Armand Hammer

Armand Hammer in 1982.

Armand Hammer was a well known dealer in Fabergé and Fauxbergé. According to Archduke Géza of Austria, Armand's brother Victor Hammer stated Stalin's trade commissar Anastas Mikoyan provided Fabergé hallmarking tools to Armand in order to sell fakes, and Victor stated a 1938 New York sale he ran with Armand, which grossed several million dollars, consisted of both genuine and faked items, with commissions going back to Mikoyan.^[12]

Edward Jay Epstein's book Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer also confirms that he used a "set of the signature stamps of the Faberge workshops, so he could doctor unsigned items in the back room" and "was thus able to expand vastly the supply of Faberge".^[13] Next an account describing the process to his mistress:^[14]

His face beaming with pride, he demonstrated to Bettye how the nineteenth-century tools provided the appearance of an authentic Fabergé signature. He told her how collectors who fancied themselves experts on Fabergé were duped by the forgeries. He would let them discover the 'signature' on their own and then, if they told him about it, act surprised. Hammer thus enjoyed not merely the monetary profit from the sale but a sense of superiority in outwitting the art buyer.

Alexander Ivanov

Ivanov's Fabergé Museum in Baden-Baden (Germany), where both Fabergé and Fauxbergé pieces are on display.

In January 2021, an art dealer specialized in Russian art and Fabergé, denounced in an open letter^[15] to the director of the Hermitage Museum Mikhail Piotrovsky, and later articles,^{[16][17][18][19][20]} that the exhibition "Fabergé: Jeweller to the Imperial Court" (25 November 2020 – 14 March 2021)^[21] had a number of fakes on display, including five eggs,^[22] in order to "legitimize counterfeits and enhance their market-value by exhibiting them in the Hermitage". The scandal was echoed by the international press.^{[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]}

Regarding those eggs, Geza von Habsburg told the BBC: "Judging by the photographs and descriptions published online, all of the so-called 're-found Fabergé Imperial Easter Eggs' from the museum in Baden-Baden displayed in this exhibition are fakes, in my opinion." Some other Fabergé experts such as Alexander von Solodkoff and Ulla Tillander-Godenhielm also doubted the authenticity.^[32]

Von Habsburg also expressed to The Art Newspaper: "What Ruzhnikov has written is in my opinion and in the opinion of a number of my colleagues, correct." "It is unusual for a museum to show items with no provenance or scholarly research to back up their authenticity."^[33]

No fewer than 65 of the 91 Fabergé items on display originated from the private museums of two interrelated Russian collectors: the Fabergé Museum in Baden-Baden (46 items), the Russian National Museum in Moscow (11), both linked to Alexander Ivanov, and the Museum of Christian Culture in St Petersburg (8), linked to Konstantin Goloshchapov, who also appears, along with Ivanov, as co-founder in January 2008 of the private limited company Fabergé Museum GmbH, which owns the museum in Baden-Baden.^[34] Around 40% of the 91 Fabergé items exhibited were fake, in the opinion of the above-mentioned art dealer.^[35]

Following the Hermitage scandal, a research article published in February 2021 by the BBC revealed, amongst other information, that in the late 1990s Ivanov was allowed to study and photograph Fabergé pieces kept in the Fersman Mineralogical Museum in Moscow.^[36]

Shortly thereafter, in Ivanov's collection, which also includes authentic Fabergé pieces, appeared objects that were similar to those in the Fersman Museum. He claimed that he owned the originals, but the Kremlin Museums confirmed that the genuines recognized by experts were in the Fersman Museum. However, pieces very similar to those in the Fersman were exhibited in the Hermitage as real, like a carved stone figurine called Soldier of the Reserves (1915). The chief curator of the Fersman, Mikhail Generalov, told the BBC that he considered this figurine a copy made "so shamefully that it's a shame for Fabergé." He also stated that the museum had sent a letter to the Hermitage outlining its concerns and position regarding the originality of this item, but did not receive a substantive response.

In that letter addressed to Piotrovsky, the director of the Fersman Museum, Pavel Plechov, commented:^[37]

We also note that items from the Russian National Museum and Fabergé Museum in Baden-Baden - based on Fabergé works in the Mineralogical Museum - have featured regularly in exhibitions over the last twenty years. Notably Ice Carrier and the Constellation Imperial Easter Egg. These items have been appearing in exhibitions since Alexander Ivanov (founder of the Russian National Museum) received permission to photograph Fabergé items and other materials in the Mineralogical Museum in 1999, ostensibly to help illustrate his book Unknown Fabergé (published in 2002).

Several of the pieces in the controversial Hermitage exhibition had previously been shown at the New Jerusalem State Museum of History and Art^[38] in Istra, near Moscow, between 15 December 2018 - 24 March 2019.^[39][40][41]

Other names

Oher well-known names include Naum Nicolaevsky, his brother-in-law Vasily Konovalenko and Edward Singer.^[42] Starting in the 1960s Russia, they specialised in the sale of genuine enameled items, from which they removed old marks and replaced them with those of Fabergé, but their greatest success was the carved stone figurines of people and animals, which found their way onto the Western market.^[43]

Other Russian stone-cutters include Mikhail Monastyrsky, Yuri Toptunov and Alexander Solomonovich Leventhal,^[44] to name a few.