Mikhail Perchin — Fabergé's Head Workmaster of the Imperial Eggs
Mikhail Perchin — Fabergé's Head Workmaster of the Imperial Eggs
The atelier head behind the majority of the Fabergé Imperial Easter Eggs, 1886–1903
Mikhail Evlampievich Perchin (1860–1903) was head workmaster at the House of Fabergé from 1886 until his death in 1903, a period that coincides with the firm's rise to its position as principal jeweller to the Russian Imperial court and to the international elite of the late nineteenth century. His workshop produced the majority of the Imperial Easter Eggs commissioned by Tsars Alexander III and Nicholas II during those years, and his initials in Cyrillic — М.П. — are the workmaster's mark on a substantial proportion of the surviving objects of Fabergé's most celebrated decade.
Background and rise
Perchin was born to a peasant family in the Olonets region of northern Russia and travelled to St Petersburg as a young man to apprentice in the goldsmithing trade. He passed his master's examination in 1884 and joined Carl Fabergé's workshop shortly thereafter; within two years, on the death of the previous head workmaster Erik Kollin in 1886, Perchin assumed responsibility for the principal Fabergé atelier on Bolshaya Morskaya Street. The promotion was unusual — Perchin's background gave him no formal social standing in the St Petersburg trade — and reflects both Carl Fabergé's eye for talent and the meritocratic culture that the firm maintained through its peak years.
The Imperial Eggs and other commissions
Of the approximately fifty Imperial Easter Eggs commissioned by the Russian Imperial family between 1885 and 1917, around forty bear Perchin's workmaster mark, including some of the most celebrated examples: the Lilies of the Valley Egg (1898), the Madonna Lily Egg (1899), the Trans-Siberian Railway Egg (1900), the Coronation Egg (1897, with its miniature replica of the imperial coronation coach), the Fifteenth Anniversary Egg (1911 – completed under his successor Wigström), and the Cuckoo Egg (1900). The eggs combined enamelling on guilloche grounds, gem-setting, hardstone carving, and frequently mechanical automata or surprises; the technical coordination required to bring all these elements together within the workshop's tight Easter-delivery deadlines was Perchin's principal managerial responsibility.
Beyond the Imperial Eggs, Perchin's workshop produced the broader range of Fabergé objets de luxe — cigarette cases, picture frames, desk objects, parasol handles, fan mounts, and the small hardstone animal carvings that became one of the firm's most internationally recognisable product categories. The workshop simultaneously produced jewellery in the conventional sense, though jewellery represents a smaller fraction of the surviving Perchin-marked output than the decorative arts pieces for which the firm is now best known.
The atelier's working method
Perchin headed a workshop of perhaps thirty to forty craftsmen at its peak, including specialists in enamelling, hardstone carving, gem-setting, chasing, and the various aspects of goldsmithing required to assemble the finished pieces. The workshop operated on the German and Swiss model of the master's mark plus the firm's mark — pieces carry both Perchin's М.П. and the Fabergé house mark — and the master assumed personal responsibility for the technical and aesthetic quality of each completed object. The Imperial commissions imposed a particularly demanding production cycle, with each year's egg conceived and approved within months of the previous year's delivery and the design held in strict secrecy until the Easter presentation.
Death and succession
Perchin died in 1903 at the age of forty-three, reportedly of an illness that had been worsening for some time. His chief assistant, Henrik Wigström (1862–1923), a Finnish-born goldsmith who had worked in the Perchin atelier from 1884, succeeded him as head workmaster and continued to produce Imperial Eggs and the broader range of Fabergé objects through to the firm's collapse in 1918. The transition between Perchin and Wigström is gradual in the surviving objects: pieces from 1903 carry both marks during the changeover, and the aesthetic continuity between the two periods is strong.
Legacy
Perchin-marked pieces represent the high point of Fabergé technical achievement in the eyes of most collectors and curators, and they have driven much of the modern auction record for the firm. The 1985 sale of the Forbes collection at Sotheby's, the 2004 sale of the Forbes collection to Viktor Vekselberg, and the periodic appearances of Imperial Eggs at auction have all centred on Perchin-period work. The Vekselberg collection, now housed at the Fabergé Museum in St Petersburg, holds the largest single grouping of Imperial Eggs in public display.