The Nécessaire Egg, 1889 — One of the Lost Imperial Fabergé Eggs
The Nécessaire Egg, 1889 — One of the Lost Imperial Fabergé Eggs
An Imperial Easter egg known only from archival records, presumed lost since the Russian Revolution
The Nécessaire Egg is one of the lost Imperial Fabergé eggs, believed to have been created by the House of Fabergé in 1889 for Tsar Alexander III to present to his wife, Empress Maria Feodorovna, at Easter. The egg is known almost entirely from archival records — the Fabergé invoices, court ledgers, and limited descriptive documentation in the imperial gift inventories — rather than from direct examination, since no photographs survive and no confirmed sighting of the egg has been recorded since the early decades of the twentieth century. The Nécessaire is therefore one of the eight Imperial eggs whose current location is unknown and whose recovery would be among the most significant events in twentieth-century Fabergé scholarship.
The Imperial Easter egg series
The Imperial Easter egg series began in 1885 with a commission from Alexander III for an Easter gift to Maria Feodorovna and continued through 1916, with eggs presented annually to the Tsarina (and from 1894 also to the Dowager Empress, after Alexander III's death and Nicholas II's accession). The series totals fifty Imperial eggs, of which forty-three are accounted for and seven remain lost or unconfirmed. The lost eggs are: the 1888 Cherub with Chariot, the 1889 Nécessaire, the 1897 Mauve Egg, the 1902 Empire Nephrite Egg, the 1903 Royal Danish Egg, the 1909 Alexander III Commemorative Egg, and the 1917 Constellation Egg (which was not presented because of the Revolution but for which substantial preparatory work survives).
What is known about the Nécessaire
The Nécessaire is documented in Fabergé and court records as having been delivered for Easter 1889. Surviving archival entries describe it as containing a fitted nécessaire — a set of small toiletry, manicure, or grooming implements, typically with handles in carved and gem-set form — as its surprise. The Fabergé invoice records the cost as 1,900 roubles, an amount consistent with a substantial but not exceptional Imperial egg of the period.
Beyond these basic records, descriptive documentation is sparse. No surviving photograph has been confirmed; no detailed description survives from anyone who handled the egg in the imperial collection or in early-Soviet inventories; and no twentieth-century sighting of the egg has been substantiated. The Fabergé Research Foundation and the major Fabergé scholars — Géza von Habsburg, Marina Lopato, Ulla Tillander-Godenhielm — list the Nécessaire among the lost eggs in their authoritative inventories.
The post-1917 dispersal
The fate of most of the Imperial eggs was determined by the chaos of the 1917 Revolution and its aftermath. The eggs in Maria Feodorovna's personal collection followed her out of Russia via the Crimea to Denmark in 1919. The eggs in Alexandra Feodorovna's (Nicholas II's wife) personal collection passed into Bolshevik hands when the imperial family was placed under house arrest and eventually executed at Yekaterinburg in 1918. The eggs held in the Anichkov Palace and other imperial residences passed to Soviet inventories and were variously preserved at the Kremlin Armoury, sold through the London market in the 1920s, or lost to documentary history.
The Nécessaire, having been a gift to Maria Feodorovna, would in normal course have left Russia with her in 1919 and been distributed among her surviving descendants on her death in 1928. The fact that no twentieth-century sighting is recorded suggests one of three possibilities: the egg was lost or destroyed in the chaos of 1917-1928 before any documented Western sighting could be made; the egg passed into private hands without identification and remains unrecognised in a private collection; or the egg's identity was confused or lost in the transition from imperial collection to Western dispersal. Substantial scholarly effort has been invested in tracing each possibility.
The 2014 recovery of the Third Imperial Egg
The 2014 recovery of the Third Imperial Egg (1887) — discovered in a Midwestern American scrap-metal dealer's possession after over a century of unrecognised existence — illustrated that lost Imperial eggs can resurface. The Third Imperial Egg had been considered permanently lost from at least the 1922 Soviet sales onward; its 2014 recovery, identification, and sale (reported in the Financial Times, the Telegraph, and the BBC) for an undisclosed sum estimated by trade press at over £20 million, demonstrated that the inventory of "lost" Imperial eggs is not necessarily permanent and that ongoing scholarly and dealer attention can produce recoveries.
The 2014 recovery has motivated continued attention to the remaining lost eggs, including the Nécessaire. The combination of the Wartski-led Fabergé scholarship community, the major auction houses' antique-jewellery departments, and the Fabergé Research Foundation maintains the working knowledge base needed to recognise an unidentified Imperial egg should one resurface.
Speculation and identification challenges
Speculation about the Nécessaire's possible current state is necessarily speculative. The egg might have been broken up and the components dispersed (the bullion value of the gold and the gems would be substantial); the egg might have been preserved intact in an unidentified private collection; the egg might have been lost in the upheavals of the early twentieth century. Identification of any candidate egg would require physical examination by Fabergé specialists, comparison with the surviving archival descriptions, and confirmation against the Fabergé hallmarking and workmaster signatures of the period.
The workmaster of record for 1889 Imperial eggs was Mikhail Perkhin, who served as Fabergé's principal workmaster for high-end Imperial pieces from the late 1880s until his death in 1903. A candidate Nécessaire egg would carry Perkhin's hallmarks and would show construction characteristic of Fabergé's late-1880s work. The verification process for any candidate would be exacting and would draw on the full apparatus of Fabergé scholarship.
The cultural and commercial significance
The lost Imperial eggs occupy a distinctive position in the Fabergé and broader collector imagination. The combination of historic provenance, exceptional craftsmanship, and the romantic possibility of recovery from obscurity has supported sustained interest, occasional speculation, and the continued willingness of collectors and dealers to examine candidate pieces with the seriousness the prospect deserves. A recovery of the Nécessaire would be a generational event in Fabergé collecting, comparable to the 2014 Third Imperial Egg recovery.