This might be the worst egg, but it might also be the best.
November 7, 2021 5:16 AM   Subscribe

 
It's pretty cool to see these all in one place. It would have been nice if they had added where they stood chronologically, too, just to get a feel for the evolution of designs.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:34 AM on November 7, 2021


16 ... It's busy without being overdone or gaudy and the colors are great.

Oh no, do I have to do my own ordering? This person's sense of aesthetics is certainly not mine.
posted by pompomtom at 5:48 AM on November 7, 2021 [2 favorites]


Wikipedia > Fabergé egg > List of Eggs (with photos).
posted by cenoxo at 5:57 AM on November 7, 2021 [1 favorite]


These are ok, but they’re no tungsten cubes…
posted by turbowombat at 6:10 AM on November 7, 2021 [2 favorites]


Can we get a link to the original Twitter thread?
posted by meese at 6:20 AM on November 7, 2021


Here’s the original thread.
posted by Kattullus at 6:25 AM on November 7, 2021 [4 favorites]


The Bolshevik nationalization was hell on the Faberge egg business, and on the jewelers' family personally, which has something to say about the consequences of consumption, the arc of political history, and those caught in between.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:27 AM on November 7, 2021 [3 favorites]


When I was about 12, there was a traveling exhibition of these at the local art museum in Minneapolis. My mind was blown, and I spent the next few years splitting my reading time between sci-fi and books about gemologist. I toyed with studying it for a career, and I still have a beautiful poster of the egg with a carriage in it.

*sigh* These are such beautiful objects. I love that they exist, despite the political system that allowed them to be created.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:28 AM on November 7, 2021 [1 favorite]


Gregory Maguire did a compelling novel called Egg and Spoon about a rich noble girl who becomes lost in peasant territory during a famine, together with a Faberge egg. It's YA and I was fascinated by it, though I had to put it down because I couldn't handle the lurking dread at the time. Maguire has that effect on me.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:29 AM on November 7, 2021 [1 favorite]


Perhaps the most significant egg is the The Constellation (WP):
The Constellation egg is one of two Easter eggs designed under the supervision of Peter Carl Fabergé in 1917, 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….

Due to the Russian Revolution of 1917, the egg was never finished or presented to Tsar Nicholas' wife, the Tsaritsa Alexandra Feodorovna.
More details at Fabergé Discoveries > 1917 The Constellation Egg, including a design sketch by Peter Carl Fabergé.
posted by cenoxo at 6:39 AM on November 7, 2021 [1 favorite]


I love you. Thanks.
posted by kfholy at 6:41 AM on November 7, 2021 [1 favorite]


This is really neat.

I've got to say, this is a category of the works of art that I absolutely don't get, even doing my best to imagine life at the time. For the same amount of money and effort, you could have the best clock in the world, or many elephants, or a smoking monkey automaton. That people were excited about them is more alien than anything in Star Trek, which is why I find them interesting. (Cheers to those who genuinely like them. I'll pass you my museum ticket on the way out.)
posted by eotvos at 6:47 AM on November 7, 2021 [9 favorites]




I'm not a collector of anything, and I don't really get the collector mindset. That said, I am a better judge of Fabergé eggs than charlemagne the gourd because I would never ding an egg for being a gorgeous "gaudy" shade of green, wtf.

(Haha seriously I think of this as just like fancy watches? Kind of cool, very expensive and pointless.)
posted by grandiloquiet at 6:57 AM on November 7, 2021


Dibs on that museum ticket, eotvos. My personal favorite: the Trans–Siberian Railway egg.
posted by cenoxo at 6:58 AM on November 7, 2021 [2 favorites]


Winter Egg is best egg, but Peacock egg should be way higher on list.
posted by Beholder at 7:06 AM on November 7, 2021 [2 favorites]


These things make me purr like a f'in kitten. Sorry for the two-commentary.
posted by kfholy at 7:06 AM on November 7, 2021 [3 favorites]


You may crush us–but we Nihilists shall rise again!

