Alexandre Ivanov: A Passion for Fabergé

"Making money from visitors' admission tickets is not the point of my exhibitions. In any case, I don't need the money," says Alexandre Ivanov. And yet the millionaire, who collects and is a well-known expert on the works of Carl Fabergé (1846-1920), was not "born in a shirt", as the Russians say – meaning that he didn't have an easy start. His father died when he was two, and he was brought up in Ostrov by a mother who was a house painter. Law studies at university honed the innate business sense of the man who later, in 1993, would open the country's first private museum in Moscow (the Russian National museum), and found a second dedicated to Fabergé in 2009 in Baden-Baden, Germany. We talk to a businessman who adores art history and has written several books. Why this passion for Fabergé, and what does he represent for you? Anyone who has ever held a Fabergé egg in their hands is bitten for life.  This great Russian master was truly the only creator of his kind, because his style remains inimitable. He never spawned an artistic movement whose…