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Source Description
This bell push sat on a dressing table in a wealthy household to summon a servant during the Gilded Age around 1900. Life "below stairs" wasn't as easy as movies and television have portrayed it. Servants could be summoned at all hours of the day and night, interrupting their work, and causing disruption at the whim of the wealthy owners or their guests. The House of Fabergé became the most celebrated Russian supplier of such luxury goods as servant bell pushes. As court jeweler to the Russian imperial family, the Fabergé firm created jewels and luxurious accessories both for the tsar and the Russian state as well as other European royalty and aristocrats.
Scholar Source Context
Document identity
localId
142768
label
Bell Push
core
obj
dtoType
object
pageCount
1
Source metadata
id
142768
contentType
object
title
Bell Push
description
This bell push sat on a dressing table in a wealthy household to summon a servant during the Gilded Age around 1900. Life "below stairs" wasn't as easy as movies and television have portrayed it. Servants could be summoned at all hours of the day and night, interrupting their work, and causing disruption at the whim of the wealthy owners or their guests. The House of Fabergé became the most celebrated Russian supplier of such luxury goods as servant bell pushes. As court jeweler to the Russian imperial family, the Fabergé firm created jewels and luxurious accessories both for the tsar and the Russian state as well as other European royalty and aristocrats.
date
c. 1895–1915
rights
CC0
rightsUri
CC0
language
en
wikidata
Q60760670
creators
55332
genreSpecific
Miscellaneous
imageCount
1
source
import
dimensionsRaw
Diameter: 3.5 x 5.8 cm (1 3/8 x 2 5/16 in.)
cul
Russia, St. Petersburg
accession
1966.472
Source extras
tec
silver gilt, enamel, bowenite, cabochon sapphire
tombstone
Bell Push, c. 1895–1915. House of Fabergé (Russian, 1842–1918). Silver gilt, enamel, bowenite, cabochon sapphire; diameter: 3.5 x 5.8 cm (1 3/8 x 2 5/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, The India Early Minshall Collection, 1966.472
collection
Decorative Arts
inscriptions
inscription
88; Fabergé (in Cyrillic); another illegible mark.
didYouKnow
The advent of electricity in the 1880s made systems of buttons and bell pushes to call servants more efficient than the old lever and pully system within the wall that often broke with a vigorous tug.
citations
citation
Hawley, Henry H. <em>Fabergé and His Contemporaries: The India Early Minshall Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art.</em> Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1967.
page_number
Mentioned and reproduced: pp. 82-3, cat. 40
creditline
The India Early Minshall Collection
updatedAt
2026-05-29 07:20:14.320000
sourceId
142768
dept
Decorative Art and Design
coll
Decorative Arts
med
silver gilt, enamel, bowenite, cabochon sapphire
creatorTags
gender unknown
thumbnail_url
image_url
Single page context
seq
1
pageIndex
0
type
photo
mediaId
405a1c05fb595891