Commissioned as an Easter gift for Empress Maria Feodorovna, the first Fabergé egg appeared plain on the outside but opened to reveal a golden yolk, a golden hen, and a tiny replica of the imperial crown. Delighted, Alexander III made Fabergé a court supplier, beginning an annual tradition that produced 50 imperial eggs before the Russian Revolution ended it.
The gift was meant to console the empress, who missed the simple pleasures of her native Denmark. Fabergé modeled his creation on a Danish royal treasure: a small egg containing nested surprises. The Russian version, wrought in gold and enamel, opened on a hinge to reveal a golden yolk; inside that sat a tiny golden hen with ruby eyes; inside the hen, a miniature diamond replica of the imperial crown and an even tinier ruby pendant, since lost to history.
Alexander III was so pleased that he granted Fabergé the title 'Goldsmith by Special Appointment to the Imperial Crown' and commissioned a new egg every year afterward, a tradition his son Nicholas II continued for both his mother and his wife. Fabergé's workshop had complete creative freedom, with only one rule: each egg had to contain a surprise.
The eggs became a symbol of Romanov opulence just as revolutionary sentiment simmered across Russia. After the 1917 revolution, the Bolsheviks seized the imperial eggs, and many were later sold off by the Soviet government for hard currency, scattering them into private collections and museums around the world, including a cache eventually bought by Malcolm Forbes and later by Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.
Key people: Peter Carl Fabergé, Alexander III