Русский национальный музей – 1

Минералогический музей Ферсмана – 1

Частные коллекции – 4

Местонахождение неизвестно – 8

Императорские пасхальные яйца

The Coronation Egg

THE CORONATION EGG: A FABERGÉ IMPERIAL EASTER EGG PRESENTED BY EMPEROR NICHOLAS II TO HIS WIFE, EMPRESS ALEXANDRA FEODOROVNA, AT EASTER 1897, WORKMASTER MICHAEL PERCHIN, ST. PETERSBURG

Enameled translucent lime yellow over a jeweled8e sunburst ground and applied with a green gold trellis of laurel leaf pinned at the top of the egg with a circle of diamonds and with black enamel Imperial eagles at the intersections, the shields of the eagles set with diamonds and the ribbons enameled blue, the top of the egg with the Imperial monogram of the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna set with diamonds and rubies on a white enamel ground beneath a table diamond, the bottom of the egg with a calyx of finely engraved leaves centered by the blackenameled date 1897 on a white enamel ground below a table diamond within a diamond-set circular frame. The egg opens to reveal a velvet-lined compartment containing a gold, platinum, enamel and jeweled miniature coach, a replica of Catherine the Great’s coach of 1793 which was employed in the coronation procession of Nicholas and Alexandra, executed in minute detail, enameled translucent strawberry red and applied with a diamond-set gold trellis, the roof mounted with gold Imperial eagles at the corners and sides and with a diamond-set Imperial crown at the center, the doors mounted with diamond-set Imperial eagles and with rock crystal windows engraved with drapery, the interior with tiny steps which fold down when the doors are opened, and with a translucent strawberry red enameled bench and cushions before a light blue enameled drapery with gold trim, the ceiling painted with gold vine and with a light blue enamel roundel within a gold wreath, a gold hook at the center, all components of the carriage finely articulated, the compartment itself suspended from gold springs, the gold wheels with platinum tires, the inner edge of the top of the egg marked with Cyrillic initials of workmaster and pre-1899 assay mark of 56 standard for 14 karat gold, the underside of the coach also marked with Cyrillic initials of workmaster, pre-1899 assay mark of 56 standard for 14 karat gold and Fabergé in Cyrillic; the name of Wigströ m scratched on the inner surface of the shell.

The 1897 Coronation Egg is the most celebrated and best known of all of Fabergé ’s creations, the most exhibited and most published work of art by the Russian master. 2 As its name denotes, it commemorates the festivities surrounding the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna, which began with their entry into Moscow on May 9, 1896. Nicholas noted in his diary: “9 May. The first hard day for us – the day of our entrance into Moscow. By 12 an entire gang of princes had gathered, with whom we sat down to lunch. At 2.30 the procession began to move. I was riding on Norma, Mama was sitting in the first gold carriage and Alix in the second, also alone.” 3 At the head of the four-mile-long cortè ge, from the Petrovsky Palace outside the gates of Moscow to the Nicholsky Gate of the Kremlin, rode squadrons of the Imperial Guard, followed by the Cossacks of the Guard, Moscow’s nobility, then, on foot, the Court orchestra, the Imperial Hunt and court footmen. Nicholas rode on his white steed, simply dressed in a white army tunic, reigns in his left hand, right hand raised to his visor in salute. Behind Nicholas rode the Russian Grand Dukes and European nobility. Next came the widowed Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna in the massive carriage of Catherine the Great – Russian Court Protocol gave her precedence over the new Empress, a situation which was later to cause considerable friction between the two (the Dowager made good use of her right to wear the Russian Crown Jewels). Last came the young Empress dressed in dazzling white in a gilded coach drawn by eight white horses. According to the perhaps biased Princess Radziwil, the cortè ge was not a great success:
“When he made his entrance into Moscow, the golden carriages, magnificence, escort of chamberlains in gold-embroidered costumes, and soldiers in parade uniforms were the same as at his father’s coronation. But one could sense no genuine warmth in the tribute of the crowd, no enthusiasms other than that always found on such an occasion. Yes, the only time that the hurrahs of the masses seemed to come from the heart was when the Dowager Empress’ carriage appeared, while her daughter in law was met with deathly silence.” 4

