Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Fabergé Eggs

Starting point is 00:00:00 In 1885, the Russian Tsar Alexander III commissioned an Easter gift for his wife. It was a rather unusual gift. He asked one of the finest goldsmiths in the country to create a jeweled egg. However, it wasn't just to be an expensive bobble. Inside the egg, there was another exquisite surprise. And this began a tradition that would last over 30 years and resulted in some of the finest and most valuable decorative works of art in the world. Learn more about Faberjé eggs, their creation and the stories behind them on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night.

Starting point is 00:01:02 And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from every day. NPR. If you weren't familiar with Faberge eggs, I encourage you to look at images of some of the eggs online. Of the 69 eggs that were believed to have been created, it's estimated that about 43 survived today. Each egg is a unique, exquisite, expertly crafted work of art. The story of how and why these eggs were created doesn't actually begin in Russia. It begins in France. The Faberge family, as you might suspect from the name, isn't Russia. In fact, their name wasn't even Faberget.

Starting point is 00:01:47 The original name in the family was Favri. They were French Protestant Huguenots in a very Catholic country. In 1685, King Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nant, which had granted religious tolerance to Protestants. This revocation triggered a wave of persecution, forcing hundreds of thousands of Huguenots to flee the country to avoid forced conversion, imprisonment, or death. Among the immigrants were members of the Faberxes,

Starting point is 00:02:13 family, who left France and eventually settled in the Baltic region, then under Swedish control. Over the generations, the family moved eastward into the Russian Empire, establishing itself in what is now Estonia. As they moved, they gradually changed their family name. Favri became Fabri and eventually became Favarge, spelt the same, but without the accent on the last E. By the early 19th century, Gustavévébrez had relocated to St. Petersburg, the imperial capital of Russia, where he trained as a goldsmith in the German tradition making gold boxes. In 1842, he ended his apprenticeship and opened his own goldsmithing and jewelry business. He named his business, Fabergerge, with a diacritical mark over the E to make it appear more French.

Starting point is 00:03:03 And he also changed the family name one last time. This was a strategic decision on his part because at the time the Russian royal family and members of the nobility were infatuated with all things French, to the extent that it became the language used at court. Russian aristocrats associated French goods with luxury and quality. Now fast forward a little over 40 years to 1885. The House of Faberger was successful and had been taken over by Gustav's son, Peter Carl Faberger. That year, Tsar Alexander III commissioned Faberge to create an Easter gift for his wife, the Empress Maria Fyodorovna. The Tsar wasn't interested in just buying a pretty piece of jewelry from his shop.

Starting point is 00:03:51 In the Russian Orthodox tradition, Easter holds profound religious significance, and the exchange of eggs symbolizes rebirth and renewal. Drawing on that tradition of exchanging decorated eggs during Easter and inspired by a jeweled egg owned by the Empress's day, family, the Tsar wanted a gift that would be both sentimental and extraordinary. The Tsar didn't just want an egg. He wanted the egg to also contain a surprise for the Tsarina. The resulting creation was deceptively simple in appearance. It was a white enamel egg that opened to reveal a golden yoke, which in turn held a gold hen and a miniature replica

Starting point is 00:04:31 of the Russian imperial crown. This first Faberger egg has been called the first hen egg, and it's currently on display at the Fabergerger Museum in St. Petersburg. The Empress was so delighted with the gift that Alexander III appointed Faberge as the official court jeweler. Moreover, he placed a standing order with the house of Faberge requiring them to create an egg for the Tsar every year. The only requirements were that each egg must be unique and contain a surprise. This gave Faberge extraordinary creative of freedom while ensuring that each creation would be unlike any other. And it should be noted that Peter Carl Faberjé probably didn't actually work on the egg or any of

Starting point is 00:05:18 the future eggs himself. The first eggs were likely created by a Finnish jeweler by the name of Eric August Colin, who was an employee of his. What Peter Carl realized is that he wasn't just making fine jeweled items for the czar. He was crafting symbols of imperial power, artistic achievement and personal devotion. These would be signature items that would not just gain him favor with the Tsar, but would establish a reputation for him and his company throughout the Russian nobility and the rest of Europe. When Alexander III died in 1994, his son Nicholas II continued the tradition, but with

Starting point is 00:05:57 a significant expansion. The new Tsar commissioned two eggs each year, one for his mother, the Dowager Empress Maria Fyodorovna, and one for his wife. wife, Empress Alexandra, Fyodorovna. This meant that from 1895, until the revolution in 1917, Faberge's workshop was creating these masterpieces at an unprecedented pace. The creation of each egg was an extraordinarily complex process that could take an entire year. Faberge employed master craftsmen who specialized in different aspects of the work. Some were experts in enameling, others in goldsmithing, and still others in gem cutting and setting.

