1902 The Clover Leaf Egg
Alexandra Feodorovna
Purchase price 8,750 rubles.
The Clover Leaf Egg is one of the last works produced by the brilliant workmaster Mikhail E. Perkhin (1865-1903). It is composed of intricately woven golden cloverleafs, their petals laid out in tiny rose-cut diamonds or filled in with translucent enamel, reminiscent of stained glass. This type of enameling effect — called “stained glass” or “window glass” enamel — is very difficult to achieve. Only a handful of the leading Russian jewelers possessed the secret, which fact accounted for the egg’s relatively high price tag. A ribbon of small rubies — a stone said to represent passionate love — winds its way among the shimmering clover. The exquisite fine openwork stand takes the form of gracefully arched stalks with leaves of clover made of gold.
From an entry in the “Inventory of items, belonging to Their Imperial Majesties and kept in their private quarters at the Winter Palace”: “Egg made of gold, with clover leaves of opalescent enamel and others of rose-cut diamonds. The trefoils are in places interwoven with ribbons made of small rubies. The Egg is topped by a faceted ruby, surrounded by rose-cut diamonds. The Egg may be opened, the upper edge of its lower part has an openwork border of gold bearing the initials AΘ, five crowns and the year 1902. The Egg rests on a stand of gold in the form of boughs with clover leaves.”
The Egg’s surprise is lost, but in 1991 Valentin V. Skurlov located in the archival holdings of His Majesty’s Privy Office an invoice, indicating that the Egg once held a large four-leaf clover. Its petals were lined with twenty-three large brilliant and rose-cut diamonds around four miniature portraits, in all likelihood of the Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatyana, Maria and Anastasia.
In the collection of the Kremlin Armory Museum, Moscow, RF