On May 14, the Coronation took place in the Dormition, or Uspensky, Cathedral, a ceremony lasting four hours. Nicholas was seated on the throne of Tsar Mikhail Feodorovich inset with 870 diamonds, rubies and pearls. Alexandra Feodorovna sat on Ivan the Great’s Ivory Throne. Nicholas wore the uniform of the Preobrazhensky Guard, a heavy gold-thread mantle embroidered with black double-headed eagles and the nine-pound diamond crown of Catherine the Great, made by Jé ré mie Pauzie in 1762 (now in Diamond Fund of the Russian Federation, Moscow). Alexandra wore a silver-white court dress with a train carried by 12 attendants, a single strand of pink pearls and the small diamond crown (now in the collection of the Hillwood Museum, Washington, D.C.). Nicholas pondered the day’s events in his diary: “14 May, 1896. A great day, a triumphant day, but for Alix, Mama and me, difficult in the moral sense. I shall not forget it my whole life long.” 5

The Empress’ brother, Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse, who attended the Coronation ceremonies, described the scene vividly: “The coronation in Moscow on May 26^th 1896 was the most opulent celebration which I ever witnessed. It bordered close to the Oriental and lasted for 10 days. In Moscow the cathedral was filled with paintings on gold ground of saints and all priests were dressed in gold robes applied with embroidery and precious stones. A very deep feeling of mysticism was in all the ceremonies and you could feel the tradition of Byzance. Through the holy oil the Emperor and the Empress are now sanctified (geheiligt.) The Emperor takes the Holy Communion as a priest in the inner sanctuary, then the Emperor takes his crown off before the throne, he kneels down and prays aloud the so wonderful prayer for his people. And following the prayer for the Emperor he gets up and then is the only person standing at that moment in the whole Russian Empire. The procession to and from the cathedral leads over an elevated passage, as high as the heads of the people around, so that all, who take part in the procession, can be seen. The procession is all uniforms, gold, silver, Emperor and Empress in their gold and ermine under a gigantic canopy, all grand duchesses (Fü rstinnen) strewn with jewels. To look at all this must have been like a fantastic dream because the sun was shining an all.” 6

The Coronation Egg contains a faithful replica of the coach in which Alexandra rode. The egg’s shell, embellished with a trellis of black double-headed eagles on yellow 10eweled10e enamel ground, is a reminder of the heavy cloaks of gold thread in woven with Imperial eagles by the Moscow firm of Sapozhnikov, that were worn by the Imperial couple at the coronation ceremony in the Uspensky Cathedral, a scene perfectly rendered in Laurits Tuxen’s paintings.

Alexandra Feodorovna’s carriage was a 10ewel coach built in St. Petersburg by Johann K. Buckendahl in 1793. The original, 512 cm long and 270 cm high, is made of oak, ash, birch, lime, iron and steel and is embellished with copper, brass, bronze, silver and gold, its interior is decorated with velvet and silk, with beveled glass windows. It is suspended on four C-shaped transverse springs and sits length- and cross-wise on straps, has seats for the coachman and pages, rear steps for the footmen and folding steps attached to the floor of the carriage. The exterior is upholstered with dark red velvet, applied with sequins, artificial diamonds, tassels and golden embroidery of trelliswork, flowers and foliage. The coach is surmounted by a copper-gilt crown set with pastes (originally aquamarines). The coach was renovated in 1826, 1856, 1894 and 1896 and most recently in 1992-93 through a grant of the Ford Motor Company for a Fabergé exhibition held at the Winter Palace in 1993, when it was carried up the Ambassador’s Staircase in pieces and then reassembled to be shown alongside the Fabergé miniature replica in St. George Hall. 7

In 1952 the goldsmith responsible for the Fabergé coach, Georges Stein, was still alive. Kenneth Snowman interviewed him and recorded Stein’s remembrances in his 1953 publication. 8 Stein was aged twenty-three at the time when Fabergé hired him away from the jeweler Kortman, offering him a higher salary of five rubles a day ($2.50). His eyesight is said to have been so incredibly good that he could detect a flaw in a diamond without a loupe. The meticulous work on the coach, executed without any artificial optic aid, took fifteen months at sixteen hours a day – a total of 7, 200 hours – with many a visit to the Imperial Coach Museum. The cost to Fabergé of the coach alone would, according to Stein, have been 2, 250 rubles, exactly half of what Fabergé charged the Tsar for the egg. A pear-shaped emerald drop suspended in the coach’s interior cost an extra 1, 500 rubles; the glass case in which the coach was separately exhibited, an additional 150 roubles.

