Kremlin Tower Clock (c. 1913): Art, History and Details

Kremlin Tower Clock (c. 1913) 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:

The use of Russian hardstones in creating precious objects became a hallmark of design from the House of Fabergé. Easily carved, these minerals were sourced largely from the western region surrounding the Ural Mountains. Fabergé's workmasters used colorful stones such as agate, nephrite (jade), lapis lazuli, rock crystal, and rhodonite, seen here in this elaborate table or mantel clock, to create all manner of luxurious accessories. Bright pink rhodonite was among the rarest, and consequently most expensive, specimens used by the House of Fabergé. This clock resembles the Taynitskaya Tower, the middle tower on the south side of the Kremlin. The House of Fabergé created this work to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty, representing Fabergé's ability to balance the functionality of objects with intricate decorative design.

Object facts

• Title: Kremlin Tower Clock
• Date: c. 1913
• Creator attribution: House of Fabergé (Russian, 1842–1918)
• Culture: Russia, St. Petersburg
• Type: Timepiece
• Technique: rhodonite, silver, enamel, emeralds, sapphires
• Dimensions: Overall: 29 x 14.6 cm (11 7/16 x 5 3/4 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1966.477

A detail from the museum

The Kremlin tower, which this clock resembles, has a secret well and an underground tunnel that leads to the Moscow River.

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.
• 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.