Miniature Table with Compass (c. 1890–95): Art, History and Details

Miniature Table with Compass (c. 1890–95) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is House of Fabergé (Russian, 1842–1918); Mikhail Evlampievich Perkhin (Russian, 1860–1903).

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 little desk compass disguising as a miniature table in the Louis XVI taste of the late 1700s.

Object facts

• Title: Miniature Table with Compass
• Date: c. 1890–95
• Creator attribution: House of Fabergé (Russian, 1842–1918); Mikhail Evlampievich Perkhin (Russian, 1860–1903)
• Culture: Russia, St. Petersburg
• Type: Miscellaneous
• Technique: gold, enamel, glass, steel
• Dimensions: Overall: 5.6 x 4.2 cm (2 3/16 x 1 5/8 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1966.480

A detail from the museum

A small compass is concealed in the top of this miniature table for use when looking at maps.

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.

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.