The Coronation Egg was displayed in the Empress’ apartment in the Winter Palace in a corner cabinet and is exactly described in 1909 by N. Dementiev, Inspector General of the Imperial Winter Palace, including its white velvet-lined interior which was the “ nest for the model State carriage.... The egg rests on a silver-gilt wire stand. ” 9 The surprise and its separate glass case were also minutely described, including “ a yellow diamond pendant egg (briolette)” which hung in the carriage (and which apparently had replaced the original emerald drop). “It is placed on a rectangular jadeite pediment with a silver-gilt rim and is contained in a rectangular glass case with silver-gilt edging. Silver-gilt Imperial crowns are placed at each of the four corners of the case.” 10

The egg was confiscated by the Provisional Government in 1917, listed among the treasures removed from the Anichkov Palace, dispatched to the Kremlin and finally transferred to the Sovnarkom in 1922 for sale: “
1 gold egg with diamonds and rose-cut diamonds, containing a gold carriage with a pear-shaped diamond.” 11

The egg was sold by Antikvariat to dealer Emanuel Snowman in 1927, sold by his London firm Wartski to Charles Parsons in 1934, reacquired by Wartski in 1945 and sold, together with the Lilies of the Valley Egg, to Malcolm Forbes for a total of $2, 160, 00 in 1979.

The Lilies of the Valley Egg

THE LILIES OF THE VALLEY EGG: A FABERGÉ IMPERIAL EASTER EGG PRESENTED BY EMPEROR NICHOLAS II TO HIS WIFE THE EMPRESS ALEXANDRA FEODOROVNA AT EASTER 1898, WORKMASTER MICHAEL PERCHIN, ST. PETERSBURG

The egg enameled translucent rose pink over a 11eweled11e ground and surmounted by a diamond and ruby-set Imperial crown, the egg divided into four quadrants by diamond-set borders, each quadrant with climbing gold sprays of lily of the valley, the flowers formed by diamond-petaled pearls, the finely sculpted gold leaves enameled translucent green and rising from curved legs formed of wrapped gold leaves set with diamonds ending in scroll feet topped with pearls, a pearl-set knob at the side of the egg activates a mechanism which causes the crown to rise revealing a fan of three diamond-framed portrait miniatures of Tsar Nicholas II and the children of Nicholas and Alexandra, Grand Duchesses Olga and Tatiana, each signed by the miniaturist Johannes Zehngraf, the reeded gold backs of the miniatures engraved with the date 5.IV.1898, marked on these backplates with Cyrillic initials of workmaster, Fabergé in Cyrillic and assay mark of 56 standard for 14 karat gold.

Fabergé ’s invoice lists this egg as:
“April 10. Pink enamel egg with three portraits, green enamel leaves, lilies of the valley pearls with rose-cut diamonds. St. Petersburg, May 7, 1898 6700r.” 1

The Lilies of the Valley Egg is adorned with the favorite flowers and the favorite jewels – pearls and diamonds – of the young Empress. It also contains, as its surprise, miniatures of her three favorite people in the world: her adored husband Nicholas and her two daughters, Olga (born 1895) and Tatiana (born 1897). Moreover, Fabergé designed the egg in the Tsarina’s favorite style – Art Nouveau. Doubtless this egg was also one of her favorite objects by the Russian master.

