Collection of Fabergé flowers and berries

The Faberge jewelry company is known today primarily for Easter eggs with a surprise, which for 32 years it has been creating for members of the Russian Imperial House and private customers. These precious masterpieces, executed at the highest level, can surprise everyone who has ever seen them.

The inspiration for the creation of such exquisite flower and berry sketches was, according to experts, European flower bouquets that Faberge could see during his studies, Russian stone-cutting art, but more than other oriental art.

Faberge became interested in plant compositions in the 1880s and at the All-Russian Industrial Exhibition in Moscow in 1882, after which his meteoric rise began, he showed his first flower study – a hibiscus flower. Since the 1890s, the creation of plant studies in transparent rock crystal vases has been, one might say, put on stream. One of the earliest such items is kept today in the Royal Collection of Great Britain. It was a sprig of raspberries (center in the first photo in this publication) given to Queen Victoria in 1894 by her Lord Chamberlain Carrington.

Easter egg “Rosebud” 1895

The earliest appearance of flowers in the collection of the Russian Imperial House is considered to be a yellow rose, which became a surprise in the 1895 Rosebud Easter Egg. The Rosebud egg is the first Easter souvenir from Faberge, which was presented to Alexandra Feodorovna by her husband Nicholas II.

The egg itself was made in neoclassical style or, as Carl Faberge noted in the accounts, in the style of Louis XVI. It is covered with bright red transparent enamel on a guilloché background and decorated with symbols of love and the strength of marriage bonds – diamond arrows, leafy garlands and wreaths of greenish gold tied with ribbons. The surprise was a tea rose bud, which was considered the most valuable in the Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt.

Inside the bud was hidden a miniature imperial crown, studded with diamonds, with two cabochon rubies (lost). The rose was made by one of the leading craftsmen of the company, Mikhail Perkhin, and it was the first mechanical surprise: the petals open when you press a small button on the stem.

Precious basket with lilies of the valley

In 1896, at the All-Russian Fair in Nizhny Novgorod, merchants presented the Empress with a precious basket of lilies of the valley from Faberge.

This gift was one of the most beloved and always stood on a table in the Alexander Palace. After the revolution, probably among other Faberge products, the basket was sold abroad and ended up in the collection of Mathilde Geddings, after whose death it was transferred to the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Egg “Lilies of the valley”

In 1898, Alexandra Fedorovna again received an item with lilies of the valley as a gift. It was one of the most beautiful Faberge Easter eggs – the Lily of the Valley egg, which is now in the collection of the Faberge Museum in St. Petersburg.

The shell of the egg is covered with transparent pink enamel on a guilloche background, decorated with stripes of diamonds and braided with lilies of the valley on golden stems with green enamel leaves and pearl flowers. On the petals of lilies of the valley, like morning dew, diamonds shine. The surprise of the egg is miniature portraits of the three dearest people to Alexandra Feodorovna – her husband and two eldest daughters: Olga and Tatiana.

The shell of the egg is covered with transparent pink enamel on a guilloche background, decorated with stripes of diamonds and braided with lilies of the valley on golden stems with green enamel leaves and pearl flowers. On the petals of lilies of the valley, like morning dew, diamonds shine. The surprise of the egg is miniature portraits of the three dearest people to Alexandra Feodorovna – her husband and two eldest daughters: Olga and Tatiana.

Egg “Basket of Flowers”

Another elegant flower gift to Alexandra Feodorovna for Easter was the Basket of Flowers egg ordered by Nicholas II in 1901.

The empress liked the bouquet of wild spring flowers very much, since at that moment she already had several Faberge flower sketches. The Basket of Flowers egg was a vase containing pansies, cornflowers, daisies, oats and various herbs. The vase is covered with white enamel and decorated with a twisted gold lattice with an oval handle, inlaid with diamonds.

After the revolution of 1917, the “Basket of Flowers” egg was taken from the Anichkov Palace to the Armory Chamber, and later came into the possession of the Antikvariat office, which in 1933 sold the egg to an unknown buyer. In the same year, the product was purchased by Queen Mary of Great Britain, but the invoice for the purchase has not been preserved.

Dandelion Faberge

Three more sketches were sold at Sotheby’s Russian auction last year. One of them is a rare apple blossom. According to the inventory number and information in Faberge’s ledgers, the flower was purchased on May 1, 1913 by Grand Dukes Andrei Vladimirovich, Boris Vladimirovich, Kirill Vladimirovich and his wife, Grand Duchess Victoria Feodorovna. Probably the flower was a gift to the Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna on her birthday on May 2. The product cost the grand dukes 800 rubles, which was one of the highest prices for such products (the average price of Faberge flowers, which were bought by Maria Feodorovna, Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna, was 250-350 rubles).

Members of the Russian Imperial House were so fond of Faberge flowers that, according to the inventory of 1917, only Maria Pavlovna had 34 sketches. In total, there were many times more of them, the Romanovs at the beginning of the 20th century were the largest collectors of flower studies.

Faberge’s activities ceased after the revolution, but until the last days the company continued to create flower studies, many of which have survived to this day and are a clear evidence of the highest skill of the legendary jewelry company.