Alexander Tillander
(1837 - 1918)
Alexander Tillander was born in 1837 to a family of poor farmers near Helsinki. At the young age of 11, Tillander was sent by his parents to live with a brother in St. Petersburg. There he was to go into an apprenticeship
with a barber to learn a trade.
Tillander was not interested in barbering and went back to Helsinki and took another apprenticeship, this time, with the Finnish master goldsmith, Frederik Adolf Holstenius with whom he stayed for the next seven years, until he became journeyman.
Tillander returned to St. Petersburg and worked as a journeyman for the German master Carl Becks, maker of Imperial orders and decorations. In 1860, Alexander Tillander ventured on his own, and opened a small shop. At the beginning he produced simple gold bangles which were very fashionable at the time and easy to sell. He worked long hours but in his free time he managed to teach himself how to read and write.
Tillander’s business slowly expanded and he began taking apprentices and even a journeyman. Tillander concentrated in fashionable and simple items that were well designed and carefully made, modestly priced and appealing to the public at large. Tillander made bangles from gold tube set with pearls or Russian gems, rings, brooches with matching earrings, cufflinks and studs. He produced bar-shaped brooches set with pearl-studded anchors symbolizing Peter the Great’s naval city. He also made lily-of-the-valley sprays and even a fleur-de-lis set
Alexander Tillander married a Finnish girl, (Mathilda Ingman) with whom he had a son, Alexander Theodor in 1870. In 1874, Tillander traveled to Paris to The Exposition Universelle which was the most important venue for new ideas from European jewelers. After the Exhibition he produced replicas of Scythian jewelry which featured tubular gold bangles and bar brooches with snake heads and bead terminals and with filigree or granulation finish. During the 1880s, Tillander’s workmanship was recognized with the award of silver medals at the St. Petersburg and Ekaterinburg arts and crafts shows.
Tillander began being commissioned to produce new items such as, commemorative badges in gold and silver and decorated with enamel for various associations and societies. He also produced eggs emulating those made famous by Fabergé, decorative objects in gold, silver and hardstone which became popular at that time, such as photograph frames. Today an enamel silver frame from Tillander’s in the Louis XV style is on display at the State Historical Museum in Moscow and another is in the Collection of the Baron Tyssen-Bornemisza in Lugano, both have a wavy-patterned guilloche enamel in vivid scarlet so characteristic of Alexander Tillander’s palette.
Like Fabergé, Tillander favored working with Siberian nephrite often gold mounted and set with gems. In 1887, Tillander’s son Alexander Theodor came into an apprenticeship with his father, fresh out of the German school he had been attending. Alexander Theodor had taken a three year vacation and while in Paris had spent some time with Smets & Fournier, then in London with Gugenheim and White and finally in Dresden with Kämpffs. In 1891 returned to St. Petersburg as a representative of L. Coulard, the Paris manufacturer of diamond jewelry.
When Alexander Theodor joined his father’s company he introduced two new profitable lines of business: an agency for the export of demantoid garnets from the Urals so popular in Russia and late Victorian England and a commission that traded in privately owned second-hand pieces of jewelry and objects of art. By the turn of the century, Tillander’s son had absolute control of Tillander’s business. Among Tillander’s customers in 1902: the Grand Duke Vladimir and Alexis, the Grand Duchess Marie Pavlovna, and the Grand Dukes Andere and Boris.
In 1899, Alexander Theodor like his father married a Finnish girl, Edith Galléu, with whom he had a son Leo in 1899 and later during the 1st decade of the century had two more sons Herbert and Viktor. In 1905, during the outbreak of the first Russian revolution, it was business as usual at Tillander’s according to their annual report, they were very profitable. Sales of demantoid garnets to Boucheron in Paris and London doubled, and more than a hundred miniature eggs were made.
After the aborted Russian revolution, Alexander Theodor fulfilled a number of commissions: a silver writing set for the Ministry of Roads and Waterways, a monument, and two magnificent diamond colliers de chien. From 1907 Alexander Tillander had the patronage of Marie Feodorovna and from 1909, that of the Tsar and Tsarina, the Tsar’s sister the Grand Duchess Olga as well as members of the cabinet, bankers, and other wealthy patrons.
During the celebration of the tercentenary of the Romanoff dynasty in 1913, The House of Tillander received a number of commissions from members of the Imperial family and cabinet. Small luxurious pieces in gold, presentation brooches, pendants, bracelets, cufflinks and tie-pins were created.
Despite the instability of the times, due to the impending World War I, in 1916, The House of Tillander was striving. In 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution put an end to Tillander’s business, and in September of that year the business closed down. Alexander Tillander (father) died in 1918 at the age of eighty-one in St. Petersburg. In 1921, after the War, Alexander Tillander Jewelers was re-established in Helsinki and continued to maintain the continuation of the St. Petersburg image.
From 1923 to 1957, Tillander’s head designer was Oskar Phil (son of Faberge’s Moscow master). Phil, continued with the St. Petersburg style of design and technique. Oskar Phil favored the simple and beautiful gems of his two native lands Russian and Finland. From 1952 on, Oskar Phil taught a new generation of designers including Lotta-Orkomies who found inspiration in Viking and archeological finds which were a great success.