For a brief period of approximately five years, Fabergé championed the cause of Art Nouveau in Russia. The present egg of 1898 marks the initial appearance of this style in his oeuvre while the Clover Egg of 1902 (Kremlin Amory Museum, Moscow) 2 is the last dateable example in this idiom created in St. Petersburg for the Imperial family. The Russian equivalent to French Art Nouveau and German Jugendstil was Stil Moderne and Mir Iskusstva or the World of Art Movement. 3 The driving force behind Mir Iskusstva was Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929). In 1885 the art patron Savva Mamontov founded a private opera house in Moscow and an artists’ colony at Abramtsevo, where a group of artists including Ilya Repin, Vassilii Polenov and Victor Vasnetsov, together with younger artists such as Konstantin Korovin, Valentin Serov and Mikhail Vrubel, developed new ideas which stood in stark contrast to the established art of the Peredvizhniki, or Wanderers. The dynamic Diaghilev, with the aid of St. Petersburg artists such as Lé on Bakst, Alexander Benois and Evgeny Lanceray and the financial backing of Savva Mamontov and Princess Maria Tenisheva, published the group’s journal, World of Art, which appeared for six years between 1899 and 1904. A first exhibition of the group’s art took place in 1898; a second pioneering exhibition was held at the Stieglitz Museum in early 1899 with participation of such foreign artists as Bö cklin, Boldini, Degas, Liebermann, Monet and Renoir and such craftsmen as Lalique, Tiffany and Gallé. Fabergé ’s interest in this style dovetails neatly with Mir Iskusstva’ s existence.

The Lilies of the Valley Egg was displayed at the 1900 World Fair, which marked the peak of Parisian excitement over Art Nouveau. René Lalique’s stand at the fair with its bronze storefront of winged female figures engendered a furor amongst his numerous followers. He was awarded a Grand Prix and the Order of the Legion of Honor or his creations. The same jury which lauded Lalique’s work to the heavens was curiously ambivalent about Fabergé ’s Art Nouveau submissions. The floral decoration of this egg was described as “ of delicate taste ” but criticized as “too closely adhering to the egg.” The critic would have preferred “three feet instead of four, leaves not terminated by banal scrolls and that the egg should have been set with asymmetrical sprays.” 4 But then the critic also found fault with another of Fabergé masterpieces, the Lilies of the Valley Basket (now in the Matilda Geddings Gray Foundation Collection, Fine Arts Museum, New Orleans), which was viewed by him as “without artistic or decorative feeling. We have before us a photograph of nature without the artist having impressed his own style upon it.” 4

Alexandra Feodorovna’s interest in Art Nouveau is well documented. Her brother, Grand Duke Ernst Ludwig of Hesse, founded a colony of artists on the Mathildenhö he in Darmstadt, where they endeavored to create joint works of art or Gesamtkunstwerke of interior design, furniture and pottery. Inspired by this artistic climate, she collected pieces of Gallé and Tiffany glass, Roerstrand and Doulton pottery, many of which were mounted for her by Fabergé ’s specialist silversmith, Julius Rappoport. 5 These works stood on cornices and mantelpieces in her salons at the Alexander Palace, interspersed with Victorian clutter of sentimental character.

The present egg was kept by the Empress in her private apartment in the Winter Palace on the first shelf from the top of a corner cabinet and is described in detail by N. Dementiev, Inspector of Premises of the Imperial Winter Palace, in 1909, including its mechanism (“At the side of the egg there is a button with a single pearl which, when pressed causes the crown to rise and disclose three miniature medallions framed in rose-cut diamonds”). 6

The Lilies of Valley Egg is clearly visible in a pyramidal showcase, together with other eggs from the collection of Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, at the 1902 von Dervis mansion exhibition (p. 186). It is also mentioned in a description of the exhibition, albeit confused with the Lilies of Valley Basket, which stood next to it: “The Empress Alexandra Feodorovna’s collection contains an egg containing a bouquet of lilies of the valley surrounded by moss: the flowers are made of pearls, the leaves of nephrite, and the moss of finest gold.” 7

The Lilies of the Valley Egg was one of nine eggs sold by Antikvariat to Emanuel Snowman of Wartski around 1927. Like the Coronation Egg, it too was then sold to Charles Parson in 1934 and bought back by Wartski. It was then sold by Wartski to Mr. Hirst and bought back yet again. In 1979 Kenneth Snowman of Wartski sold the egg to Malcolm Forbes together with the Coronation Egg for a total of $2, 160, 000.

The Orange Tree (Bay Tree) Egg