Fabergé Friday

Imperial Easter Egg number forty-three is: The "Fifteenth Anniversary Egg", from 1911!

This opalescent and opaque white enamel egg is like a little lesson in Russian history. It was created to commemorate the fifteenth anniversary of Tsar Nicholas II's accession to the throne, and contains miniatures of nine major political events during 1911. These miniatures, painted by court miniaturist Vassily Zuiev, are put in different spaces, cut off from each other by a grid of green enamel garlands, bound together by diamond crosses.

Among the political miniatures, there are also portraits of the Tsar, the Tsarina, their five children, and highlights from important occasions in their lives together. 

The year of Nicholas' and Alexandra's wedding, 1894, and the year of the fifteenth anniversary, 1911, are set underneath the Tsaritsa's and Tsar's portraits. At the top of the egg the the crowned monogram of Alexandra sits beneath a table diamond, and at the bottom of the egg a rose-cut diamond, signed Fabergé, is set.

The Imperial children: Olga, Tatiana, Alexei, Marie and Anastasia.

The nine political events portrayed are:

The Tsar Alexander III Russian Imperial Historical Museum in St. Petersburg.

Procession to the Uspenski Cathedral.

Opening of the Alexander III Bridge in Paris.

Huis ten Bosch, the Hague.

Reception for the members of the first State Duma at the Winter Palace, St. Petersburg.

Unveiling of the monument commemorating the Bicentenary of the Battle of Poltava.

Unveiling of the statue of Peter the Great at Riga.

Moment of Coronation.

Removal of the remains of St. Seraphim of Sarovski.

If there was a surprise attached to the "Fifteenth Anniversary Egg", it is now gone. The egg was dearly treasured by Alexandra, who kept it in the Maple Room at the Alexander Palace. After being sold a few times, it ended up in the Forbes Magazine Collection, where it became Malcolm Forbes' favorite egg. In 2004 it was sold to the Vekselberg Foundation.