Last update:
April 13th
2017

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Name Necessaire Egg

Date 1889

Provenance Presented by Alexander III to Czarina Maria Fyodorovna

Made in St. Petersburg

Work-master N/A

Marks N/A

Media gold, diamonds, cabochon rubies, emeralds,
a large coloured diamond at top and a cabochon sapphire at point

Size N/A

Techniques N/A

Kept in Private collection - Whereabouts unknown - possibly in the UK
 france

Egg-Shaped Necessaire (1757 - 1758) France (not by Fabergé)
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 wartski wartski wartski

Reflection of the Necessaire egg in 1952 exhibition, and picture
Click on the thumbnails to see a bigger image

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eggThis Easter Egg was made in the form of a toilet-case. It contains a small 13-piece manicure set. It is one of the twelve untracked Fabergé's Imperial Easter Eggs. It is valued about 3 million dollars. It would be wonderful to find at least some news about this curious "egg" made by Fabergé. The Nécessaire Egg was sold in 1952. The buyer was almost certainly British, and insisted on anonymity.

This egg is known to exist from a photograph from 1902 when it was included in an exhibition in St Petersburg. Gold and gem-studded, it is decorated with diamond-encrusted ribbons of leaves and roses and three large sapphires. Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, it is believed to have been seized by the Bolsheviks and was recorded in a 1922 Soviet inventory.

Art experts suspected it had been lost or destroyed until a Fabergé enthusiast in America discovered an identical image of the egg in an auction catalogue from the 1960s. The image shows the egg among lots being sold in March 1964 by Parke Bernet, the New York auction house that was later acquired by Sotheby's. The vendor was named only as "Clarke", with the egg described as "Gold Watch in Egg-Form Case on Wrought Three-Tone Gold Stand, Set with Jewels".

in"The interior is designed as an Etui with thirteen gold and diamond set implements." This is the description of item 20 under the heading 'Lent Anonymously' from the catalogue of a loan exhibition of the works of Carl Fabergé held at Wartski, 138, Regent Street, London W1, November 8-25, 1949.

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