The Karelian Birch Egg is one of the two Imperial Easter eggs ordered by Tsar Nicholas II from the House of Fabergé for Easter 1917 and never delivered to the Imperial family because of the February Revolution and the abdication of Nicholas II in March 1917. It is one of the more unusual pieces in the Imperial series because of its primary material — Karelian birch, the heavily figured burr wood from the birch forests of north-western Russia — rather than the precious enamels, gemstones and gold that characterise the better-known eggs of the previous decades.

Context: the abbreviated 1917 commissions

By the third year of the First World War the wartime austerity affecting all aspects of Russian Imperial expenditure had reached the Fabergé Easter egg series. Earlier wartime eggs (the Steel Military Egg of 1916 and the Order of St George Egg of 1916) had already moved away from the gold-and-precious-stone vocabulary of the prewar series toward steel and patriotic motifs. For 1917 Nicholas commissioned two eggs as in previous years — one for his mother the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna and one for his wife Empress Alexandra Feodorovna — but with even more restrained materials. The Karelian Birch Egg was the egg ordered for Maria Feodorovna; the Constellation Egg, intended for Alexandra, was the second.

Description

The Karelian Birch Egg is a turned and polished egg-shape body of Karelian birch (the densely figured burr-wood form of Betula pendula var. carelica) mounted on a vertical gilt-metal stand. The mounts are restrained — gold collar fittings at the joining of the two halves, a small cabochon at the apex — and the surprise inside was specified in the workshop documents as a small mechanical elephant of gold and brilliants, a reference to the elephant motif of the Danish royal Order of the Elephant, of which Maria Feodorovna (born Princess Dagmar of Denmark) was a recipient. The dimensions are modest by Imperial-egg standards, in keeping with the wartime restraint of the commission.

Provenance and rediscovery

The egg was paid for by the abdicated Tsar in early 1917 (the Fabergé invoice for 12,500 roubles is documented) but was not delivered to the Imperial family. After the October Revolution the egg passed out of Fabergé workshop possession and disappeared from the historical record for most of the twentieth century. Its rediscovery is one of the more recent Imperial-egg attributions: the egg surfaced in private hands in the 2000s and was authenticated through the documentary evidence in the surviving Fabergé workshop records. The Russian art-historical community treats the Karelian Birch Egg as one of the eight Imperial eggs whose location was unknown for most of the twentieth century but which has been rediscovered or located in the more recent period.

The surprise

The original surprise — the gold and diamond elephant — was not with the egg when it resurfaced. The Russian National Museum and the Fabergé Museum in St Petersburg have at various times reported acquisition of an associated mechanical elephant believed to correspond to the original surprise, although attribution of the specific piece to this specific egg has remained the subject of some scholarly debate.

Place in the Imperial series

The Karelian Birch Egg occupies an unusual position in the Imperial series because of three things: it is one of only two 1917 commissions, it was never delivered to its intended recipient, and it uses a non-precious primary material. The use of Karelian birch reflects both wartime austerity and the broader Russian decorative-arts interest in the figured wood, which had been used for furniture, snuffboxes and small objects in the Russian decorative-arts tradition since the eighteenth century. Together with the unfinished Constellation Egg of 1917, it stands as a marker of the abrupt end of the Imperial Easter egg tradition.

Trade and museum significance

The Imperial Easter eggs are among the most highly valued pieces of decorative-arts jewellery in the world. The major holdings are the Kremlin Armoury Museum (10 eggs), the Fabergé Museum in St Petersburg (founded by Viktor Vekselberg, 9 eggs), and various other museum and private collections. The Karelian Birch Egg's specific location and ownership status has been variously reported through the 2010s and into the 2020s, with the egg having been associated with Russian collectors and at times with the Russian National Museum. Insurance valuations on the surviving Imperial eggs run into the tens of millions of US dollars, and the Karelian Birch Egg's documented Imperial provenance places it firmly within that valuation cohort despite its restrained materials.