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Fabergé eggs |
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Fabergé , even the mere
mention of the name conjures up visions of a regal time long
past. One only has to close their eyes and imagine the sounds
and sheer magnificence of the Czarist Imperial Court. It was
here that the exquisite art of the Fabergé jeweled eggs were
revealed for the first time. The house of Fabergé was originally situated in St.
Petersburg, Russia. |
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Throughout Alexander's reign, only one Fabergé egg was made
each year. It was presented to the Czar at Easter. He
volunteered to create a jewelry egg for Czar
Alexander III to give his wife, Marie. Fabergé kept the egg
a secret, but delighted the royal family with an ordinary
looking "egg," but with tiny surprises made of gold, enamel, and
precious gems inside. |
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When
Nicholas II ascended the throne, Fabergé began making two
eggs, one for the new Czar to give his wife, Alexandra, and the
other for the Czar's mother. Around 1885, Russian jeweler Peter
Carl Fabergé took the decoration of eggs to new heights. After the
Russian Revolution of 1917, the Fabergé collection was
dispersed and many of the eggs were later sold in the West. |
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In 1918, after
the death of the Romanovs, the
House of Fabergé was nationalized and ransacked by the
Bolsheviks. Fabergé and members of his family left Russia on
what was to be the last diplomatic train to Riga, not realizing
that they would never be able to return to their beloved Russia
again. When Fabergé saw that all was lost – all of the
members of the Imperial family on Russian soil had been murdered
– he decided that was it, his whole world had collapsed, and he
fled to Switzerland, where he died in 1920 of a broken heart. |
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Still so closely associated with the decadence of the Romanovs,
Fabergé's eggs were initially undervalued. Before his escape,
Fabergé's son Agathon had been imprisoned by the Bolsheviks and
released briefly to evaluate the jewels and gemstones
confiscated from the Imperial family. He was later jailed again
when they found it difficult to sell the stones at the prices he
had quoted. |
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Fabergé objects were very expensive. Even the least costly items,
such as the miniature pendant egg hidden inside the 1895 Hen egg,
cost 60 rubles, an amount equal to two years salary for the
average tradesman. But the original charge to the Czar for each
of the Imperial eggs was very likely well below costs. |
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They were by no means the most expensive things that the
imperial family bought from Fabergé. The first eggs cost
something like two to four thousand dollars, approximately, at
the time. Not cheap, but not expensive either. The most
expensive egg was the Winter Egg of 1913. That cost just under
25,000 rubles, or about $12,500, not vastly expensive compared
to necklaces that Fabergé had sold to the imperial family in
1894. For instance, the great necklace of pearls given by
Nicholas II to Empress Alexandra for their betrothal cost
176,000 rubles, or some $85,000 at that time. That was big money
then."
The Winter Egg brought "big money" in modern times as well. In
1949, it was sold for a mere $4,760; but in 1994, it was
acquired anonymously at public auction by an American
businessman for the record price of $5.5 million dollars.
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