The Kelch Apple Blossom Egg is one of seven Easter eggs commissioned from Carl Fabergé by the Russian industrialist Alexander Ferdinandovich Kelch as gifts to his wife Barbara, also known as Varvara Bazanova-Kelch. Made in 1901, it is part of the only series of Fabergé eggs comparable in ambition to the Imperial commissions, although produced for private clients rather than the Romanov court.

The Kelch series in context

Alexander Kelch came from a Saint Petersburg merchant family and inherited substantial holdings in Siberian gold-mining and railways through his marriage to Barbara Bazanova in 1894. Between 1898 and 1904 he commissioned seven eggs from Fabergé, beginning with the Hen Egg of 1898 and ending with the Chanticleer Egg. The Apple Blossom Egg sits roughly midway in the series and is generally considered, along with the Twelve Panel Egg, among the most accomplished. The Kelch eggs were made in the same Saint Petersburg workshops as the Imperial pieces, with workmaster Mikhail Perchin responsible for the early ones in the series.

Description of the egg

The Apple Blossom Egg is worked in nephrite, with the body of the egg carved from a single piece of dark green stone and overlaid with a network of gold branches in chased relief. The branches bear apple blossoms rendered in white enamel with rose-cut diamonds at the centres of the flowers and small leaves of varicoloured gold. The composition is naturalistic in the manner of late nineteenth-century Russian decorative art and shows Fabergé's characteristic restraint in colour, allowing the materials themselves to carry the visual weight.

The surprise

Like the Imperial eggs, the Kelch pieces conceal a surprise within. In the case of the Apple Blossom Egg the original surprise has not survived intact, and contemporary documentation is incomplete. References in Fabergé scholarship, including the work of Geza von Habsburg and Marina Lopato, suggest a miniature object now missing. This loss is not unusual among non-Imperial eggs, which were less carefully documented in court inventories than the eggs presented by Tsar Alexander III and Tsar Nicholas II.

Provenance and ownership

The Kelch family fortunes collapsed during the Russian Revolution, and the eggs were dispersed through international dealers in the 1920s, principally through the Paris jeweller Morgan. Several passed through the collections of American and European industrialists. The Apple Blossom Egg's twentieth-century history includes time in private American hands, and it is now held in a major private collection of Russian decorative arts. Its ownership has periodically been disclosed at exhibitions including those organised by the Fabergé Museum in Saint Petersburg and travelling shows mounted by Wartski of London.

Place in Fabergé scholarship

The Kelch eggs occupy an instructive position in the firm's output. They demonstrate that Fabergé did not reserve his finest work for the Imperial commissions and that wealthy private clients could obtain pieces of comparable quality. For modern collectors and historians the Kelch series is therefore essential evidence for understanding the workshop's range. Kenneth Snowman's monograph The Art of Carl Fabergé remains a foundational reference for the series, and subsequent scholarship by Geza von Habsburg, Marilyn Pfeifer Swezey, and the catalogue of the Fabergé Museum has refined the record.