Faberge's Eggs: The Extraordinary Story of the Masterpieces That Outlived an Empire

This was a great comprehensive look at Faberge's life, his work, and his relationship with the Russian Imperial Family. After Alexander III first began the tradition of giving a Faberge egg to his wife every Easter, Faberge's skill and attention to detail flourished each year. Upon Alexander's death, his son Nicholas II would continue the custom, commissioning elaborate eggs for both his mother and his wife. Faber's book details many of these imperial eggs, and traces their histories through the revolution, through the century, and around the world. This book also illustrates the decadence of pre-revolutionary czarist Russia. Faberge's workshops created the most ornate and sought-after jewelry and trinkets in the world until WWI and the communist uprising devastated any market for such frivolities. Regardless, Faberge's eggs were impressive creations, each unique and spectacular in their craftsmanship and originality.

The Faberge imperial eggs were Easter gifts which Russia's last two czars gave to their czarinas, and are the biggest symbols of old Russia's artistic craftsmen. FABERGE'S EGGS is the first book to tell the story of these eggs, considering their design, their origins, the surprises hidden inside the eggs, and the evolution of a gift tradition that would end with an empire and with vanished eggs in the revolution. Any interested in either Russian history or art will find this an involving and unique history. Diane C. Donovan California Bookwatch

Fabergé's eggs have been a symbol of decadence and extravagance ever since their origin as a gift from Czar Alexander III to his wife, Maria Fedorovna, as an Easter present in 1885. What seemed to be a plain white egg hid a golden yolk that contained a golden hen, a diamond miniature of the Imperial crown, and a ruby pendant. That treasure, created by Carl Fabergé, began a tradition for more than thirty years of gifts from the Czars commemorating events and holidays. Faber has collected tales of many of the eggs, from when and why they were created, their disposition during the Russian Revolution, to their current return back to Russia at the hand of the oligarchs. There is not a great deal of history of Fabergé himself, but mostly the highly entertaining stories of the eggs, their journeys and the people driven to collect them. It is also the history of the 20th century Russia, from the revolution through the Cold War and into the new Russia, complete with billionaires competing through conspicuous consumption. The book includes sixteen pages of black and white and color photos of the eggs, their owners, Fabergé's workshop and more.

I am a collector of the books and eggs of this period. This book is an excellent resource of information. I truly enjoy perusing through this book. I highly recommend it!

There are many books (and even some websites) devoted to pictures of the jeweled eggs produced by Fabergé for the last two czars of Russia to give to their czarinas on Easter. _Fabergé's Eggs: The Extraordinary Story of the Masterpieces that Outlived an Empire_ (Random House) by Toby Faber is not like those. Sure, it has photos, but only of some of the fifty eggs that were so given. The point of Faber's fascinating book is not the sparkle of these splendid, somewhat preposterous baubles, but the history behind them. He has, in many cases, told the stories of individual eggs and positioned them within the history of the last years of the Russian Empire, and then followed them from after the revolution until the current day. This, then, is a history book with a wide scope, using the eggs as a mere foundation for bigger themes. It is full of remarkable stories from the royal family as well as from the colorful subsequent owners of the eggs, and Faber, who wrote about the violins of _Stradivari's Genius_ a few years ago, has told the stories in a lively way to interconnect a lot of historical strands. When Czar Alexander III came to Fabergé before Easter in 1881, he wanted a present for his wife, the Empress Maria. The first egg of the series was the Hen Egg, based on the design of an egg in the Royal Danish Collection, and since Maria was from Denmark, it would have reminded her of her happy childhood there. The eggs became an annual tradition thereafter, and each year Fabergé had more freedom about how to execute the commission. When Alexander died only aged 49 in 1894, Fabergé might have worried that the new czar Nicholas II would not have the same taste or desires, but Nicholas proved to be unwilling to change anything much (a characteristic that Faber shows played a role in his doom), and continued the tradition, with Easter eggs going not just to Maria his mother but to Alexandra his new wife. The eggs often reflected historical landmarks or anniversaries. The Trans-Siberian Railway Egg of 1900 commemorating the newly completed railway. Fabergé knew that he could please Alexandra with depictions of her children; the famous Lilies of the Valley Egg of 1898 had a surprise of pop-out portraits of her husband and daughters. Faber demonstrates that the eggs could represent the alienation of the royals from the world around them. He contrasts these expensive and beautiful toys with the lot of the Russian people and increases our understanding of the revolution that brought the family down in 1918, and the eggs were available for sale abroad to benefit the new Soviet state. The most famous collector was Malcolm Forbes, who determined that he would buy up so many of the eggs he would have more than were left in the Kremlin vaults. He thought he had succeeded, too, with eleven eggs to the Kremlin's ten in 1985, but increased interest in the eggs (and a Forbes-inspired boom in their prices, which lasted after his death in 1990) meant tha