Style: April 05, 2017

20 Style | report
A security guard watches over the rothschild Fabergé egg,
displayed at Christie’s auctioneers on october 4, 2007, in London
Where Are TheY NoW?
the violent russian revolutions of 1917 saw the end
of this extravagant tradition. In october 1917, the
Bolsheviks seized power and the tsar and his family
fled to ekaterinburg, where they were executed
the following July. With the tzars overthrown, the
Fabergé family fled russia.
The eggs were confiscated. Ten were held at the
Kremlin Armoury, another 10 are thought to have
been stolen in 1918, and many more were sold by the
Bolsheviks and scattered across the West. Inadvertently,
Starlin saved a number of the eggs by selling them at an
extremely low rate to foreign investors. others were
thought to have been melted down for their precious
metals and jewels.
Today you can find 10 of the imperial easter
eggs on display at Moscow’s Kremlin Armoury
Museum. Queen elizabeth has three eggs in her own
collection.
from time to time an egg will reappear. the most
recent of which was the third Imperial easter egg of
1887.
the Love
trophies egg
the third
fabergé Imperial
easter egg
INTrIguINg FAbergé
eggS
1887: third imperial easter egg
Discarded as a worthless item within a deceased
estate, this egg ended up in an American flea market.
It was purchased by a man who had intentions of
melting down the gold to surpass the £8000 ($14,000)
purchase price. When the scrap-metal value was too
low, he stubbonly held on to his ‘bad’ purchase. Years
later, he googled the name etched on the timepiece
inside the egg, which fortunately connected him to a
british Fabergé expert. The £20-million ($35.6-million)
goldmine that had been sitting in a humble kitchen
in the Mid West, uSA, was purchased by a private
collector. Antique dealer Wartski was given permission
to show the egg to the public in London, in April 2014.
1895: rosebud egg
The first egg given to Tsar Nicholas II’s new bride
empress Alexandra Feodorovna. The yellow-enamelled
rosebud inside was a symbol of their former home in
germany and its rose garden, in which they shared
their first easter. Later owned by an english couple,
the central panel was reportedly damaged when the
bejewelled egg was thrown across the room during an
argument.
1907: the love trophies egg
Controversy surrounded this egg for 50 years, with
experts struggling to decide when it was given, to
whom and how it made it out of russian. We now
know it was a gift from tsar nicholas II to his mother,
in 1907, and the surprise inside was a miniature of all
the imperial children. how it came to be out of russia,
however, has never been confirmed.
1914: imperial Coronation egg
A miniature replica of the coronation coach, it took
fabergé’s craftsman, georg Stein, 15 months to create.
June 1935: richly decorated and highly-ornate Fabergé eggs, pictured as part of a russian art exhibition
famous easter eggs by fabergé in St Petersburg Museum