Rothschild Fabergé Egg

Rothschild Fabergé egg
Year delivered	1902
Customer	Béatrice Ephrussi de Rothschild
Current owner
Individual or institution	Hermitage Museum
Year of acquisition	2014
Design and materials
Workmaster	Michael Perchin

The Rothschild egg is a jewelled, enameled, decorated egg that was made under the supervision of the Russian jeweller Peter Carl Fabergé by the workshop of Michael Perchin in 1902.Béatrice Ephrussi de Rothschild presented this egg to Germaine Halphen upon her engagement to Béatrice's younger brother, Édouard Alphonse James de Rothschild.

Upon the hour, a diamond set cockerel pops up from the top of the egg, flaps its wings four times, nods his head three times, crowing all the while. This lasts fifteen seconds, before the clock strikes the hour on a bell.

As one of only four eggs with an ornamentation surprise and a clock, similarities have been drawn with the 1904 Kelch Chanticleer egg.

It is one of the few eggs that was not made for the Russian Imperial family, and it had been in the Rothschild family since it was first purchased. It was one of the most expensive eggs that Fabergé had ever made and sold.

It was sold by Christie's auction house on 28 November 2007, for £8.9 million (including commission). The price achieved by the egg set three auction records: it is the most expensive timepiece, Russian object, and Fabergé object ever sold at auction, surpassing the $9.6 million sale of the 1913 Winter egg in 2002.

The egg was bought by Alexander Ivanov, the director of the Russian National Museum. "It's one of the most beautiful, valuable and most intricate Fabergé eggs ever," Ivanov said, as well as adding that "We didn't have investors, and this egg will go into the private museum which we are building in downtown Moscow. We will not resell it." The Rothschild egg was eventually displayed at Ivanov's Fabergé Museum in Baden-Baden, Germany.

...
Wikipedia