Fabergé Friday

And egg number ten is: The "Renaissance Egg", from 1894. This was the last egg Tsar Alexander gave to his wife Maria...

This is one of the few Imperial eggs made to lie down on it's side - this one on a gold enameled base, closely modeled after an eighteenth century casket by Le Roy. The casket itself is now situated at the Grüne Gewölbe Museum in Dresden. The egg is carved from a milk-white piece of chalcedony, with gold heraldic lions' heads on two sides.

On the top a gold trelliswork with diamonds, rubies, and emeralds spread out. In the middle shells made of diamonds surrounds a medallion with the year 1894, also set in diamonds. The surprise of this egg is lost, but the Fabergé invoice mentions pearls, so it's probable a strand of pearls was hidden in it. 

Another theory, advanced by Christopher Forbes, is that the surprise could have been the so called "Resurrection Egg" - pictured above. 

This egg perfectly fits into the "Renaissance Egg", and has similar decorations. 

The "Renaissance Egg" was confiscated by the Russian Provisional Government in 1917, and sold - together with nine other eggs - for 1,500 rubles to Armand Hammer. The Tsar had payed 4,750 rubles for this Easter egg in 1894...

After being sold two more times, the owners Jack and Belle Linsky attempted to donate their Fabergé collection to the Metropolitan Museum. The museum stated that they were not interested in "Edwardian decorative trivia" though...Gah!!! So after that, the egg was sold to the antique dealers "A La Vieille Russie" where it was purchased by Malchom Ford for his collection in 1965. In 2004 the Forbes collection was sold to Viktor Vekselberg. The egg finally got to return home to Russia, and can now be seen in Viktor's collection - the Svyaz' Vremyond Fund - in Moscow.