Starting point is 00:06:36 The workshop operated more like a Renaissance artist studio, with Faberje himself serving as the creative director, with skilled artisans executing his vision. Each egg required hundreds of hours of meticulous work, incorporating techniques that had been refined over the course of centuries. The eggs themselves varied dramatically in style and concept. Some celebrated military victories like the Trans-Siberian Railway Egg, which contained a working model of the famous train. Others marked personal milestones such as the coronation egg, which commemorated Nicholas

Starting point is 00:07:11 the 2nd's coronation and contained a miniature replica of the Imperial Coach. The craftsmen incorporated precious metals, gemstones, enamel, and even more exotic materials like Bowenite and Nephite Jade. What made these objects truly remarkable wasn't just their material value, although that was considerable. Each egg was a miniature masterpiece of engineering and artistry. The mechanisms that opened the surprises were often as complex as fine clockwork. The Imperial Coronation Egg, for example, contains a mechanism that allows the miniature coach to be wound up and actually driven across a surface, complete with moving wheels

Starting point is 00:07:51 and swaying suspension. The total number of Imperial Easter eggs created by Faberger for the Tsars is definitively established at 50. This count spans from 1885 to 1916. And it's worth noting that while these 50 imperial eggs are the most famous, Faberge also created eggs for other wealthy clients, including the Kelch family. The total number of all eggs made by Faberge is believed to have been 69. The Russian Revolution of 1917 brought an abrupt end to the Romanov dynasty and the production

Starting point is 00:08:28 of imperial eggs. The Bolsheviks nationalized the Faberger workshop, because every communist country needs a high-end jewelry store. And many of the eggs were confiscated and stored in the Kremlin armory. Carl Peter Faberjé fled to Riga Latvia, where he found himself in the middle of a war between Latvia and the Soviet Union, which caused him to flee again to Germany and eventually Switzerland, where he died in 1920. His son's Agathon and Alexander were imprisoned by the Soviets. His wife and Eugene managed to cross into Finland in the middle of the night. Agathon and Alexander both eventually escaped from prison.

Starting point is 00:09:06 Alexander Nugène eventually opened a jewelry store in Paris. I should note that the Faberjeie Fragrance and Cosmetics Company, which is the brand name you've probably heard of, has nothing directly to do with the Faberge family of egg fame. The fragrance company was founded by a Polish entrepreneur named Samuel Rubin, who named the company after the Fabergerie jewelry company at the suggestion of his friend and collector of Faberjeet eggs, the American oil tycoon Armand Hammer. Hammer worked closely with the Soviet government as he was one of the few Westerners who were trusted enough to do business with. But the big question is, what happened to the eggs? In the 1920s and 30s, Stalin's government

Starting point is 00:09:51 began systematically selling off imperial treasures through various channels. Some eggs were sold through official Soviet trade organizations and others through intermediaries and dealers. The process scattered the collection across the globe, with eggs ending up in private collections, museums, and some even remaining in Soviet hands for decades. Armand Hammer was given three eggs by the Soviets. Today, the 50 imperial eggs are distributed across several locations. The largest single collection resides in Russia, where nine eggs are housed in the Kremlin Armory Museum in Moscow.

Starting point is 00:10:28 These eggs were either never sold by the Soviet government or were later repatriated. The collection there includes some of the most spectacular examples, including the Moscow Kremlin egg and the memory of Azov egg. The United States holds a significant portion of the collection with several eggs in private hands and others in museums. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, each house imperial eggs. Private collectors in America also own several eggs, though these occasionally change hands through high-profile auction sales. Of the eggs that went missing, no one is really sure what happened to them. We have records, and in some cases,

Starting point is 00:11:10 drawings of the missing eggs. In one famous case, a lost Faberge egg, the third imperial egg, was discovered in a very unlikely place. For decades, the egg was considered lost and its whereabouts unknown. It had been last listed in a 1964 auction catalog in New York, listed merely as gold watch in egg form, with no mention of Faberge or its imperial provenance. From there, the egg simply disappeared. But sometime in the early 2000s, a scrap metal dealer in the American Midwest bought the egg and an estate sale for around $13,000, thinking that he could make a small profit by selling it for its gold content.

Starting point is 00:11:53 He was particularly interested in the Vasharan Constantine Watch inside, which was made of solid gold. However, when he weighed the egg and calculated the gold value, he realized that the piece wasn't worth much more than what he had paid, and he considered just melting it down for scrap. But before doing so, he searched online for clues about the strange item. When he googled the names engraved on the watch inside, he stumbled upon a 2011 article in the telegraph. The article included a photo of the lost third imperial egg and provided a detailed description of its appearance. He immediately recognized it as the same object that he had purchased. Realizing its possible value, he conducted Kieran McCarthy, a Fabergergerger expert at the London

Starting point is 00:12:37 jeweler Wartzky. In 2012, he traveled to London with photo of the egg, and Wartzky quickly confirmed its authenticity. In early 2014, the egg was physically brought to London for formal authentication, and it was confirmed to be the third imperial egg, made in 1887, and last recorded in public view around 1914. It was then sold privately for an undisclosed amount. But estimates place its value at somewhere around $33 million. There are very few Faberge eggs that ever come to auction. In 2004, the Russian oligarch, Victor Vexelberg, purchased nine Faberge eggs from the collection of the American publisher Malcolm Forbes for about $100 million. Given the rise in art prices this century, the next time a Faberje egg goes up for auction, it will

Starting point is 00:13:30 probably shatter all records. It would give a whole new meaning to the price of eggs going up. The hunt for the remaining missing eggs continues to fascinate collectors and historians. The discovery of a lost egg would not only represent an enormous financial find, but also return a piece of Russian cultural heritage to the world. The enduring fascination of Faberge eggs extends far beyond their material value or historical significance. They represent the pinnacle of the merger of technical mastery and engineering with artistic vision in ways that have rarely been equaled before or since. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel.

Starting point is 00:14:14 The associate producers are Austin Oakden and Cameron Kiefer. I want to thank everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. I'd also like to thank all the members of the Everything Everywhere community who are active on the Facebook group and the Discord server. If you'd like to join in the discussion, there are links to both in the show notes. And as always, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you two can have it read on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Fabergé Eggs

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.