These people are tsarists, Donny. There's nothing to be afraid of.
posted by credulous at 7:10 AM on November 7, 2021 [8 favorites]


My favorite weird Fabergé egg fact is that the man who made them famous, on behalf of the bolsheviks who really wanted to sell them, was Armand Hammer.
posted by Kattullus at 7:21 AM on November 7, 2021 [4 favorites]


I'd never bothered to look at all of them before, kinda like the boat ones, as art they're kinda cheesy, perhaps the ones that are windup and move might be cooler in a video.
posted by sammyo at 7:24 AM on November 7, 2021


It’s unclear whether “This egg looks like Dr. Robotnik” is a pro or a con.
posted by mbrubeck at 9:21 AM on November 7, 2021 [1 favorite]


Browsing through some of the non-Imperial eggs, I think my favourite is the Kinder Surprise egg.
posted by giltay at 9:22 AM on November 7, 2021 [5 favorites]


The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has a collection of some of these eggs. They are even more beautiful in person. I always end up spending more time in that area than planned.
posted by SuzySmith at 9:40 AM on November 7, 2021


"My Franklin Mint Fabergé egg!"
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 10:44 AM on November 7, 2021 [2 favorites]


my Chia-Pet Fabergé! too
posted by kfholy at 10:59 AM on November 7, 2021


The thing that I like about the Constellation is that, in its unfinished state, it looks to the untrained eye (i.e. mine) that it's the sort of tchotchke that you might pick up at a knick-knack store. Which naturally leads to the rough draft of a story in which the real McCoy gets mixed up with some cheap knock-offs, and it ends up on my computer desk; in the fullness of time, Old Man Me is asked about it by the child of a nephew, and with a dry chuckle I say that there's a heckuva story behind that...
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:13 AM on November 7, 2021 [1 favorite]


Browsing through some of the non-Imperial eggs, I think my favourite is the Kinder Surprise egg.

I was all "Norway represent!" until I read to the point where it was found among Quisling's widow's belongings. Yeah, no. (Quisling was an expert on Russian matters and did a lot of humanitarian work in the Empire and later the Soviet Union. I can't on first glance determine how he ended up with the egg.)
posted by Harald74 at 12:26 PM on November 7, 2021 [3 favorites]


I too can find faults with the ordering of the list, but I bet the Winter Egg is absolutely stunning in person.
posted by Harald74 at 12:27 PM on November 7, 2021


I can admire the workmanship in the eggs that are kinda meh, but the really exquisite ones are ethereal.

But even the nicest ones look like a hoarders cheap tchotchkes in this type of presentation! Palace interior designer, what were you thinking?
posted by BlueHorse at 12:31 PM on November 7, 2021 [1 favorite]




The writer has only seen these in photos. Seeing them in person is much, much more enlightening.
posted by Ideefixe at 1:22 PM on November 7, 2021 [1 favorite]


these are amazing - but I have to quibble - # 25, those are fish, not snakes, at the base. Not sure why old-timey fish were drawn with such big foreheads?
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 1:46 PM on November 7, 2021


I think it is interesting that Faberge Egg is absolutely something I was aware of existing and that I even had mental images of but had never actually seen in my half century of farting about learning weird stuff.

Until now.
posted by srboisvert at 2:46 PM on November 7, 2021 [1 favorite]


I love the tree egg.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:18 PM on November 7, 2021 [1 favorite]


Wenestedveldt, when you were twelve and visiting that Faberge show at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, I was working that summer as a museum guard. That show was behind thick glass, so I probably didn't admonish you about touching anything. There was a Rodin bronze adjacent to that show that almost every elementary school student had to touch, so when you probably touched that penis, I or one of my colleagues probably asked you to stop touching the penis, but it was a very shiny penis nevertheless.
posted by Scarf Joint at 7:39 PM on November 7, 2021 [9 favorites]


My dad had this thing on the dining table that was like a Faberge egg where you would press a button on top and all of these little panels on the egg would open up revealing cigarettes inside and the whole thing would rotate like a carousel and play a music box song. Apparently a "sophisticated" way of offering your guests a postprandial coffin nail. So Faberge eggs look like cigarette dispensers to me. If I had to pick one, I'd pick the bay tree, although it should probably also be disqualified for not being an egg.
posted by HotToddy at 8:10 PM on November 7, 2021 [3 favorites]


The VMFA in Richmond has 5 of the Imperial eggs. My grandmother worked in the coat room there for almost 20 years, into her 90s. Being at that museum was her main source of joy, and her absolute favorite exhibit was the eggs. She visited those eggs every time she worked.

