Russian, 1842–1918)
• Culture: Russia, St. Petersburg
• Type: Miscellaneous
• Technique: palisander, silver gilt, ruby
• Dimensions: Overall: 14 x 12.5 cm (5 1/2 x 4 15/16 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1966.484

A detail from the museum

This barometer was likely sold by the Soviet Union between 1934 and 1939 as part of a general selling off of former imperial possessions to raise money for the state treasury.

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: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1967.
• Habsburg, Géza von and David Park Curry. Fabergé in America. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1996.
• 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.