[2] Gustav Fabergé's paternal ancestors were Huguenots, originally from La Bouteille, Picardy, who fled from France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, first to Germany near Berlin, then in 1800 to the Pernau county (today Pärnu),[3] Livonia Governorate, then part of Russia, now in Estonia.

[4] Carl enrolled at the Dresden Handelsschule (trade school), a place where the sons of Saxon merchants studied the basics of business administration.

He received tuition from respected goldsmiths in Germany, France and England, attended a course at Schloss's Commercial College in Paris, and viewed the objects in the galleries of Europe's leading museums.

[4] Fabergé also began making changes to transform the firm from what his son Eugène called "a dealer in petty jewelry and spectacles".

[4] By 1881, Carl earned enough recognition among his peers to be appointed "master of the Second Guild", which marked him as a merchant or retailer rather than a craftsman.

[4] Upon the death of Hiskias Pendin, Carl Fabergé took sole responsibility for running the company and was formally acknowledged as the head of the firm.

[4] The firm's first major breakthrough was in 1882, when Carl and Agathon Fabergé were a sensation at the Pan-Russian Exhibition of Industry and the Arts held in Moscow.

Her Majesty honoured Fabergé by buying a pair of cufflinks with images of cicadas which, according to Ancient Greek belief, bring luck".

Influenced by the jewelled bouquets created by the eighteenth century goldsmiths Jean-Jacques Duval and Jérémie Pauzié, Fabergé re-worked their ideas combining them with his accurate observations and his fascination for Japanese art.

[citation needed] This resulted in a revival of the lost art of enameling and a focus on the setting of every single gemstone in a piece to its best visual advantage.

Beginning in 1887, the emperor apparently gave Carl Fabergé complete freedom with regard to egg designs, which then became more and more elaborate.

[1] The tradition continued until the October Revolution when the entire Romanov dynasty was executed and the eggs and many other treasures were confiscated by the interim government.

The Saint Petersburg branch was made up of several workshops with the responsibility of overseeing each item from its design through all the manufacturing stages.

Additionally, France recognized Carl Fabergé with one of the most prestigious of French awards, appointing him a knight of the Legion of Honour.

The two were reunited in 1929 when Eugène Fabergé took his father's remains from Lausanne and buried them in his mother's grave at the Cimetière du Grand Jas in Cannes, France.

[15] The autobiography also records the memories of François Birbaum, Fabergé's senior master craftsman from 1893 until the House's demise.