Raiders of the Lost Art | Episode 2 | The Hunt for Fabergé Eggs | Free Documentary History

[Music] at an antique store in london a remarkable discovery has been made that has thrown light on the bloody end of the czars of russia and the birth of the soviet union well it was a miracle we were here at warziki and in through that very door behind you walked a gentleman he was the most unassuming unpre-possessing individual but in his hands he had a sheaf of photographs [Music] this mysterious stranger had pictures of a lost treasure made by the legendary carl faberge a master jeweler and favorite of the russian imperial court [Music] like the romanovs faberge himself would ultimately be a victim of the terrifying russian revolution and one of his greatest creations would go missing for a century having to survive two world wars and a precarious trip to america before pictures of it finally made their way to london this has been the target of our dreams for so long that i recognize it instantaneously but of course as an antique dealer your first reaction is no you doubt everything but looking at the images and then looking at him it had to be true 50 imperial faberge eggs are known to have been made could one of the missing ones have finally been found of course we couldn't confirm that until we'd handled the object itself saint petersburg russia it was in 1917 in this elegant city on the baltic sea that the story of the carl faberge company and their legendary imperial eggs came to a crashing end this is where you made them workshops downstairs we design we used to design our products in here the eggs not just commissions from his majesty citizen romanov citizen romanov it's a time capsule it's a it's a portal i mean in russian history we have this fault line of 1917 and each and every one of these pieces catapults us back to that time when there were beautiful grand duchesses a hemophiliac heir a mystical rasputin and all of these people who were annihilated i saw them once the eggs i was a boy my grandfather took me to your exhibition each one of these pieces tie us back to an aristocracy a religion a system of uh governing that's that's absolutely gone and they're the only tangible evidence that these people ever lived he was up bloody sunday your friend's imperial guard shot him right here he was just an old man i wish i'd smashed the x when i'd had the chance so how had it all gone so horribly wrong for faberge and the aristocracy that adored him and just what happened to the faberge eggs the story begins in the same city where it ended saint petersburg [Music] the faberge family originally came out from france they were refugees from the um repeal of the edict of nance that's to say they were huguenots protestants being persecuted by louis xiv and they flooded eastwards from there carl faberge known sometimes as peter carl because he was christened that born in 1846 schooled in the german school in st petersburg his father owned a small jewelry shop it was a small jewelry shop but in a smart area his father clearly had an eye for carl becoming something greater than just the jeweler he had been faberge had such extraordinary talent and his workshop was so extraordinary the other thing is that he could be considered a foreign citizen but being foreign in saint petersburg was not at all unusual it was a very very cosmopolitan city he very much planned his education to give him an exposure to western art to some of the great jewellery treasures around europe the training that he received when he was abroad with his family studying the collections of museums in paris and london and returned to russia and at the tender age of 26 takes over his father's firm in russia at the end of the 19th century though one had to get the attention of the tsar to really make a name for yourself and that was especially the case at the time of the autocratic alexander iii alexander iii was so horrified by his own father who was generally a liberal and a progressive he'd he decided to reverse every reform on the other hand there's quite a lot to be said for alexander iii he was almost the only russian leader never to declare war on another country he was also an extremely brave and powerful man perhaps his major mistake was not preparing his son nicholas ii to rule carl faberge implemented a plan that would eventually catch the eye of this imperious tsar he started working on restoring ancient scythian jewellery which had recently been excavated from the black sea he works on a volunteer basis at the amitaj appraising and repairing objects without invoicing the court and it all really paid off for him in 1882 there was an exhibition of russian art which faberge exhibited and what he was exhibiting was pieces derived from those scythian artifacts which appealed hugely to the russian public because they gave the impression that russia had this art-rich pre-history to compete with anything in the west that exhibition was visited by the russian royal family and the tsarina marie fedorovna bought the tsar a pair of cufflinks from the faberge stand cufflinks with a cicada motif so that was the first time he sold something to the russian royal family this brings him favor because in 1885 he's awarded the imperial warrant having been awarded the coveted imperial warrant carl faberge starts work on what would be the beginning of a long line of easter gifts the first hen egg the first imperial egg was presented in 1885 by the tsar alexander iii