Kenneth Snowman

Abraham Kenneth Snowman CBE FSA (26 July 1919 – 9 July 2002) was a British jeweller, painter and chairman of Wartski. He was made a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1994, and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1997.

Kenneth Snowman was born in Hampstead, London, one of three children of the jeweller Emanuel Snowman and his wife Harriet Wartski, daughter of Morris Wartski, the founder of the Wartski art and antiques firm. He was educated at University College School, Hampstead. Kenneth's father made regular trips to the Soviet Union, acquiring a total of nine Fabergé eggs between 1925 and 1938, which Kenneth played with as a child. He then studied at Saint Martin's School of Art and the Byam Shaw School of Art.

Snowman painted throughout his life, exhibiting at the Royal Academy, the Paris Salon and the Leicester galleries. In September 1999, there was a retrospective exhibition of his work in Cork Street, London, at the dealers Browse and Darby. The painter Peter Greenham was a lifelong friend.

Snowman was highly critical of trends in modern art towards conceptualism and away from figurative art. In his 1993 chapter in Fabergé: Imperial Jeweller he railed against "fraudulent jumbles of brushstrokes and meaningless heaps of rubbish left on the gallery floor to be admired by the simple minded". He was optimistic, however, that the pendulum was now swinging the other way towards respect for "anything that shows evidence of work well done", for instance the work of highly skilled craftsmen working for Fabergé, Lalique and Cartier. Snowman acknowledged, however, that the work of Fabergé, for instance, could seem over-ornate and was not always to the modern taste. He made no comment regarding the cost of such items.

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