Sometimes I would go see her while she was working, and she would sneak out of the coat room always to show me the eggs, and stand in front of them transfixed. She could never quite articulate why she felt such a strong connection, but I think those eggs are part of what kept her going so long.

Now whenever I get a chance to go back to the museum I always visit the eggs, because it's like visiting her.
posted by oh hey at 8:12 PM on November 7, 2021 [17 favorites]


#25 - even odder, I believe those are Renaissance or neoclassical dolphins. I don’t know why they sculpted dolphins like that. The foreheads I can see, the snouts not.
posted by clew at 8:40 PM on November 7, 2021


This ranked list of eggs is ova, rated.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 1:31 AM on November 8, 2021 [26 favorites]


I remember seeing some Faberge eggs in an exhibit in Las Vegas in the 2000s. I thought it was mind-boggling that I could see such beauties up close, they are so intricate and incredibly difficult to make and require so much expertise, it's very impressive.

https://m.lasvegassun.com/news/2002/aug/30/bellagio-basking-in-faberges-light/
posted by yueliang at 2:33 AM on November 8, 2021


Antiques Roadshow is/was a favourite TV show of my parents (they even managed a small appearance on one of the shows when travelling to the UK once!) One of my favourite presenters is Geoffrey Munn - especially when he gets to say "This is Fabergé"...
posted by freethefeet at 2:47 AM on November 8, 2021 [1 favorite]


So which egg is Driss returning to Philippe in this scene from Intouchables? Looks like the Alexander Palace to me.
posted by rongorongo at 6:03 AM on November 8, 2021


Scarf Joint, that's so cool -- and I totally remember when "The Gates of Hell" were on display, but which bronze weiner was on display and within arm's reach of children?

Also: NO, I DIDN'T TOUCH THE BRONZE DICK.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:08 AM on November 8, 2021 [2 favorites]


oh hey, I am pretty sure your grandma must have been Anastasia, just going back for another look at her stolen toys, cruelly displayed behind glass.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:10 AM on November 8, 2021


For the same amount of money and effort, you could have the best clock in the world, or many elephants, or a smoking monkey automaton.

Unfortunately, it turns out that once the question is "what do you get for someone who's already got the best clock in the world, many elephants, and a smoking monkey automaton," there really aren't that many directions you can go...
posted by regularfry at 8:16 AM on November 8, 2021 [2 favorites]


My dad had this thing on the dining table that was like a Faberge egg where you would press a button on top and all of these little panels on the egg would open up revealing cigarettes inside and the whole thing would rotate like a carousel and play a music box song.

And thus the name, cigarette carousel. Say what you like about demon tobacco, it generated really interesting accessories.
posted by BWA at 8:24 AM on November 8, 2021 [1 favorite]


If I had the power of Instant Transport and Invisibility, I would make that pansy egg mine.
posted by BostonTerrier at 11:09 AM on November 8, 2021 [1 favorite]


When I was very small indeed, like...2nd grade?? Our holiday project was to make sugar Fabergé eggs with iced decorations and a little surprise behind a cellophane window. They were dipped or brushed or something so that they weren't edible??? I feel like there was an awful lot of teacher assistance and a slide show of the originals, and that is also how we learned about the Russian Revolution and WHY WAS MY SCHOOL SO WEIRD, Y'ALL?

My egg lasted some 15 years before it finally crumbled.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:22 PM on November 8, 2021 [5 favorites]


Speaking of eggs and elephants, as one does: In 2015 a curator at the Royal Collection Trust discovered that a random tchotchke in their collection was a lost surprise from the Diamond Trellis Egg (my second favorite, after the Mosaic). FB video
posted by Sweetie Darling at 5:43 AM on November 9, 2021


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