to his wife mary fedorovner it's a deceptively simple egg and i think it's a great microcosm of what faberge does so well it's white enamel on the outside it's a gold yolk on the inside represented a chicken you open it up inside you find a golden yolk you can open up the yolk and inside that you find a golden hen inside was an imperial crown and a pendant so it was like it was like a matrix you know one of these russian dolls he was probably wanting something to delight her something to amuse her what better way to celebrate 20 years of marriage and easter in one and led to a commission an ongoing rolling commission that lasted uh 33 years clearly that first day worked and each year the emperor would give the empress an easter egg from faberge famously fabijay started to get total autonomy in the designs and with only three commands that each gift should be egg shaped that each one should be different from any predecessor and that each one should contain something of it a surprise something that would delight the empress carl faberge would quickly become a favorite of the russian royal family but neither they nor he saw the huge changes which were coming to the russian empire that would leave both faberge and his incredible imperial eggs in great peril [Music] towards the end of the 19th century master jeweler carl faberge had become a firm favorite of the russian tsar alexander iii and his wife the zarina marie fiodarovna his one-of-a-kind imperial eggs had become a highlight of the easter celebration in 1890 he presented the exquisite danish palace's egg complete with a surprise of folding miniatures this was followed by the memory of azov egg which commemorated a voyage taken by the future tsar nicholas ii on the armored russian cruiser the azov where he narrowly survived an assassination attempt in japan the diamond trellis egg made from pale jadeite was presented in 1892 and was followed by the caucasus egg of translucent ruby enamel in 1893 [Music] the renaissance egg of 1894 would prove to be the last presented by tsar alexander iii to his wife marie that same year the tsar suddenly fell ill with an incurable kidney disease and he died at the age of only 49. the sudden death of the tsar left his son the terribly unprepared nicholas ii to take the throne and things got off to a dreadful start when at a celebration of his coronation at kadinka fields near moscow a stampede killed over 1300 people the public at large was not impressed with nicholas's response to the tragedy he was doomed after the kadinka fields catastrophe he wasn't strong like his father he wasn't expecting to be tsar he was only in his twenties he had kept a iron grasp on the people and then um nicholas comes along and he's a bit more diffident to begin your coronation with a mass death of the population is bad and then worse still he should go to a ball at the french embassy on the same day of this disaster so that uh in fact did his prestige and enormous damage which he never recovered his strength and his weakness was that he was slightly normal and he rather liked normal life he liked chopping wood being with his family and smoking which he did a lot of the time fortunately for faberge though nicholas continued the tradition of imperial easter eggs and in fact two were now requested each year one for nicholas's mother the now dowager empress and one for the new zarina alexandra who unfortunately was just as unpopular as the tsar sarina alexandro came from the small german court of darmstadt and she was known as the german one that was a problem for her to get over to start with some russian empresses have overcome this but she was extremely tactless she was convinced that russia should be an absolute monarchy and she pushed her husband and she had extremely bad judgment she didn't enjoy balls and dances she thought that the russian aristocracy were very decadent meanwhile the dowager had been very fun-loving it was very popular the the tsarina had a hard act to follow and she didn't really manage the first pair of eggs given was in 1895 when zarina alexandra received the rosebud egg and the dowager received the blue serpent clock egg this egg would eventually end up in monaco where it became a treasured possession of princess grace queen elizabeth and prince philip take the royal drive along the superb course princess grace and prince renier are guests three other eggs also ended up in royal possession becoming the property of queen elizabeth ii the colonnade egg the basket of flowers egg and the stunning mosaic egg it seems that faberge has always been a favorite of royalty right from the days of his very first royal client the dowager empress marie fiordarovna christ is risen he is risen indeed you look well master jeweller i persevere your majesty yes you are a wonderful reminder to the court that our generation is not passed quite yet we persevere indeed i think fabij had an intimate relationship with virtually every member of the imperial family their relationships and their loves their passions their lusts and so on were expressed through the exchanges of these gifts so all of the emotions which you know are treasured in in them as these historical figures coalesced into these faberge objects on behalf of his imperial majesty it is the great honor of the carl faberge company to present this year's easter gift maria fjodorovna was unlike nicholas's second's wife she had extraordinary charm once she was the dowager empress she was the most respected member of the of the royal family the dowager was generally more charming and outgoing than the sarina and she had established a good relationship with faberge he had obviously prepared the surprises very well she'd always liked them [Music] mary fedorovner she was essentially the same age as him she was his original client she received those original legs and there are certainly letters from her for example for her sister who has our own queen alexandra here in the uk uh in which she said fabijay brought the worst wonderful egg i told him you're a genius clearly she liked him i hope her majesty is pleased my dear dear faberge you truly are an unparalleled genius faberge's connection with the imperial family was the ultimate cachet and his workshop was soon producing an array of items for other european aristocratic families he even opened up an international store in london that idea of a feudal society if it was the fascination of the court it quickly became the fascination of every level of society the aristocracy the the traders the bankers the entrepreneurs they would all want to participate in that royal fascination and it wasn't just in russia in england exactly the same thing happened fashions such as cigarette smoking came to the fore fabricated responded very quickly to this with cigarette cases when you open this you have not only the um case itself and the characteristic thumb piece here it opens to reveal a signature and a date so this is when a cigarette case is not only a cigarette case but it's a case that's been purchased by a grand duchess as a gift faberge is a russian company and they were made in russia and they are quintessentially russian it does have a distinct english flavor and i think there is perhaps more faberge within a mile radius of where we're stood now than there is in the entirety of russia and america put together essentially uh the london shop was started on the back of commissions or requests for objects from the british royal family and the british royal family had learned to love faberge because of the relationship between mary fedorovner and alexandra edward the seventh and then queen alexandra the sister of maria theodorovna they were also fascinated by faberge and as a consequence english society became fascinated by faberge there's a famous story of uh i think he was by then edward vii being given a present uh by a friend uh saying actually i don't particularly want this if you want to buy me something go down to fabajay's shop and look at it look at what he's got although the 50 imperial legs are undoubtedly the most desired today faberge did make other easter eggs for paying customers including the wealthy kelch family if you were a russian lady of some stature you would have chains of miniature faberge eggs and then there were eggs in between that were given the size of hens eggs and there were various types which are all marvelous and they're all wonderful the problem with making stuff for the russian royal family was the bureaucracy he had to deal with he did find it more congenial making objects for the newly emerging middle classes or very rich middle classes i should say two very prominent european families who commissioned works from faberge were the rothschilds and the nobels for whom the nobel ice egg was made they were happy to spend what it required happy to give him carp lash and and to take what he made for them and he made some fabulous objects for them faberge made two eggs every year during nicholas ii's reign with the exceptions of 1904 and 1905 when no eggs were presented during this period russia suffered a disastrous defeat in the russo-japanese war 1905 was an especially bad year with the bloody sunday massacre being carried out in some petersburg and the eventually unsuccessful 1905 revolution work on the eggs resumed in 1906 with the swan egg with its automaton miniature carl faberge had brought his son agathon into the company which now had over 500 employees nephrite exterior watercolor miniatures of the children [Music] father you can do better [Music] when world war one broke out in 1914 russia was soon dragged in and czar nicholas ii left the imperial court to take charge of the armed forces in response carl faberge made what would turn out to be his last easter gift the steel military egg presented to the zarina alexandra it contained a surprise of her husband and son commanding the russian army but nicholas ii was never suited to being a military leader and russia was grossly unprepared for the war effort once the germans came to the help of the austro-hungarians and pushed the russian army back and the soldiers found they had to go into uh into battle with no boots no rifle and were told to take it off the first corpse they found then the whole thing fell apart once housewives came out of their houses banging saucepans because there was no bread then the tsar had to go the imperial family were offered an exile in england but all the children were ill they all had measles and there was also the thought that the situation wasn't as grave as people were making out so they delayed their departure george v who was a cousin of the tsar took away his offer it was considered safer to uh take them to siberia however the revolutionary bolshevik forces led by lenin managed to capture the tsar the tsarina and their children and take them to the city of ekaterinburg where they came to a grisly end nikolai alexandrovich in view of your relative continuing attacks on soviet russia the euro executive committee has ordered that you are to be executed [Music] the reason that they were executed was really because where they were kept in the urals the white army was approaching and the reds feared perhaps justified if the whites captured them again they would have something to rally the country around once you got the tsar back and i think the panicky execution was not due entirely to sheer brutality but just to deny the the the opposition in the civil war as an important symbolic figure there's a certain amount of obfuscation about it i think because um perhaps lenin at various points thought it wouldn't be good for him to be named as the killer of the whole family so there's also dispute over who gave orders for the tsar and sarina to be killed and who gave orders for the whole family to be killed lenin definitely sanctioned it i mean the brutality of the revolution the civil war was so horrific that the deaths of the stars fit in with the deaths of millions of others who were shot tortured drowned and so on the murder of the russian royal family meant that carl faberge's life was hanging in the balance and his amazing collection of works was in danger of being lost forever which makes the recent rediscovery of one of his imperial eggs all the more miraculous [Music] in july 1918 the russian royal family was executed and all their possessions seized by the new soviet state [Music] carl faberge very much a part of the now extinct imperial russia was in danger of meeting a similar end [Music] i saw them once the eggs i was a boy my grandfather took me to your exhibition i had pestered him about it for weeks did you have a favorite in the early 1900s he built a purpose-built headquarters in some petersburg with the shop on the ground floor floors above that included essentially workshops where a lot of the jewelry happened although a lot of the other more specialist work would happen in other workshops outside and then on floors above that the design studio one ruble 10 copics it costs to get in you wouldn't even bend down in the street to pick that up would you one ruble i didn't know that was more than he made in a week he was at bloody sunday it's estimated that the faberge enterprised enterprise well he had workshops in petersburg and in moscow moscow was where they made silver uh he had shops uh and those two places also odessa which was a popular tourist destination and london which dealt with most of his international business and total employees either working for or indirectly for faberge probably about 1500 at its height your friend's imperial guard shot him right here he was just an old man i wish i'd smashed the x when i'd had the chance they had a first stage revolution a parliamentary government but it couldn't end the war and it couldn't continue the war the officers wouldn't stop fighting the soldiers wouldn't go and fight and finally a small group of highly organized men the bolsheviks understood how to make a revolution i wish many things were different comrade lenin back in exile you mean bloody nicholas in his palace [Music] they understood you don't have to have large numbers you just take the railway junction and the telephone exchange once you hold those two everyone else is paralyzed uh so you could say to lenin's and trotsky's highly intelligent methods for a small group to take over a large country that finished that stage of the revolution you're all looters war profiteers parasites growing fat while the working man dies but you don't make the world anymore [Music] time to go citizen famously the bolsheviks arrived at fabijay's business uh to take it over he said just give me a minute to fetch my hat and coat and essentially slipped out the back soon afterwards he was uh smuggled out of some petersburg uh he ended up in switzerland uh but he was clearly broken by the events of the revolution he was not placed under arrest nor was he dragged to catrionberg and shot or any of his family members so his destiny was very different his holdings were nationalized and eventually found his way to lausanne having traveled with his clothes and apparently a collection of wine and died in lausanne in 1920. faberge wasn't the only one who escaped though the dowager empress also managed to flee the revolution despite having been a zarina herself she along with other members of her family were taken to safety aboard the british battleship hms marlborough george v felt very guilty when he heard obviously this terrible tragedy he made great efforts to get the dowager out and that's our sister senior and all seniors children the local reds never got round to executing members of the royal family they were too much of a hurry defending themselves and so she managed to get out on a british battleship on the mulberry prince felix yusipoth who murdered rasputin had two rembrandts and he was seen on deck with them rolled up under his arm uh there was the faberge egg the cross and george down in the hold and the youth pubs also had other treasures 20 million pounds worth of um jewels and treasures on on board so quite an extraordinary amount the crosses and george egg was the last faberge egg presented to the dowager empress by taking it with her it became the only imperial easter egg known to have left russia with its owner carl faberge may have escaped to switzerland but his son agathon who'd become a key part of the faberge company was not so lucky and remained in the now soviet russia i think a lot of the enterprise and dealing within faberge's world was conducted by agatha and i think he did exactly the same after the revolution as he had done before and he was a conduit himself for the movement of objects out of russia to the west and in fact in watsky's ledgers there are um references to us buying objects from faberge and the february was agathon fabishe agathon faberge managed to escape soviet russia himself in 1927 but he had left behind one of the unfinished eggs due to be given to the romanoffs in 1917. it was found essentially in the firsman mineralogical museum in moscow they thought it was a lamp stand it is actually an egg-shaped uh bit of polished blue gas on a funny sort of cloud-shaped uh bit of other glass they now know in fact that that was going to be the egg for alexander fedorovna the story of the blue zarovich constellation egg reveals the precarious times that faced the imperial treasures after the russian revolution both lenin and stalin authorized the sale of many of russia's greatest works of art to fund the soviet programmes the revolution brought the bolsheviks to power even if there hadn't been economic collapse as well it would have changed everything economic collapse as well just made it all even worse there was so much russian art and you could argue that in fact russia had plundered all europe in the 18th century catherine the great we got an enormous amount of stuff from impoverished english collectors and aristocrats one of lenin's famous commands was loot the looters that is to say all these people have been living the life of riley for the last 500 300 years it is now our turn to loot them despite the looting the smashing uh the rotting away uh there's still the hermitage gallery in petersburg can only display a tiny fraction of what it has countless works of art were sold abroad including the faberge eggs and their buyers were a very mysterious bunch they included emmanuel snowman of watsky and almond hammer of occidental petroleum ahmed hammer is a fascinating character and he was almost the joseph devine of his day multi-millionaire capitalist who alleges that he is in fact a communist um and then goes over and makes big deals with with lenin he was not a communist he was a capitalist through and through he organized uh trunk shows through department stores across america and catered to the way that women bought things and made vibrancy pieces accessible to the american public ultimately he became the agent for the sale of russian works of art primarily almost solely to america and so he was the conduit from russia to america whilst emmanuel snowmon was a conduit from russia to western europe a king's ransom in art joules gems from the collection of the late czar of russia on exhibition treasure worth many millions procured from the soviet government after the revolution armand hammer and emmanuel snowman were two of the major figures who had facilitated the movement of faberge eggs to the west but one man who wanted to gather them for himself was malcolm forbes of forbes magazine he went on a spending spree malcolm forbes was a relative late calm and forbes was possessed by a collecting mania he was an obsessive collector i suppose um the great thing about faberge eggs is there are only what 50 imperial ones and another 16 so you could you you could actually get the lot it was one of those things where you could find you had the complete stamp collection in a span of two decades malcolm forbes managed to get his hands on nine imperial faberge eggs in total his ambition was always to have more easter eggs than the kremlin he never quite got there but he got very close while most of the imperial faberge eggs were sold abroad for foreign currency ten did remain in the kremlin armory and have never left the country and one of the great sort of stories and unknowns of these eggs is that we know exactly where they were in soviet times we know where they were in imperial times and we really know where they were once they emerged in the west the skullduggery and the mischief of those original and first transactions we don't know and so i feel as though there are wonderfully sort of untold stories there involving these sort of ravenous dealers and sort of mischievous individuals malcolm forbes determination to collect as many faberge eggs as he could help shoot up the price of these one-of-a-kind treasures when the winter egg went on sale in 2002 it was bought by a qatari bidder for 8.7 million dollars 700 dollars maria you've been related my favorite egg is one that was given to marie federovna in 1913 and that's one of the most striking things about it is here we are almost 30 years after that first egg and you're still getting wonderful creativity it looks like you're looking through a winter fog as you look through the egg it's sitting on more carved rock crystal which is polished so much that it looks like melting ice and then within the egg so you can see it through a winter fog or open the egg and lift it out as a little basket of enamel flowers of springing enemies so you've got a wonderful symbolism there of spring scene through winter in 2004 though malcolm forbes collection of faberge eggs would make their way back home to some petersburg when they were purchased by the russian oligarch victor vekselberg vexelbeck i think spends on their 100 million dollars getting quite a large number of eggs back they've gone back to the uh the faberge museum in saint petersburg which actually is a fabulous destination for them whatever the mechanism of why they got there where they have ended up is the perfect home for them for the longest time 42 imperial faberge eggs were known to have survived the russian revolution with just eight remaining lost but then out of the blue an american man arrived at wartsky in london with evidence that one of those eggs had been found [Music] watsky in london is forever entwined with the history of faberge so it's the only place you would go if you thought you'd found a missing imperial faberge egg and that's exactly what an american individual recently did in walked a gentleman and he was the most unassuming unpre-possessing individual he was wearing a plaid american shirt the quintessential red plaid america shirt jeans he asked me by name but when i came up he couldn't actually speak to me his mouth was dry with fear there was a sort of like like a sort of inability to communicate just a couple of years before a pair of intrepid researchers looked through a 1964 catalogue of the auctioneers parker bernay now a part of sotheby's within it they discovered an image of the missing third imperial faberge egg which have been sold with everyone unaware of its true origin the only other known image of this egg is from the 1902 von dervis mansion exhibition where many of the faberge eggs had been displayed but this new discovery proved that the egg had made it to the west and there was now a far clearer photograph of it kieran mccarthy of watsky was part of an article published by the daily telegraph on this catalogue discovery which gave some hope that the egg may turn up someday now that it was proved to have survived the russian revolution but little did he know how quickly that article would lead him to the egg itself i went out to america as pretty much as quickly as my feet and the wings would carry me afterwards we traveled a long way to a very remote path and i walked into the kitchen of this house which is a million miles from imperial st petersburg and sat on a kitchen counter there was um a cupcake and next to it the the missing easter egg a google search had proved key in bringing owner and expert together he had no idea whatsoever that it was faberge he had no concept that this was a missing imperial egg and so he typed into google of all things he typed vacheron constantine and egg what came up was all of the art historical research which i and warski had been involved in surrounding this egg and so although the miracle of him walking through our door one day it was a miracle the actual link and the reason why he walked through our door was that research it proves that these eggs are out there to find you know there were 50 eggs some of them were destroyed or melted down or disappeared and we had thought that eight were missing and until recently uh that was the case and then this this third egg appeared well the egg displays every wonder of faberge's work the first is it's a very simple construction it's a rooted gold egg but the simplicity belies how difficult it is to make each one of these reeds is formed by hand by a craftsman at a workbench they taper at the same rate to an exact point both at the bottom and at the top and when you press the diamond at the front it opens to reveal the watch by vacheron constantine and this scrolling around the bezel of the aperture where it's there is found on many of them it's the identical engravings on the cradle of garland's egg and so you begin to see these little sort of hints of what faberge has done before and of how fabulous craftsmen worked and another aspect is when you flip the watch up it sits which is a beautiful little piece of design which actually allows it to work as not just an easter egg but as a clock where you really see the absolute tour de force of goldsmithing is not so much in the simple egg but in the far more elaborate stand four coloured gold roses and roses are an emblem of love and so the tsar and the tsarina when they saw this would know that it was an expression of love and then the lion poor feet they're beautifully finished on top and they are slightly stylized but very sort of endearing lion's paws but when you turn it over and look at the base the pads and the underside of the feet are as beautifully represented and of course the zarini would never have seen that because it would have sat like that this is one of the most sophisticated pieces of goldsmithing from faberge's or anybody else's hands that has ever been created and it would have been a gift appropriate for us but what of the seven imperial faberge eggs that are still missing well one of them is called the cherub with chariot egg and it could be seen in the same photograph from the 1902 von dervis exhibition that featured the third imperial egg sitting sneakily behind the caucasus egg you can see the wheel of the cherub with chariot egg and can catch a glimpse of it in the reflection of the glass casing this artist's interpretation shows what the egg could look like if you happen to notice another 20 million pound treasure at an antique store but this isn't the only faberge egg of which we have but a faint glimpse the fifth egg in the series is known as the necessary egg and it featured at a 1949 exhibition of faberge eggs in london london and a region street jewelers becomes the setting for an exhibition of the work of carl faberge that great craftsman of