Wartski at 160: Fabergé dealer and royal jeweller stages landmark brooch exhibition

The London jeweller, famed for its royal wedding rings and Fabergé treasures, is celebrating its anniversary with a show bringing together loans from major museums and Pforzheim’s Jewellery Museum, including Lalique, Fouquet and the renowned Octopus and Butterfly brooch

Wartski, the London jeweller long associated with royal wedding rings and collectors of Fabergé, is marking its 160th anniversary with an exhibition tracing the evolution of the brooch from utilitarian fastening to decorative art.

The company, which created the wedding rings for King Charles III and Queen Camilla in 2005 and for the Prince and Princess of Wales in 2011, has held six consecutive royal warrants and served clients from Queen Mary to Queen Elizabeth II and the Queen Mother. Its broader clientele has ranged from Edith Sitwell and Margot Fonteyn to Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand and Vivienne Westwood.

Its anniversary exhibition, From Function to Fantasy: The Brooch, runs from 1 to 12 October at Wartski’s St James’s Street premises. It brings together works from leading public institutions  including the British Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Musée Lalique, alongside rarely seen pieces from private collections.

Germany’s Pforzheim Jewellery Museum is contributing five loans, among them Lucien Falize’s experimental 1858 aluminium brooch, two examples by René Lalique, Georges Fouquet’s Poisson breast ornament and Lucas Wilhelm von Cranach’s celebrated Octopus and Butterfly, regarded as the most significant German Art Nouveau jewel.

Friederike Zobel, the director of the Pforzheim Museum, told The European: “We are delighted to be represented in London with these outstanding pieces, which also pay tribute to Wartski’s 160th anniversary.”

Wartski was founded in Bangor, North Wales, in 1865 by Morris Wartski, a Polish-Jewish immigrant.

His son Isidore built a drapery empire in Bangor, while Harry Wartski and his brother-in-law Emanuel Snowman developed the jewellery side of the business in Llandudno, where patrons included King Edward VII and the 5th Marquess of Anglesey.

David Lloyd George, later Britain’s wartime prime minister, acted as the firm’s lawyer.

A London branch followed in 1911, styled “Wartski of Llandudno” beginning a move that would establish the firm as an international player.

From the 1920s, Emanuel Snowman, Wartski’s son-in-law, was among a small group of dealers to purchase treasures directly from the Soviet government’s Antiquariat, securing Romanov jewels, Imperial Fabergé eggs and works once owned by Catherine the Great.

Later, his son Kenneth expanded the firm’s scholarship, publishing definitive books on Fabergé and 18th-century goldsmithing and curating major Fabergé exhibitions at the Victoria & Albert Museum in 1977 and New York’s Cooper Hewitt in 1983. Author Ian Fleming, a customer, immortalised him in the James Bond novella Property of a Lady.

The firm also handled jewels from the Egyptian royal collection after King Farouk was deposed. Its reputation as a dealer in Fabergé and court jewellery cemented its appeal to collectors, museums and royalty.

Wartski has occupied several London premises, from Bond Street to Regent Street and Grafton Street, where its 1974 shopfront was later Grade II listed. In 2018 it moved to 60 St James’s Street, providing larger space for both commerce and exhibitions.

Alongside its commercial activities, the firm has regularly sponsored and staged scholarly exhibitions, including Bejewelled Treasures: The Al Thani Collection at the V&A in 2015 and Designers & Jewellery 1850–1940 at the Fitzwilliam Museum in 2018. Collectors have queued overnight for its exhibitions, a rarity in the field of historic jewellery.

The business remains family-owned under chairman Hector Snowman, great-great-grandson of the founder, supported by joint managing directors Katherine Purcell and Kieran McCarthy and director Thomas Holman. Purcell is a specialist in French 19th-century jewellery, while McCarthy identified the lost Third Imperial Fabergé Easter Egg in 2014 and curated the V&A’s Fabergé in London exhibition in 2021–22. Holman, meanwhile, a specialist in engraved gems, curated Wartski’s 2019 exhibition Multum in Parvo.

Zobel, of the Pforzheim Museum, added: “The exhibition impressively shows how the brooch has developed over time from a practical clothing fastener to an independent work of art.

“With this exhibition, Wartski is making a mark in its long history as an internationally renowned jeweller and collector, and the Jewellery Museum, with its loans, is part of this international dialogue on jewellery art.”

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_{Main image: Wartski’s premises at 60 St James’s Street, London, home to the royal jeweller since 2018. The firm, founded in Bangor in 1865, is marking its 160th anniversary with a landmark exhibition on the history of the brooch. Courtesy, Wartski}