Fabergé egg
The imperial Easter eggs of gold and enamel, with a surprise inside.
In 1885 Tsar Alexander III ordered an Easter egg for his wife Maria Feodorovna. The first, the Hen Egg, looked plain but contained a gold hen, a crown and a small pendant.
Fabergé made about fifty imperial eggs up to 1916. The workshops also made smaller eggs, animals and objects in hardstone, which have been forged in great numbers.
Materials: Gold, enamel, precious stones
Manufacture: Made in Fabergé’s workshops in St Petersburg, under workmasters such as Michael Perchin and Henrik Wigström.
Guilloché enamel – enamel over an engine-turned pattern.
An egg that opens to reveal a surprise.
The workmaster’s initials and Russian gold marks.
Guilloché under translucent enamel, often in several layers, gold mounts set with small diamonds, and marks bearing Fabergé’s name or the initials of the workmaster, for example Mikhail Perkhin or Henrik Wigström.
Among the best known are the Coronation Egg (1897), which contains a miniature of the coronation coach, the Lily of the Valley Egg (1898) and the Trans-Siberian Railway Egg (1900), with a small train in gold and platinum.
Several of the imperial eggs are in the Kremlin Armoury in Moscow. Nine were bought in 2004 from the Forbes collection and are displayed in the Fabergé Museum in St Petersburg. Smaller pieces from the workshops are often forged, and the marks must be examined carefully.