The Fabergé Connection

My great-grandfather met Carl Fabergé on a train travelling from Moscow to Paris in 1886, when he had been living in Russia for about eight years. This story about the circumstances in which Allan Bowe and Carl Fabergé became partners was a familiar tale in my family, and a convincing one, although the details may not have been exactly as I used to imagine them. I never did find out what it was about Allan Bowe that made such a big impression, but impressed Fabergé must have been, for within a short time of that first meeting he offered Allan a partnership in the well-established--though not yet famous--House of Fabergé.