Perch for the Parrot on a Perch (1896–1903): Art, History and Details

Perch for the Parrot on a Perch (1896–1903) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Mikhail Evlampievich Perkhin (Russian, 1860–1903); House of Fabergé (Russian, 1842–1918).

The work and its context

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

This frame is meant to hold a hardstone parrot sitting on a perch. In creating luxurious accessories for a desk or tabletop, Fabergé often used native hardstones such as multicolored agate and jasper, green nephrite, pink rhodonite, and rock crystal found in the Ural Mountains of western Russia. By paying careful attention to the unique colors and textures of the stones, Fabergé and his craftsmen brought them to life, turning milky agate into a begging poodle or green and black jasper into a parrot sitting on a perch. The use of native materials also promoted Russian nationalism, which appealed greatly to the tsar and his family.

Object facts

• Title: Perch for the Parrot on a Perch
• Date: 1896–1903
• Creator attribution: Mikhail Evlampievich Perkhin (Russian, 1860–1903); House of Fabergé (Russian, 1842–1918)
• Culture: Russia, St. Petersburg
• Type: Miscellaneous
• Technique: Silver, enamel
• Dimensions: Overall: 15.3 x 7.4 cm (6 x 2 15/16 in.)
• Collection: Decorative Arts
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 1966.447.b

A detail from the museum

This perch is part of a figure of a parrot sitting on a perch.

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.
• Fabergé, Peter Carl, and Deborah E. Horowitz. The Fabergé Menagerie. London: Philip Wilson Pub, 2003.

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.