The collection of Russian art bequeathed by Lillian Thomas Pratt to the Virginia Museum of Fine Art (VMFA) in 1947, comprising 328 items, was first catalogued in 1976 by Parker Lesley, who attributed the majority of the objects to Fabergé without much discernment. The collection remained somewhat of an enigma for Fabergé scholars as only few had the opportunity of examining all the Russian artifacts acquired by Mrs Pratt throughout the 1930s and 1940s from businessman/dealer Armand Hammer and from Alexander Schaffer of A La Vieille Russie. Less than half of the collection was on view in a single gallery at the museum, while the remainder languished in the vaults below.
In 2009 I requested permission from the VMFA’s Director, Alex Nyerges, to examine in depth and publish the full collection. As the museum lacked a specialist, I was awarded the honorary title of Fabergé Guest Curator. After two years of study of the collection, which was mostly sold to Mrs. Pratt as being by the great Russian master goldsmith, only approximately half withstood the test of closer scrutiny. However, this still left Mrs Pratt’s bequest at the time as the premier collection of Fabergé in the United States. The remainder of the pieces were erroneous attributions or forgeries.
A lavish catalogue with essays by leading Fabergé scholars, each object illustrated in color, was published in 2011, comprising the entire Pratt collection, as well as 45 further pieces donated later to the museum. This also marked the opening of the collection’s first full exhibition, together with additional loans from the Hodges Family Collection, other prestigious pieces from the Matilda Geddings Gray Foundation Collection and from the McFerrin Collection.
Next, awaiting a decision about the its future location, the collection traveled for 5 years to museums in Detroit, Salem, Montreal, Las Vegas, Oklahoma and the Palace Museum in Beijing (a stop at the Fabergé Museum in St. Petersburg was canceled). Upon its return to Richmond, the collection was re-opened to the public on October 22, 2016. I was invited to hold the inaugural lecture before a capacity crowd. Visitors are in for a great treat: from the previous single gallery of 715 sq. feet, the exhibition space had grown to 5 galleries measuring 1,963 sq. feet. The elegant well-lit rooms, made possible by a grant of benefactor Eda Hofstaed Cabaniss, whose name now adorns the galleries, are now all painted in pale gray with white trim, while the objects are displayed on dark blue velvet backgrounds. The galleries were designed and built in a record time of six months under the supervision of Stephen Bonadies, Senior Deputy Director for Conservation and Collections. The well thought-out installation is due to Barry Shifman, the museum’s Curator of Decorative Arts from 1890 to the Present. The five rooms are thematically ordered (Introduction; Enamels; Imperial; Hardstones; Old Russian), with 20 wall cases and 14 free-standing cases. The five Imperial Eggs benefit from interactive touch-screens on which visitors can view animations of the eggs revolving. Scholars can now study the Pratt collection through a comprehensive digital archive launched through a portal comprising 700 items and 1,500 downloadable files.
Go to https://vmfa.museum/ to plan your visit.
Fabergé collections are available online and in the international boutiques.
