Russian mogul buys prized Fabergé eggs
A prized collection of Fabergé eggs owned by the family of late American publisher Malcolm Forbes has been sold to a Russian oil tycoon who said he intends to return the collection to their homeland.
Terms of the sale – which includes 12 of the famed, bejewelled eggs and an assortment of other gems – were not released by Sotheby’s auction house in New York.
When the collection was put up for auction last month, Sotheby’s said the most valued item, the Coronation Egg, could go for as much as €19m, and the entire collection could fetch up to €73m.
The eggs, about five inches tall, are intricately designed pieces, individually crafted with unique designs.
The Coronation Egg, for example, is created from gold-coloured guilloche enamel and contains a replica of the coach TsarNicholas II’s wife rode into Moscow.
Bill Ruprecht, Sotheby’s chief executive, said the auction house negotiated the transaction on behalf of the Forbes family.
Industrialist Victor Vekselberg said he intended to return the collection of eggs to Russia.
The collection “represents perhaps the most significant example of our cultural heritage outside Russia,” he said. “The religious, spiritual and emotional content captured by these Faberge eggs touches upon the soul of the Russian people.”
Malcolm Forbes, the former publisher and editor of Forbes magazine, began collecting the items in the 1960s and continued until his death in 1990. The collection continued to be displayed in the Forbes Galleries and in shows worldwide.
“The family is delighted that the advent of a new era in Russia has made possible the return of these extraordinary objects,” the Forbes family said. “It is an astonishingly romantic ending to one of the great stories in art history.”
Carl Fabergé, who created jewellery for European royalty in the 19th century, was commissioned by Tsar Alexander III, of Russia, in 1885 to create an Easter gift for his wife, Tsarina Marina Feodorovna. Nicholas II continued the tradition, and the collection grew.
There are 50 Imperial Easter Eggs in the world, including the nine now owned by Vekselberg.
There are 10 in the Moscow Kremlin Collection, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in the United States has five and the Queen owns three. Eight are unaccounted for, Sotheby’s said.
Vekselberg, listed by Forbes magazine as having a net worth at around €2bn, is a Ukrainian-born oil baron who made the bulk of his fortune when he teamed up with Mikhail Fridman’s Alfa Group to take over Russia’s third-largest oil company, TNK, in 1997.
This year, TNK signed a deal to merge with the Russian operations of BP, giving Vekselberg and other TNK owners €5.4bn in cash and BP stock.
