For nearly two centuries, mystery and intrigue has surrounded the legendary Fabergé. This year, as a new decade dawns, we welcome you on a voyage of discovery with our latest film: ‘The Journey of a Fabergé Egg’. Opening the doors of our discreet workshops nestled in the Black Forest, watch our Palais Tsarskoye Selo Turquoise Locket with Heart Surprise come to life at the hands of true artisans. The workshops are overseen by our appointed workmaster Dr Marcus Mohr – fourth generation of Victor Mayer, a 130-year-old family business well versed in the art of guilloché and enamelling.
Top 10 | Beautiful and Expensive Imperial Egg of Russia from the House of Faberge
In 2010, an American scrap-metal dealer visited an antique 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 component metals, the dealer purchased this egg-clock for $13,302. He then had trouble selling it, as potential buyers deemed it 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 objet d’art 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 Czar 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, who had spent her early years as a Danish princess before leaving Copenhagen to marry him and become a Russian empress. He turned to Peter Carl Fabergé, a master goldsmith who had taken over his father’s House of Fabergé jewelry business in 1882.