Kenneth Snowman

Background

Kenneth Snowman was born in Hampstead, London, one of three children of the jeweller Emanuel Snowman and his wife Harriet Wartski, daughter of Morris Wartski, the founder of the Wartski art and antiques firm.

Education

He was educated at University College School, Hampstead. He then studied at Saint Martin"s School of Art and the Byam Shaw School of Artist

Career

He was made a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1994, and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1997. Kenneth"s father made regular trips to the Soviet Union, acquiring a total of nine Fabergé eggs between 1925 and 1938, which Kenneth played with as a child. Snowman painted throughout his life, exhibiting at the Royal Academy, the Paris Salon and the Leicester galleries.

In September 1999, there was a retrospective exhibition of his work in Cork Street, London, at the dealers Browse and Darby.

Snowman was highly critical of trends in modern art towards conceptualism and away from figurative art In his 1993 chapter in Fabergé: Imperial Jeweller he railed against "fraudulent jumbles of brushstrokes and meaningless heaps of rubbish left on the gallery floor to be admired by the simple minded".

Snowman acknowledged, however, that the work of Fabergé, for instance, could seem over-ornate and was not always to the modern taste. He made no comment regarding the cost of such items.

Like his father, he was an enthusiastic dealer in the works of Carl Fabergé, and wrote a number of scholarly yet accessible books and catalogues on the subject, largely connected with the 1949 and 1953 exhibitions he arranged at Wartski.

He also organised the major Fabergé exhibitions at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 1977, and at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York in 1983. The story was first published in a Sotheby"s publication, The Ivory Hammer, in 1963 and later in the Fleming short story collection Octopussy and The Living Daylights. Fleming writes: "James Bond asked for Mr Kenneth Snowman.

The story also forms the basis for the 1983 film Octopussy, where a Fabergé egg plays an important role, but Snowman"s role there is conflated with another and becomes the character Jim Fanning, played by Douglas Wilmer.

In the film, prior to the auction of the Fabergé egg, Bond visits the Wartski shop, then at 138 Regent Street, where Snowman/Fanning explains the history of Carl Fabergé"s work, and then goes with Bond to the sale at Sotheby"son

Works

More photos

• book

  • Eighteenth Century Gold Boxes of Europe

    (This standard work of reference provides a carefully docu...)

  • Eighteenth Century Gold Boxes of Europe
  • Eighteenth Century Gold Boxes of Europe by Kenneth A. Snowman (1990-12-01)

Personality

He was optimistic, however, that the pendulum was now swinging the other way towards respect for "anything that shows evidence of work well done", for instance the work of highly skilled craftsmen working for Fabergé, Lalique and Cartier.

Connections

Friend:

Ian Fleming