Wartski

Wartski is a British family firm of antique dealers specialising in Russian works of art; particularly those by Carl Fabergé, fine jewellery and silver.

The firm was founded in Bangor, North Wales in 1865 by Morris Wartski, a Polish-Jewish[1][2] immigrant from the town of Turek,[3] in central Poland.

The firm's distinctive shop front on Grafton Street, designed by John Bruckland in 1974, was Grade II listed by English Heritage in 2012.

In 2018 Wartski moved to larger premises at 60 St. James Street, London, the concrete-lined interior was designed by the architects Waldo Works.

Emanuel Snowman travelled to the Soviet Union from 1925 onwards to negotiate the purchase of former Romanov jewels and objets d'art from the Antiquariat, a commissariat established by the Bolsheviks to raise foreign currency.

(Abraham) Kenneth Snowman (1919–2002), ran the London shop and wrote standard works, The Art of Carl Fabergé (1953), followed by Carl Fabergé: Goldsmith to the Imperial Court of Russia and Eighteenth Century Gold Boxes of Europe (1966), written at the urging of Sacheverell Sitwell.

She authored the definitive study Falize: A Dynasty of Jewellers (1999) and translated into English Henri Vever’s French Jewellery of the Nineteenth Century (2001).

[7] His research led to him curating 'Fabergé in London: Romance to Revolution',[8] the sell-out exhibition devoted to the subject at the Victoria and Albert Museum, November 2021 to May 2022.

[10] Wartski were the sole sponsor of 'Bejewelled Treasures', an exhibition of Indian and Indian-influenced jewellery from The Al Thani Collection staged at the Victoria and Albert Museum from November 2015 to March 2016.

[12] An exhibition of engraved gems entitled ‘Multum in Parvo’ (a Latin motto which translates as 'much in little'), was staged at Wartski in October 2019.

Morris Wartski's first shop on High Street, Bangor, North Wales
Wartski Fields in Bangor, Wales
The former Wartski's department store in Bangor, North Wales, shown here as a Debenhams, in 2006
Wartski on 14 Grafton Street, London (2011)
Wartski, 60 St. James's Street, London