How Peter Carl Fabergé is the Steve Jobs of bejeweled eggs
(Read article summary)Google is celebrating the 166th birthday of Peter Carl Fabergé, whose ornate eggs made him the Steve Jobs of his day. But with eggs instead of consumer electronics.
It may seem like a stretch to compare the intricately ornamented eggs crafted by Peter Carl Fabergé to the sleekly minimalist designs of the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs, but the two men have a lot in common.
Like Jobs, Fabergé, whom Google is celebrating Wednesday with a bejeweled logo, took an idea that had already existed and made it his own. Humans have been decorating eggs for millenia – the earliest examples, uncovered in a cave in South Africa, are some 60,000 years old – but it took Fabergé to elevate the practice into an art form that will forever be associated with his name. Similarly, Jobs didn't invent the PC, the mp3 player, the smartphone, or the tablet computer, but these devices would be radically different today without his influence.
Both men were personally eccentric, particularly in their clothing choices. Once he settled on his outfit of a black mock turtleneck, Levi’s 501 jeans, and New Balance sneakers, Jobs never deviated from it. Fabergé favored tweeds, and was known for traveling without any luggage, instead opting to buy everything he needed once he arrived at his destination.
