Beautiful Objects of a Doomed Empire: The Story of Faberge's Eggs

The San Francisco exhibit called "Artistic Luxury," at the Palace of the Legion of Honor (done in conjunction with the Cleveland Museum of Art), included objets d'art from Fabergé, Tiffany and Lalique, and raised a number of questions in my mind about Fabergé's eggs. There were just two or three Fabergé eggs in the exhibit and I remembered that Malcolm Forbes had collected them. The eggs were nearly all created for the Romanovs, the last of the Tsars. What else made them so special? How many eggs were there? What happened to them during and after the Russian revelolution? Where is each one of them today?

I found the answers to those questions in a wonderful book by Tony Faber called Fabergé's Eggs; The Extraordinary Story of the Masterpieces That Outlived an Empire. If tales of international mystery, murder, revolution, and gorgeous jewels interest you, you'll very much enjoy this book.

The "Rose Trellis Egg," from 1907, contained a "surprise" inside of a diamond chain and a miniature of the Tsar's son Alexis. The "surprise" is missing from the egg and its whereabouts are not known.

The decorated Easter eggs we exchange each spring have their origins in early Christian tradition. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, which split from the Roman Catholic Church some time after the fall of Rome, Easter gradually became a more important holiday than Christmas. And by the time of the Romanov tsars, Easter greetings were exhanged among Christians as part of the tradition. "Christ is risen," said the first person to a loved one, and the answer came back: "He is risen indeed." In Russia people exchanged these greetings all day Easter Sunday and often all during the following week.

Russians had been exchanging eggs at Easter for centuries: the egg was a pagan symbol of spring and was transformed into a Christian symbol of renewal and the Resurrection. The Russian Tsars and the Russian upper classes gave jeweled eggs to one another--as pins, as charms for charm bracelets, watch fobs and as jeweled pieces for necklaces. But it wasn't until 1885, that Tsar Alexander III had jeweler Carl Fabergé design a large jeweled egg for his wife, Tsarina Marie Fedorovna. That gift began a tradition and spread the fame of Carl Fabergé throughout Europe. (Today, in fact, Buckingham Palace has one of the best collections of Fabergé jewels and objets in the world.) From 1885 until 1918, jeweler Fabergé created one jeweled royal egg each year. Each one was a gift from the Tsar to his wife and each one contained a "surprise" inside. The tradition ended only with the murders of Tsar Nicholas and his family.

Fabergé was considered an enemy of the people by the communists, presumably for producing objects of luxury while the Russian people starved, and he fled to Switzerland. Most of his famous treasures remained behind him in Russia. A few were smuggled out by members of the royal family and some were later sold in Paris. A few others remained behind in the Russian armory. Some disappeared forever.

Two Americans were instrumental in the preservation of many of the eggs. The first was Armand Hammer, of Occidental Petroleum. He spent a great deal of his time in Russia after the revolution, and his relationship with the Soviets remains murky to this day. Whatever the relationship, he was allowed to purchase some of the eggs and sell them in the United State. The second American is Malcolm Forbes. He turned the phrase "Capitalist Tool" from a curse into a popular slogan for his magazine. It was Forbes who personally ensured the eggs had a lasting place in history, by paying huge prices for them when they came up for auction, putting together the best collection of them since the time of the Romanovs.

The Tsars exchanged these treasures at a critical time in Russian history, ignoring the desperation of the people they ruled. It was this kind of arrogance that led directly to the revolution. Thus, the Romanovs paid a terrible price for their bad governance and extravagance. All the people of Russia paid a price as well, as citizens of the Soviet Union--as it became--were then forced to spend six decades living under the terror of the Soviet dictators. Luxuries like jeweled eggs had no place in that new order.

But it all adds to the tale. How jeweled Easter eggs were involved in a revolution. And how they traveled an amazing journey from the Tsars to the hands of collectors in the century that followed.

Fabergé's Eggs; The Extraordinary Story of the Masterpieces That Outlived an Empire
by Tony Faber
Random House, New York, NY
2008

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"Artistic Luxury" at S.F. Museum

A necklace of green glass frogs and jewels by early twentieth century designer René Lalique.

The artistic opulence of turn-of-the-twentieth century luxury is celebrated in a new exhibit at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, and if you love beautiful things it is the show for you. The exhibit is titled: Artistic Luxury: Fabergé, Tiffany, Lalique and runs through May 31 in the City By the Bay.

