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Grand Duchess Alexandra’s Faberge Tiara

04.20.2019 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

Grand Duchess Alexandra wearing her aquamarine tiara (Christie’s)

We recently chatted here about the stunning Prussian diamond tiara headed for auction in May — but guess what? It’s not the only sparkler from the extended family that will be available for a lucky buyer! Today, we’ve got a look at the gorgeous Fabergé tiara owned by Crown Princess Cecilie’s sister-in-law, Grand Duchess Alexandra of Mecklenburg-Schwerin.

Alexandra and Friedrich Franz (Christie’s)

In 1904, twenty-two-year-old Grand Duke Friedrich Franz IV of Mecklenburg-Schwerin married Princess Alexandra of Hanover. The twenty-one-year-old bride was the granddaughter of two monarchs: King George V of Hanover and King Christian IX of Denmark. The groom was the only son of Grand Duke Friedrich Franz III of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and his Russian-born wife, Grand Duchess Anastasia Mikhailovna.

Alexandra’s aquamarine tiara (Christie’s)

Friedrich Franz’s mother, Anastasia, was one of Fabergé’s biggest fans and best clients. As we discussed two weeks ago, she was instrumental in ensuring that her daughter, Cecilie, received a diamond tiara from the firm when she married the German Crown Prince in 1905. Anastasia also apparently encouraged her son to secure a Fabergé tiara to offer his new wife as her wedding present. Correspondence between the government of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and the jewelry firm reveals that several designs were proposed, and that a tiara was delivered for the princess shortly after their royal wedding in June 1904.

Alexandra’s aquamarine tiara (Christie’s)

Christie’s, the auction house that will soon sell the tiara, describes the piece as being set with “nine graduated pear-shaped aquamarines” as well as “old, cushion and rose-cut diamonds.” The tiara’s elaborate diamond base features numerous elements typical of belle epoque style, including forget-me-knots and ribbons. You’ll also note that the large, pear-shaped aquamarines are set atop cupid’s arrows — a touching design element for a tiara given as a wedding present.

Grand Ladies Site

Shortly after she received the tiara, Alexandra wore the diadem for a grand court ball in Schwerin, held in July 1904. The Christie’s catalogue notes that “Princess Alexandra was recorded wearing a pink silk dress with pearl necklaces and an aquamarine tiara” for the event. Around the same time — perhaps even the same evening — Friedrich Franz and Alexandra sat for a series of photographic portraits, which feature Alexandra wearing her new tiara.

Grand Ladies Site

Christie’s will sell the tiara in Geneva on May 15, and they expect it to bring somewhere in the neighborhood of $200,000-300,000. We don’t know the identity of the person selling the tiara, though the catalogue notes that it was indeed inherited by Alexandra’s descendants when she died in 1963. (The couple had five children, and they still have descendants living today.) Regardless of the seller, the auction house is clearly banking on the tiara’s romantic nature to inspire potential purchasers, noting that the tiara “represents a wonderful opportunity for collectors to acquire a jewel which was at one time in history an emblematic token of love.”

The Duchess of Marlborough Egg

07.25.2018 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

The Duchess of Marlborough Egg, made by Fabergé in 1902 for Consuelo Vanderbilt (Wikimedia Commons)

As we wrap up our month-long focus on Russia’s imperial jewels, we’re looking today at an unusual example from Fabergé’s series of incredible bejeweled Easter eggs. While most of the eggs were made for the Romanovs, this particular egg was commissioned by an American — and remained in American hands for a century.

The Duke and Duchess of Marlborough sailing with companions from France to India ahead of the Delhi Durbar, ca. 1902 (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

In January 1902, the 9th Duke of Marlborough and his American-born duchess, Consuelo Vanderbilt, headed to Russia to attend the whirlwind of imperial court occasions held annually during the celebrations of the Orthodox New Year. In her memoirs, Consuelo explained that they decided to go because her “husband, who had a weakness for pageantry, wished to play a fitting part in festivities renowned for their magnificence.” The couple stuffed their luggage with the necessary gowns, uniforms, and jewels, recruited companions and staff (including a private detective to keep an eye on the gems), and headed east for St. Petersburg.

