The Lost Fabergé Eggs
Jewelled miracles, scattered by a revolution.
- EXISTED
- 1885, 1917
- WHERE
- Imperial Russia
- LOST
- After the Russian Revolution of 1917
- CAUSE OF LOSS
- Confiscated and sold off; several simply disappeared
Each Easter from 1885, the House of Fabergé made for the Russian Imperial family a jewelled egg of almost unimaginable craft, enamel and gold and gemstones, each opening to reveal a hidden “surprise”: a tiny golden coronation coach, a mechanical swan, a miniature palace. Around fifty were made for the last two Tsars, the high-water mark of the jeweller’s art.
The Revolution of 1917 swept the dynasty away, and the eggs with it. The Bolsheviks seized the imperial treasures and, needing money, sold many of the eggs cheaply to foreign collectors; others were lost track of entirely in the chaos. Seven remain missing to this day. Their fate is the strange hope at the heart of this museum’s grief, for in 2014 one long-lost egg was found by chance at a bric-a-brac market, proof that not everything counted as gone truly is.
Of about fifty Imperial eggs made for the Tsars, the new Soviet state sold many abroad for hard currency, and several vanished entirely in the upheaval. Seven are still missing, though, astonishingly, one thought lost turned up at an American flea market in 2014.