The museum offers free admission on the first Tuesday of each month, so I chose a Tuesday to head up to San Francisco from my home on the peninsula just 46 miles away. San Francisco is almost always colder, foggier and windier than the Santa Clara Valley so, since it was pouring sheets of rain in Los Altos, I expected the worst in the City. Well, anyway, I told myself. The museum is, after all, indoors.

But as I cruised along the most beautiful highway in the U.S., Interstate 280, up against the foothills of the Coast Range, the sheets of rain let up at about San Mateo and it was clear sailing into San Francisco. The Legion of Honor museum is located in a corner of the City where I haven't often traveled. It is just on the edge of the old Presidio, on a hill overlooking the Bay. You have to be careful or you'll end up going over Golden Gate Bridge if you miss your turn. New-old-comer that I am I almost did just that, but at the last minute took the last exit and found myself at Fort Point, just about where Kim Novak was rescued by Jimmy Stewart when she jumped into the Bay in Vertigo. Like a good tourist I got out and took a picture, and you just can't take a bad picture from that location.

There it was, posing for me at the edge of the Presidio.

From there, all I had to do was wind my way through the Presidio to the edge of Lincoln Park and that wasn't difficult. I parked at the foot of the hill and walked the quarter mile up to the museum. It was good exercise after sitting in the car for fifty minutes and when you get to the top the view is worth the walk.

Even on a grey day the Legion of Honor was blooming with color.

There were so many beautiful objects in the show--jewelry, hair combs, vases, lamps, brooches, stomachers (that's a bibelot dripping in diamonds you wear over the front of your dress), Fabergé eggs, and Tiffany lamps, it was almost more than you could take in. Many of the Fabergé items, all covered in gems and gold from cigarette cases to eggs to jewelry to tea sets, had been designed for the ill-fated Romanaov family, the last of the Tsars. Looking at all that luxury and knowing how it was bought while their subjects suffered in poverty was a little sad. Many of the items were confiscated by the Soviets after they executed Tsar Nicolas, Tsarina Alexandria (the granddaughter of Queen Victoria) and their entire family. But they certainly enjoyed their exquisite jewels while they reigned.

Fabergé necklace of Siberian amethysts.

The Tiffany and Lalique objects had a somewhat more cheerful history, purchased in the West for the wealthy sons and daughters of successful capitalists, God-bless-'em, in Europe and America.

I was familiar with the designs of Louis Comfort Tiffany because Winter Park, Florida where I lived for twenty years, is home to the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art with the largest collection of Tiffany objects in the world. The Morse recently re-designed its jewelry exhibit and as my friend and museum executive Catherine Hinman told me, "We don't have anything in there that we would loan." So, if you enjoy the San Francisco show you have another treat on your hands the next time you visit Central Florida. (See more on their web site at http://www.morsemuseum.org/).

A Louis Comfort Tiffany brooch in the San Franciso exhibit.

But the Getty family loaned the Legion of Honor show several important Tiffany lamps and Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Albert of Monaco also sent over a few priceless knickknacks from their own collections. And, oh yes, Joan and Melissa Rivers sent over a few things. But they didn't say which ones, so one could only speculate.

At right: one of Fabergé's rare be-jeweled Easter eggs.This one was given by Tsar Nicholas II to the Tsarina in 1907.

Since it was free day the show was very crowded, especially crowded with French-speaking people who didn't budge so others could see around them. I stayed as long as my brain would allow me to download all this beauty and then I walked to the coat check for my umbrella (not allowed inside the show.) Adjacent to the coat check was a little cabinet with beautiful jewelry from Greece and Rome, circa 200-500 BC. Each of the pieces could easily compare with the lovely jewels of the Belle Epoch exhibit down the hall. Just goes to show you--people have been enjoying beautiful things since the dawn of time.

Outside, the rain had started again, and the mist made the city look like the land of Sam Spade and the Maltese Falcon. I stopped to take a picture of the Bay, with Alcatraz cold and lonely in the distance.



And then I did what any good tourist would do: I headed over to Fisherman's Wharf to buy a couple of Dungeness crabs and some sourdough bread for dinner. The sun came out again and the sad fate of the Romanovs faded from my mind. The real jewel of this adventure had been San Francisco herself.

They were awfully good, and since they are only found on the West coast, I at least know they were caught somewhere not farther away than say, Alaska.

Is it the prettiest bridge in the world? It certainly can be found on a lot of charm bracelets.

All of the photos of the "Artistic Luxury" exhibit are the property of the Cleveland Museum of Art in conjunction with the Legion of Honor in San Francisco and Yale University Press. They are used here under the Fair Use provisions of the law, in this news article only, and should not be reproduced for commercial use.

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