Fabergé Eggs – A Romanov Easter Tradition

Fabergé Eggs – A Romanov Easter Tradition

In 2010, an American scrap-metal dealer visited an antiques stall somewhere in the United States, and purchased a golden egg sitting on a three-legged stand.

The egg was adorned with diamonds and sapphires, and it opened to reveal a clock.

Intending to sell the object to a buyer who would melt it down for its metal, the dealer purchased this egg-clock for $13,302.

However, the dealer had trouble selling it, as many potential buyers thought it was overpriced.

The dealer had valued it incorrectly – but not the way he originally thought.

In 2014, the man, who remains anonymous, discovered that his little golden object was one of the 50 exquisitely bespoke Fabergé Easter eggs created for imperial Russia’s royal Romanov family.
Its value?
An estimated $33 million!!!!

The Romanovs’ extravagant royal Easter egg tradition began with Tsar Alexander III in 1885.

Alexander was then in the fifth year of his reign, having succeeded his father, Alexander II, who had been killed by bomb-wielding assassins.

In 1885, Alexander sought an Easter gift to surprise and delight his wife Maria Feodorovna.

He turned to Peter Carl Fabergé, a master goldsmith who had taken over his father’s House of Fabergé jewellery business in 1882.

Instead of crafting a dazzling necklace or a breathtaking ring, Fabergé created something deceptively plain – a white enameled egg around two-and-a-half inches tall.

But the real treasures were to be found inside.
The egg twisted apart to reveal a golden yolk within. Inside the yolk was a golden hen sitting on golden straw.

Hidden in the hen was a tiny diamond crown that held an even tinier ruby pendant.

This astonishing creation, known as the Hen Egg, was the first of an eventual 50 Fabergé imperial eggs commissioned annually by the Romanov family’s two final tsars: Alexander III and Nicholas II.

All was shiny and beautiful in the imperial palaces, but by the early 20th century, Nicholas II was contending with many problems –
International conflicts, nationwide impoverishment, a population boom and a growing number of people eager to overthrow a tsar they saw as oppressive and out of touch.

In 1904 and 1905, Nicholas suspended his annual Fabergé egg commission.

Nicholas resumed the tradition in 1906, and had one delivered every Easter until 1917.

That year, Fabergé worked on two eggs, but before they could be presented, the Bolshevik’s February Revolution arrived and Nicholas II was forced to abdicate the throne.
His entire family was ex3cuted by Bolsheviks the following year.

So what became of the imperial eggs?
Under the orders of new leader Vladimir Lenin, the Bolsheviks packed up the eggs and other royal valuables they found at the imperial palaces, and stashed them safely at the Kremlin in Moscow.

In the 1920s and ‘30s, the Russian economy tanked and famine affected millions.
The country’s new leaders, looking to make some quick rubles, started selling the imperial eggs to international buyers.

Today, there are 10 eggs at the Kremlin Armory, nine at the Fabergé Museum in St. Petersburg, five at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and three each at the Royal Collection in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Two more are on display in Lausanne, Switzerland, two at Hillwood Estate in Washington, D.C., and two at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.
There’s a single egg in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, one in Monte Carlo, and one at the Fabergé Museum in Baden-Baden, Germany.

One is also owned by Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the former Emir of Qatar.

The fate of seven imperial eggs still remains a mystery.

The mystery surrounding the lost eggs perpetuates their legendary history of being seen only by an elite few.

Strange how seven eggs are missing, seven being the number of the Imperial family that were ex3cuted……

Nicholas
Alexandra
Olga
Tatiana
Maria
Anastasia
Alexei.

? Three Fabergé Eggs.
The Cuckoo Clock or Cockerel Egg
The Lilies of the Valley Egg
The Blue Serpent Clock Egg.
Picture credit – Tony Evans.