Fabergé egg hunt

It is an exquisite irony that the art objects which have done most to rekindle interest in the imperial dynasty — fetching prices of up to £6 million per egg in recent years — were in fact sold onto the international art market for pitifully low prices by the communist regime which most despised them.

Out of the original 50 imperial eggs, only ten are now known to remain in Russia, most of them held back by courageous Kremlin curators who risked execution to hide them from the plundering regime. The rest are scattered around the world — including three in the collection of Queen Elizabeth (which can be seen shortly at Holyroodhouse), and nine at the Forbes Magazine Galleries in New York. Four are in private ownership, surfacing sporadically in auction houses to change hands for seven-figure sums — as the Diamond Trellis egg is expected to do in Christie’s on April 11. More tantalizing still, eight remain unaccounted for.

Posted by David on March 23, 2003 4:00 PM