1916 The Order of St George Egg
Maria Feodorovna
Purchase price unknown
The 1916 Order of St. George Egg is the last Easter present commissioned by Nicholas II for his mother, the Dowager Empress Maria Fedorovna. It features no precious stones, complex mechanisms or fanciful surprises. This was due in part to the general mobilization, which sent some of Faberge’s best workmen to the front. At the same time, the Imperial family was eager to project an image of austerity.
During the war years the Dowager Empress resided in Kiev. As the head of the Russian Red Cross, she took part in setting up hospitals and military medical trains. Nicholas II spent practically all his time at the Army headquarters in Mogilev, where the Tsesarevich Aleksey joined him in the fall of 1915. The Emperor and his son reviewed the troops, visited officers’ and soldiers’ dugouts, and sampled the food in field kitchens. Nicholas II thanked the regiments for their service, bestowed decorations, and on October 25, 1915 was himself honored with a St. George Cross, 4thclass. (The Tsesarevich Aleksey had earlier received a silver medal, 4thclass, on a St. George ribbon, having been “in the vicinity of long-range fire of the enemy artillery.”)
The Order of St. George Egg commemorates the honors received by Maria Fedorovna’s son and grandson. The body of the Egg is covered in opaque enamel of greenish hue with a slight mother-of-pearl effect. Both sides of the Egg are applied with St. George crosses and medals. At the touch of a button these spring open, revealing watercolor miniature portraits of Nicholas II and Tsesarevich Aleksey. The crosses are tied together with the enameled ribbons, bearing the St. George pattern, the colors of “gunpowder and flames,” standing out prominently against the delicate matte background, “strewn” with more crosses, inscribed into a trellis formed of bay leaves and receding into the “misty” enamel. The top and bottom of the Egg are applied with the monogram of Maria Fedorovna and the date of the present, in coolly gleaming steel.
Upon receiving the Egg, Maria Fedorovna wrote to her son, “I kiss you three times and thank you from the bottom of my heart for your dear postcards and the delightful egg with the miniatures that dear Fabergé himself came with. Amazingly beautiful. It is so sad not to be together.” The Imperial family would never again come together to celebrate their beloved Easter holiday…The Order of St. George was the only egg that Maria Fedorovna kept at her side until 1919, when she was forced to leave the country aboard the British warship HMS Marlborough. After her death in Denmark in 1928, the Egg passed to the Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna. Maria Fedorovna’s grandson, Prince of the Imperial Blood Vasiliy Alexandrovich, offered the Egg for sale at a Sotheby’s auction in 1976, where it was purchased by Malcolm Forbes.
In the collection of the Faberge Museum, St. Petersburg, RF