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

ONE "Christ Is Risen!" For Russian Orthodox Christians in the nineteenth century, no date in the religious calendar was more important than Easter day. The long fast of Lent would have been strictly observedno meat, milk, butter, or eggs for more than seven weeksuntil the solemn celebrations of Holy Week built steadily to their joyful climax at a midnight service finishing early on Easter morning. Throughout the day itself, friends and family greeted each other with the traditional three kisses, and responded to the jubilant "Christ is risen!" with a reply of equal certainty: "He is risen indeed!" And then, in a ritual whose symbolism stretches back to pagan spring festivals, they would exchange eggs. So Czar Alexander III was simply following tradition when, in 1885, he gave his beloved czarina, the popular Marie Fedorovna, an apparently unexciting white enameled egg. About two and a half inches high, it had the size and appearance of a large duck egg, but with a gold band around its middle. Only when the empress opened the czar's present did it reveal its true nature: like an elaborate matryoshka doll it contained a perfect yolk, made of gold; within that was a golden hen, sitting on a nest of golden straw; and inside the hen was a diamond miniature of the imperial crown, concealing a tiny ruby pendant. Every detail was exquisitely renderedthe craftsmanship unparalleled, the creativity inspired. It was the first egg made by Carl Faberge for the Russian court. Faberge was not even forty when his firm made that first egg for the czar, but his family had, in a sense, spent more than a lifetime preparing for this moment. Not only was his father, Gustav, a jeweler, but it is safe to assume that his more distant ancestors were craftsmen, too. Their surnames alone give that away: Favry, Fabri, and Fabrier all appear to have been used at some point, and all, like Faberge itself, are derived from the Latin word "faber," meaning "smith" or "maker." In the eighteenth century these ancestors were living in France, but their Protestant religion marked them out for persecution by another absolute monarch, the Roman Catholic Louis XIV (16381715). At least two hundred thousand Huguenotsmany of them skilled artisansfled France following Louis's repeal in 1685 of the Edict of Nantes, which had until then guaranteed religious toleration. Carl's ancestors were among them, and chose to go east. By 1800, Peter Favry had settled in Parnu, in current-day Estonia, where he had taken Russian citizenship, a move that gave his family freedom from further religious intolerance. Gustav was born here in 1814, and by 1820 his surname was already Faberge. He seems to have added the accent to the final e in 1842. The gradual name change smacks of an attempt at social betterment. The aristocracy of nineteenth-century Russia still spoke in French and looked to Paris as the fount of culture. It would have done the former Favrys no harm to stress their Gallic origins. Gustav's ambition is evidenced by his early move to Russia's capital, Saint Petersburg. Here he trained with some of Russia's most eminent jewelers, including I. V. Keibel, the firm that only a few years earlier had reset the crown jewels for Czar Nicholas I. Soon enough, Gustav was ready to set up on his own as a master goldsmith, and in 1841 he opened his own shoponly a basement, but located on the Bolshaya Morskaya, one of the smartest streets in Saint Petersburg. Five years later, on May 5, 1846, Gustav's son, Carl Gustavovitch Faberge, was born. He would become the vehicle for his father's dreams, not only attenFaber, Toby is the author of 'Faberg's Eggs: The Extraordinary Story of the Masterpieces That Outlived an Empire', published 2008 under ISBN 9781400065509 and ISBN 140006550X.