As a symbol of excess – and extraordinary craftsmanship – a Fabergé egg is hard to beat. And it’s an Easter egg. In 1885, Emperor Alexander III commissioned an Easter gift for his wife, Empress Maria Feodorovna, from the celebrated goldsmith Peter Carl Fabergé. He commissioned another egg the following year and it became a family tradition: between 1885 and 1993, Emperor Alexander III commissioned 10 eggs from Fabergé. The egg pictured is the Rosebud egg, auctioned in 2004 at Sotheby’s in New York, when nine Fabergé Imperial Easter Eggs, valued collectively at $90 million, went under the hammer.

Source: The Irish Times March 31, 2018 06:00 UTC