This egg was made by the Fabergé firm in 1896 incorporating gold, enamel, diamonds, emerald, rock crystal and watercolor on ivory. It was presented by Tsar Nicholas II to his wife, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, in the same year for their second Easter as a married couple – just two months before their coronation.

The surprise inside the rock crystal egg is a gold support holding 12 miniature paintings of various palaces and residences that were significant to the empress. When the large cabochon emerald at the apex is depressed, it engages a mechanism that rotates the miniatures inside the egg, which can then open like the pages of a book.

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The other thing we did in Richmond was visit the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, not something I’d normally do on a first visit to a place, but I have long wanted to see their collection of five Fabergé eggs, and this was my chance to do it.


Moon over Capitol Hill, posted earlier: