Constellation (Fabergé egg)

The Constellation egg is an unfinished 1917 Easter egg designed under the supervision of Peter Carl Fabergé for the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, as an Easter gift to his wife, the Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna. It was the last Imperial Fabergé egg designed.

History and description


According to Franz Birbaum, Fabergé’ workshop manager, the egg was conceived as a clock in the form of a celestial globe of dark blue glass encircled by a rotating dial, held above billowing rock crystal clouds surmounted by silver cherubs; the whole supported on a nephrite pedestal. The globe was to be decorated with a diamond studded engraving of the constellations under which Tsarevitch Alexei was born. Work began on the egg, but the 1917 February Revolution and subsequent events overtook its production.

In 2001, its unfinished clouds and globe were uncovered in the collection of the Fersman Mineralogical Museum in Moscow, where Fabergé's second son Agathon, left them in 1925. Experts believe it to be the unfinished 1917 egg by Fabergé. It is without the diamonds, nephrite base and silver putti intended to decorate it. Its authenticity is supported by numerous studies by Russian experts.

A false pretender
Russian art collector Alexander Ivanov claims that he owns the original (and finished) egg. In 2003–2004 he said that he acquired this egg in the late 1990s and affirmed that "the Fersman Museum erroneously continues to claim that it has the original egg." Fabergé experts do not agree and think his egg is a Fauxbergé. Ivanov's egg is in the Fabergé Museum in Baden-Baden, which houses part of his Fabergé/Fauxbergé collection.