A famous portrait of Consuelo Vanderbilt during her marriage to the Duke of Marlborough, ca. 1911 (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Consuelo wasn’t overly impressed with Russia on the whole, though she was wowed by the balls held at the imperial palaces and by the incredible jewelry worn by the imperial women. (Grand Duchess Vladimir even took Consuelo on a private tour of her jewels, showing her “endless parures” that were “set out in glass cases in her dressing room.” Can you imagine? Consuelo expressed relief that she’d bought a new, grand turquoise necklace for the trip.) But while she was there, likely during her visit to Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna’s palace, she absolutely fell in love with one feature of Romanov life: the incredible jeweled Easter eggs made for them by Fabergé.

The Duchess of Marlborough Egg (Wikimedia Commons)

The same year, Consuelo decided that she needed a glittering Fabergé egg of her own. She commissioned the firm to make her a large egg in shades of rose and gold that also functioned as a clock, much like a combination egg/clock she may have seen in Marie Feodorovna’s collection. Consuelo’s clock egg, made of pink and white enamel, gold, rose-cut diamonds, and seed pearls, sits atop a pedestal base that is adorned with love trophies, including torches and arrow, and Consuelo’s monogram, “CM.” A diamond-studded serpent rests on the base of the egg, slithering toward the clock band; its forked tongue indicates the hour. The egg was made by one of the firm’s masters, Mikhail Perkhin, who died the year after the Marlborough egg was made. Consuelo’s egg was the only large Fabergé egg ever commissioned by an American.

Ganna Walska, wearing an outfit that reportedly raised eyebrows, attends the opening night of Lohengrin at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, 14 December 1945 (Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

By 1926, Consuelo’s life had changed radically. Separated in 1906, she and Marlborough had divorced in 1921. Later that same year, she married a French aviator, Jacques Balsan, and settled in Paris. In the summer of 1926, Consuelo was focused on raising funds to build a new hospital in Vincennes. A charity gift auction was held as part of that fundraising effort, and Consuelo writes that she donated “a Fabergé clock [she] had brought back from Russia” to the auction. The buyer was another woman with American connections: Ganna Walska, the Polish-born wife of Harold Fowler McCormick, son of the founder of International Harvester.

A view of the love trophies adorning the base of the Duchess of Marlborough Egg (Wikimedia Commons)

In Walska, the egg found another eccentric, fascinating owner. An aspiring opera singer — even though her voice was reportedly mediocre at best — Walska’s career was heavily promoted by McCormick and his fortune. (Orson Welles apparently used their relationship as one of the inspirations for the film Citizen Kane.) McCormick and Walska divorced in 1931, five years after she acquired the Marlborough egg. In 1965, long after her divorce from her last (and sixth!) husband, Walska also decided to sell the egg. She needed funds to continue improvements to Lotusland, her private estate in Santa Barbara, California. The property is now a botanical garden and can be visited by the public.

Detail of the serpent’s tail portion of the Duchess of Marlborough Egg (Wikimedia Commons)

A New York auction house, Parke-Bernet, handled the sale. They advertised the egg as an “important wrought gold, rose, and white enamel serpent and egg rotary clock, set with diamonds.” Intriguingly, the lot notes for the 1965 auction tried to link the Marlborough egg with royalty, noting, “We believe the monogram to be that of Queen Alexandra, wife of Edward VII. By curious coincidence, the date beneath the clock, 1902, was the year of their coronation and could possibly have been a royal gift. She was an admirer of Fabergé’s work, and her collection is now at Sandringham.” Of course, we know this is not true; the egg belonged to a member of the aristocracy (Consuelo), not royalty.

Malcolm Forbes and close friend Elizabeth Taylor at the Château de Balleroy in Normandy, 11 June 1988 (MYCHELE DANIAU/AFP/Getty Images)

It’s tough to know how much this incorrectly-advertised royal provenance affected the sale of the egg, but one thing is for certain: through the Parke-Bernet sale, the egg became the cornerstone of one of the most important American collections of Fabergé ever assembled. On May 15, 1965, the egg was purchased by Malcolm Forbes, the famous American entrepreneur and magazine publisher. He paid $50,000 for the ornament. It was the first Fabergé egg that he bought; over time, he assembled a collection that reportedly included as many as twelve eggs.

