Miniature Compote (1896): Art, History and Details

Miniature Compote (1896) 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 House of Fabergé specialized in the creation of little treasures intended as opulent personal gifts. In creating luxurious accessories for a desk or tabletop, Fabergé often used native hardstones such as multicolored agate and quartz, green nephrite, pink rhodonite, and rock crystal found in the Ural Mountains of western Russia. Fabergé's designers often paired hardstones with silver mounts, particularly in the Moscow workshop where the silver studios were concentrated.

Object facts

• Title: Miniature Compote
• Date: 1896
• Creator attribution: House of Fabergé (Russian, 1842–1918)
• Culture: Russia
• Type: Silver
• Technique: silver, aventurine quartz
• Dimensions: Overall: 15.2 cm (6 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 2022.111

A detail from the museum

Pink aventurine is the rarest form of this type of quartz, which is most commonly found in an olive green form.

Collection credit

Gift of the Hiller-Borneman Collection

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.