Peter Carl Fabergé was born in St. Petersburg, Russia (May 18, 1846)  and educated in Germany, Italy, France, and England. 

His father was a goldsmith (jeweler) and Peter continued the tradition when he inherited his father's business in 1870. 

Assisted by his sons and by associates headed by the Swiss artisan François Berbaum, Fabergé gained recognition as a brilliant designer, specializing in such precious and semiprecious materials as gold, silver, malachite, jade, lapis lazuli, and gems. 

Fabergé's workshop soon became famous for exquisite and ingenious masterpieces: flowers, figure groups, bibelots, animals, and, above all, the celebrated imperial Easter Eggs, 
which were prized by Russian and other royalty throughout Europe and Asia. 

Emperor Alexander III commissioned the first of the eggs for his tsaritsa in 1884, and Alexander's successor, Nicholas II, continued the tradition. Fabergé's studios created outstanding works of imaginative delicacy until the Russian Revolution of 1917; then his world ended, for the new government would not tolerate any object of luxury, and he died in exile in Switzerland in 1920.