This book is a result of many years of research, collecting documents and illustrations of big group of people. There are some authors among them who died as early as in the beginning of 20th century. Several specialists lived and worked the same time as Karl Faberge, but mostly all the authors (several dozen of them) are our contemporaries. They used the main ideas of the prominent jeweler Karl Faberge and developed them in the end of the 20th beginning of 21st century. Their texts altogether form the biggest part of the book.

Small size art pieces of stone-cutting actually were not researched well by contemporary specialists. We decided to give chance to Russian stone carvers to tell themselves about their achievements and their work. As a result we got really interesting and important materials. They were written in very different styles and reflect the way of thinking of every participant of the project. We almost didn't edit these texts to allow readers to "hear" personal "voice" of the authors. This book could be considered as a collective monograph, collected articles on the same theme - Faberge items as the source of creative work for other generations of artists. Autobiography of every specialist was illustrated according their own choice. There are near 2500 photographs in the book.

Authors-compilers of the book tried to comment these illustrations as full as possible. But the lack of information especially is clear in comments to Faberge works. Many of his hardstone figures are in private collections and names of the collectors are not known. Some of such figures in different publications have different descriptions.

This book will be useful not only to specialists of Russian jeweler's art but also to historians of art and people who are interested in art of Faberge in all the World.