The Mauve Egg of 1897 — One of the Lost Imperial Fabergés
The Mauve Egg of 1897 — One of the Lost Imperial Fabergés
An undocumented Easter egg presented to Tsar Nicholas II, missing since the Revolution
The Mauve Egg, dated to 1897, is one of the eight Imperial Easter eggs created by the workshops of Carl Fabergé for the Russian Imperial family that have not been recovered since the Russian Revolution. Of the fifty-two Imperial eggs documented as having been made between 1885 and 1916, forty-six are accounted for in museum collections, royal collections, and private hands. The remaining eight — the Mauve Egg among them — are known only from archival inventory references and surviving correspondence. No photographs, drawings, or detailed descriptions of the Mauve Egg are known to survive.
What is recorded and what is not
The Mauve Egg appears in the records of the Imperial Cabinet as one of the two eggs presented at Easter 1897 — Tsar Nicholas II's customary gift of two eggs each year, one to his mother the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna and one to his consort the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. The egg is recorded in administrative documents that confirm its delivery and its association with the Imperial Easter tradition, but the descriptive entries are sparse. The colour name — mauve — is the principal piece of evidence about its appearance. No description survives of its design, its surprise, the gemstones used, or the workmaster responsible.
The other 1897 egg — the Coronation Egg, presented to Alexandra Feodorovna and now in the Vekselberg collection at the Fabergé Museum in St. Petersburg — is one of the most famous Imperial eggs and is fully documented. The Mauve Egg, presented in the same Easter, has effectively no documented presence beyond its name and date.
The lost eight
The eight Imperial eggs whose whereabouts remain unknown are: the Hen with Sapphire Pendant (1886), the Cherub with Chariot (1888), the Necessaire (1889), the Mauve (1897), the Empire Nephrite (1902), the Royal Danish (1903), the Alexander III Commemorative (1909), and a 1903-or-1904 egg whose identification varies in the literature. Three additional eggs once on the lost list have been recovered or identified in recent decades, the most celebrated being the Third Imperial Egg, recovered in 2014 from a Midwestern American scrap dealer who had purchased it for melt value.
The recovery of the Third Imperial Egg revived speculation that other lost eggs might be in private hands without their owners recognising the significance of the object. Fabergé scholars including Géza von Habsburg and Marina Lopato continue to compile the documentary evidence on the missing eggs and to monitor major auctions for plausible candidates.
Why the records are thin
The Imperial Cabinet's records of egg presentations were kept primarily for administrative and accounting purposes rather than as art-historical documentation. Detailed photographs and descriptive inventories of the eggs were assembled at intervals — most notably the photographic albums commissioned in the early twentieth century — but coverage of individual eggs is uneven. Eggs that were photographed for these albums and that have survived in collections are well-documented; eggs that were not photographed and that did not survive are known only by inventory mention.
The 1897 Mauve Egg falls into the second category. It was made, it was presented, it appears in the Cabinet records, and it then disappears from the documentary trail. Whether it was destroyed during the Revolution, melted for its precious metals, broken up for its stones, or simply mislaid in private hands cannot be determined from the surviving evidence.
Status today
The Mauve Egg remains formally listed as a lost Imperial egg by the major Fabergé scholars and by the Fabergé Heritage Council. It is included in the standard catalogues of Imperial egg production and continues to be the subject of speculation among collectors. Any object presented for sale as the Mauve Egg would require thorough provenance investigation given the absence of corroborating contemporary documentation.