The Delicate Art of the Faberge Egg

Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum is currently holding an exhibition of 160 Fabergé eggs and other Fabergé objects loaned to them by the Kremlin from Russia. Peter Karl Fabergé was the court jeweler for the Russian tsars starting in 1885 until the monarchy was toppled in 1917 and the entire family was subsequently shot. Today we're doing a different type of happier shooting involving looking at contemporary Fabergé pieces and their links to history. One of the greatest summaries that I've ever heard of the collection of 50 imperial-made Fabergé eggs is that they essentially tell the story in 50 eggs of the lives and the loves of the imperial Romanov family. So if we look at the Trans-Siberian egg, which was the gift in 1900, a remarkable piece of work with a model of the train built on the inside to commemorate the opening of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, one sees incredible workmanship, the use of a great deal of enamel, and that was typical of the way in which Peter Karl Fabergé captured the happenings in Russia at that time. Fabergé used his sense of storytelling to make those commemorative pieces, but he also used his craftsmanship to forge more abstract artistic works like this one that has quite an interesting story behind it. This is the remarkable Nymphia bracelet, 4,500 gemstones, yours for $4.3 million. And whilst it might look very different to the pieces made pre-1917, there is in fact a very important link, and that is the water lilies that are portrayed by the gemstones, in this case inspired by Monet's water lilies. In addition to being famous for his iconic Easter eggs and making pendants and other pieces of jewelry for women, Fabergé used a detailed enamel technique to make practical objects like cigarette cases and snuff boxes for men, including a snuff box that sold at Christie's in 2010 for $1.5 million. The quintessential Fabergé techniques involve guilloche and enamel. Guilloche is the art of doing very fine engine turning or engraving on metal, very difficult on round surfaces, and then applying hot enamel layer upon layer of glass, which gets polished, to give the object a totally translucent effect. Very difficult to achieve, as it was pre-1917. That is also something that we do very well today.