Wartski jewellery shops: from Russia with love

I am totally invested in Swarovski crystals and can recognise them from 100 meters away, with my eyes blindfolded.  But I knew little about Wartski other than it was a family company specialising in the work of Carl Fabergé, elegant jewellery, silver and perhaps Russian art.

The book Wartski: The First Hundred and Fifty Years was written by Geoffrey Mann and published by Antique Collectors' Club in 2015. From war-torn Poland to London’s Mayfair, this new book charts the success of one of the world’s greatest jewellers in its 150th year. Huon Mallalieu reviewed the book in Country Life (May 2015) “in order to look at a sumptuous book that whirls us through the 150-year history of one of the world’s great jewellery businesses

According to family tradition, the business that grew to be Wartski, the Mayfair jeweller by appointment to The Queen and Prince of Wales, had its beginnings in 1865, in Turek in Poland, then close to the border between Russia and Prussia.

It was not a good time for anyone, let alone a Jew, to set business offering jewellery and haberdashery in Poland. A nationalist uprising against the Russian occupiers had just been bloodily crushed and, throughout the Tsarist Empire, anti-Semitism was on the rise.

So it is not surprising that in 1876 Shemaya and Rosa Wartski, despite declaring themselves natural-born subjects of the Russian Empire, should send three of their sons, including Morris, westwards to Britain. What was less expected was that they established themselves in North Wales, not in the rapidly growing Jewish communities of London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds.

Morris Wartski outside his first shop 

Bangor Wales c1895.

photo credit: Wartski London

Morris Wartski (1855-1946) began as a travelling salesman but soon, seemingly as a result of a chance meeting with the Marquess of Anglesey, was able to open a shop in Bangor. On his naturalisation papers in 1893 he is described as a jeweller and furniture dealer and by 1907, he had extended the business to the more prosperous and fashionable watering-place of Llandudno. His customers included the eccentric Lord Anglesey, not a reliable payer, and the family lawyer was David Lloyd George.

Morris was a man of great ability as well as charm and, as he spoke Russian, Polish, Yiddish, German and Welsh as well as Polish-accented English, he was able to aid the authorities in dealing with further waves of immigrants. He died at 91 after a long and full life, which he attributed to ‘plenty of whisky, good cigars and no exercise’.

His son-in-law Emanuel Snowman (1886–1970), son of similar immigrants, opened a branch of Wartski in London  in 1911. And it was Snowman who made many of the acquisitions from imperial and aristocratic coll­ect­ions that were sold by the Soviets between 1927-33, thus making the enduring reputation of the firm. During the 1920s and after WW2 everyone who was anyone came to Wartski to marvel and to buy: the moneyed classes old and new, royalty by families and Holly­wood by the galaxy. Even the 2nd Viscount Stansgate, later Tony Benn, was there; he consulted the Snowmans on the disposal of his peer’s coronet.

In the book beautiful photographs of beautiful people complement the jewels, the bibelots and of course the fancies of Faberge, including a whole clutch of eggs. Long departed from the subterranean premises in Regent St and settled comfortably yards from Bond St in Grafton St, Wartski continues to attract stars as well as putting on the most wonderful exhibitions”.

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Wartski’s own page added vital information. In 1911 Morris Wartski's son-in-law Emanuel Snowman was among the first to negotiate with the new Soviet government in the 1920s; he purchased treasures that had been confiscated after the revolution of 1917. For over a decade he acquired many fine works of art, including a gold chalice commissioned by Catherine the Great (now in the Hillwood Museum).

Faberge bell push bought by the Tsar's sister Grand Duchess Xenia,
later owned by King George I of Greece,
silver with purple guilloche enamel and pearls.

detail of a Faberge egg, containing a Vacheron Constantin watch,
sits on a jewelled gold stand,
given by Alexander III to his Empress Maria Feodorovna in 1887.

Emanuel's son Kenneth built on his father's work, adding an academic dimension to the business through his pioneering research and exhibitions. His first book, The Art of Carl Fabergé, was published in 1953. Then Carl Fabergé: Goldsmith to the Imperial Court of Russia and Eighteenth Century Gold Boxes of Europe in 1966. Kenneth Snowman was made famous by Ian Fleming, a Wartski customer, in the James Bond novella Property of a Lady; he was described as being in Wartski’s premises, then in Regent Street. In the next generation, Kenneth’s son Nicholas Snowman succeeded his father as Chairman and continues to support the firm's scholarly traditions. Appropriately Nicholas Snowman is the great-grandson of Morris Wartski.

Two exhibitions specialising in tiaras have been organised by Wartski’s. The first, One Hundred Tiaras - An Evolution of Style 1800-1900, was in 1997 in the Grafton Street premises of this firm. The Queen Victoria's Emerald and Diamond Tiara was one of the tiaras displayed at this exhibition. Queen Victoria's Sapphire and Diamond Tiara, worn in the famous Winterhalter portrait, survives intact in the hands of a descendant of Queen Victoria, who lent it to Wartski for the 1997 exhibition. The second exhibition of tiaras was held at the Victoria Albert Museum in 2002, also organised by Wartski's. The 2002 display at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Tiaras, included 200 pieces ranging from historic pieces loaned from European royal and aristocratic families.. to modern pieces. It included 20 tiaras of British Royal origin, out of which four were designed by Prince Albert for Queen Victoria.