For Czar Alexander III, the Faberge Eggs were a token of love and affection, presented to his wife each Easter. At his death, son Nicolas II continued the tradition, bestowing eye-popping artistry on his wife and mother. From 1885 to 1917, these jeweled wonders were celebrated for their intricate design and a surprise – a giant pearl or diamonds – inside.
For the art world, these over-the-top creations symbolized the last remnants of imperial rule. All 50 eggs, handcrafted by the Faberge workshop in Saint Petersburg, reveal the court’s decadence. The Russian Revolution ended the Romanov’s reign – but the quest for Faberge Eggs had just begun.
Toby Faber (of publishing house Faber and Faber) spins an exciting tale in “Faberge’s Eggs,” with political figures like Rasputin as well as collectors from Queen Mary to Marjorie Merriweather Post.
The Eggs, given their scarcity and provenance, represented the stark contrast between the czars and their subjects. According to Faber, “they could only have been commissioned for a court disconnected from the country it was meant to govern.”
The first, the Hen Egg of 1885, contained a gold interior with a diamond miniature of the imperial crown, concealing a ruby pendant. In 1892, the Diamond Trellis Egg, with a lattice of rose-cut diamonds surrounding its jade shell, secreted an ivory elephant. Each egg contained a personal detail, such as miniature portraits of the royal children, to please the czarinas. “They provide a magnificent perspective on the lives and preoccupations of Russia’s last czars,” says Faber, “the ultimate symbols of czarist wealth and extravagance.”
But life beyond the palaces was grim.
When famine struck in 1895, 36 million faced starvation; the czar’s incompetence in dealing with the crisis set the stage for anarchy. But life was good for Carl Faberge, a craftsman who produced silverware and object d’art for the emerging middle-class, who was appointed “appraiser of the imperial cabinet” in 1890. Nicolas, who ascended the thrown in 1894, continued his father’s autocratic rule and ignored calls for reform, despite bungling military command during World War I. Though revolution was in the air, Faberge – and his fabulous Eggs – flourished.
(Not everyone was impressed. Novelist Vladimir Nabokov called them “emblems of grotesque garishness.”)
The Communist revolution brought it all to an end. Once industry was nationalized and looting became government policy, the grand Faberge establishment was ruined. Deemed “parasites” by the Soviets, “one of the greatest series of sustained creativity of craftsmanship,” laments Faber, was over.
What followed was chaos. White Russians fled to Paris, liquidating their holdings. The czar’s treasures were sold abroad, often by US businessman Armand Hammer, who was nothing more than Stalin’s emissary, notes Faber. Hammer took a small commission on goods, sold at department stores during the Depression, then kicked back money to the Kremlin.
Prices fluctuated in the ensuing decades as the Eggs went in and out of favor. One problem was their buyers; King Farouk of Egypt was rich but déclassé. The eggs needed respectability to send prices soaring. Enter Malcolm Forbes, who proudly owned nine and loved to show them off. “When you viewed his Faberge collection,” said William F. Buckley, Jr., “you were doing him a favor.”
It was the stewardship of Forbes and others that made the Eggs popular again, and made a new generation of Russian elite eager to capitalize on old opulence.
The “happy vulgarity,” as Faber describes the czarist period, has returned. In January 2004, when the Forbes family sold their Eggs to Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, he would only say he’d paid “more than $90 million” to get the treasures back to the Motherland.
Faberge’s Eggs
The Extraordinary Story of the Masterpieces That Outlived an Empire
by Toby Faber
Random House