Miniature Chair (1896–1906): Art, History and Details

Miniature Chair (1896–1906) 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 giving of small precious objects as intimate gifts between family members within the imperial court was spurred by the House of Fabergé's seemingly endless supply of bejeweled utilitarian objects decorated as expensively as possible, such as this stamp holder disguised as an exquisite miniature chair in the Louis XVI taste of the late 1700s.

Object facts

• Title: Miniature Chair
• Date: 1896–1906
• Creator attribution: House of Fabergé (Russian, 1842–1918)
• Culture: Russia, St. Petersburg
• Type: Miscellaneous
• Technique: gold, silver gilt, enamel, rubies, diamonds
• Dimensions: Overall: 10.5 x 5.3 x 4.8 cm (4 1/8 x 2 1/16 x 1 7/8 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1966.454

A detail from the museum

This miniature chair has a clever mechanism that allows the seat cushion to slide forward and upward slightly so that it can be opened to reveal a compartment, probably used to hold stamps on a desk.

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.
• “Back Matter.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 54, no. 3 (March 1967): 89.
• Habsburg, Géza von, and David Park Curry. Fabergé in America. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1996.

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.