tsarist russia his son eugene faberge holds one of the dual studied enamel and gold easter eggs made for the last empress as a gift from the tsar kieran mcafee who was instrumental in finding the third faberge egg has also brought us closer to uncovering this one when he found an image of it in the back of a photograph taken at the exhibition that's one of the most frustrating sort of events in my life warski is ned wardy and company and our ledgers are arranged that on the left hand side it shows what the object is and i looked across where we have the name of the buyer the address of the buyer and how much they paid so i thought if mr bloggs lives a full blog square i can go knock on four blocks square and find the egg within but i look across and it said a stranger and and warski's discretion as it is with this egg we cannot reveal who bought or sold this egg and there is no way of telling where it went the exquisite work of a man who was caught joella and goldsmith to russia's royal house still mirrors the splendor of an age that is no more although the necessary egg featured at this exhibition it was not known at the time to be the fifth imperial easter egg the necessary egg was never recognized as the pure fabric but importantly it was recognized as a faberge egg so this egg here was never known to be faberge and so because of that it was never likely to be saved because it was faberge and as a result this danced on the precipice of the melting pot over and over again it was sold to almost certainly an english customer and it was only in 1952 so it is likely to have survived and that one i i feel in my instinct has survived of the five eggs where we've got no trace of them coming to the west it's possible that they'll emerge one day it's equally possible that they were destroyed in the whole chaos around the revolution despite the slim chances of discovery there are photos of two of these five most elusive faberge eggs the 1909 alexander the third commemorative egg and the 1903 royal danish egg oddly we also have the surprise of the 1897 move but not the egg itself the missing royal danish egg is the intriguing one though as it was presented to the dowager empress while she was away at her original home of copenhagen in 1903 it's not known for sure if she ever brought the egg back to russia so it may be the case that something is amiss in the state of denmark you just never know and that's partly the mystery of them and i think that's why this one this particular is so significant because it is one of the missing ones well it seems possible that it might be there um she she wasn't very keen to pass anything on when she was alive and she used to say you can have my treasure when i'm dead so uh yeah it could be yes when you know the history it becomes rather blase i know that one i've seen it there it was exhibited there and it went there they paid so much they did this it's the ones you don't know about that actually excites the um the mind and the fascination all seven of the missing eggs are ones that were presented to the dowager empress marie fioda ravner it's known that she escaped russia on the hms marlborough with the crossups and george egg on board the dowager took the egg with her presumably to england i think then xenia her daughter then vasily her youngest son ended up with it and then he sold it but there's no reason why this should have been the only egg she took with her it's possible she packed up the empire nephrite egg and move or any other of the missing ones such as the second hen egg with sapphire pendant these are the only three eggs left of which we have no images but that doesn't mean they're not out there it's like james dean it's like you know if they if absolutely carried on and we were now on the 1042nd faberge egg i think they would not have the same appeal but the fact that it's finite that the glory of faberge is that it is no more the reason we've all heard of faberge today is because of the eggs these great fabulous objects that he started to make for the russian royal family they are just so over the top so wonderful so inspired and their creativity as well they're just wonderful objects for combining history and craftsmanship the extraordinary about faberge is the very very expensive materials use unique jewels the the materials themselves are wealth beyond the imagination then the extraordinary craftsmanship the miniaturization of the work it's an oriental type of work it's very very iranian indian in its use of jewelry is the intricacy faberge eggs sort of encapsulate the romance of the of the story so much um care gone into them they're a product of the social cultural financial political circumstances of that moment and it's that collision of great craftsmanship and uncompromising patronage that gives rise to this fascination refurbished [Music] um [Music] you

Channel: Free Documentary - History

Views: 250,623

Keywords: Free Documentary, Documentaries, Full Documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre), History, History Documentaries, Free Documentary History, History Documentary, Raiders of the Lost Art, Art, Art History, History of Art, Art History Documentary, Art Documentary, Fabergé Egg, Carl Fabergé, fabergé, romanov, faberge eggs, Romanov Dynasty, Russian Empire, Tsar Nicolas II, Russian Tsar, Russian Revolution, October Revolution, lenin, 1917

Id: iVQgBnYHtZw

Length: 44min 43sec (2683 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 19 2021