The Duchess of Marlborough Egg (Wikimedia Commons)

After Forbes’s death in 1990, the collection stayed together for more than a decade. But in 2004, just before the collection was set to go on the auction block at Sotheby’s, nine eggs, including the Marlborough egg, were purchased privately from the Forbes family by the Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg. (The Bay Tree Egg, which we discussed earlier this month, was also part of the collection sold to Vekselberg.) The Marlborough egg and the rest of the Fabergé eggs owned by Vekselberg now reside in his private Fabergé museum in St. Petersburg. Intriguingly, although it was made in Russia by a Russian firm, the 2004 purchase marked the first time that the Marlborough egg was owned by a Russian national.

The Bay Tree Egg

07.02.2018 by The Court Jeweller // Leave a Comment

The Bay Tree Egg is displayed at Sotheby’s in New York ahead of its auction, 8 January 2004 (STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images)

Most of the jewels we focus on here on the blog are wearable pieces of art, but in imperial Russia, some of the most fabulous bejeweled pieces were objects — more specifically, Fabergé eggs. The presentation of jewel-encrusted eggs was an Easter tradition for the last two Russian emperors. Today we’re looking at one of my very favorite imperial Easter eggs: the Bay Leaf Egg.

The Bay Tree Egg is displayed at Sotheby’s in New York ahead of its auction, 8 January 2004 (STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images)

Tsar Alexander III and his son, Tsar Nicholas II, presented eggs to their wives and mothers to mark nearly every Easter holiday from 1885 until 1917. The eggs were created in the workshop of Peter Carl Fabergé, and 43 of the 50 that were made for the imperial family survive today This egg, the Bay Tree Egg, was made in 1911 for Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna, Tsar Nicholas II’s mother.

You’ll sometimes also see it called the “Orange Tree Egg,” in part because its design was based on the kinds of French royal orange trees that you’d see in places like Versailles, where the trees are similarly housed in boxes. Fabergé was reportedly inspired by a little eighteenth-century mechanical orange tree that he saw during a visit to France when he created this bay tree, which opens at the top to reveal its surprise: a tiny feathered bird who rises from the egg, flaps his little wings, and offers the viewer a sweet song.

The Bay Tree Egg is displayed at Charlottenburg Castle in Berlin, 15 June 2005 (MICHAEL KAPPELER/AFP/Getty Images)

Here’s a closer look at the leafy portion of the bay tree. The egg is made of gold and white and green enamel, set with numerous gems, including diamonds, rubies, citrines, amethysts, white onyx, pearls, and jade. The egg’s surprise is triggered by touching a small lever, disguised as a little piece of fruit, nestled among the tree’s leaves.

The Bay Tree Egg is displayed at Charlottenburg Castle in Berlin, 15 June 2005 (MICHAEL KAPPELER/AFP/Getty Images)

And here’s a view of the little jeweled box that contains the tree, as well as the elaborate base that surrounds it. The bay tree has changed hands numerous times since it was confiscated from the imperial family a century ago. Emanuel Snowman, a representative of Wartski, the famous Fabergé dealers in London, purchased the egg in 1927, presumably from the Soviet government. The firm sold the egg in 1934 to a British solicitor, Allan Gibson Hughes; Wartski purchased the egg back from Hughes’s estate when he died unexpectedly five years later.

The Bay Tree Egg is displayed at the Kremlin in Moscow after its purchase by Viktor Vekselberg, 18 May 2004 (YURI KADOBNOV/AFP/Getty Images)

In 1947, the egg was sold at auction at Sotheby’s in London. Its most famous mid-century owner was Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, the American entrepreneur who is most famous for publishing Forbes Magazine. He amassed a large collection of Fabergé eggs, and the Bay Tree Egg remained in the Forbes collection from 1965 until 2004, when it was sold to a Russian billionaire, Viktor Vekselberg.

Visitors view the Bay Tree Egg at Viktor Vekselberg’s museum in Saint Petersburg, 19 November 2013 (OLGA MALTSEVA/AFP/Getty Images)

Now back home in Russia, the Bay Tree Egg resides with eight other imperial Fabergé eggs in Vekselberg’s privately-owned Fabergé museum in Saint Petersburg. The museum collection has been housed in the restored Shuvalov Palace in the city since 2013. Interestingly, the other imperial egg made by Fabergé in 1911 — the Fifteenth Anniversary Egg, which commemorated the coronation of Nicholas and Alexandra — is also housed in Vekselberg’s museum.