Your Faberge is not all it’s cracked up to be, V&A told
Tycoon’s German museum questions provenance of jewelled egg discovered with help of The Telegraph
FEW objects can match the intricate beauty of Fabergé eggs, as a new exhibition at the V&A attests.
Fabergé in London: Romance to Revolution features 15 of the treasures, the largest number to be displayed together in a generation.
But the V&A has found itself at the centre of a rather indelicate row. The Fabergé Museum in Baden-baden, Germany, has claimed that one of the eggs included in the exhibition is a fake.
The Third Imperial Easter Egg is dated to 1887 and has an extraordinary backstory: bought in the 2000s for £8,000 by a scrap metal dealer in the American Midwest, who had it in his kitchen for years until a Google search revealed he had a lost treasure on his hands.
In a post on its website, the Badenbaden museum dismissed the story, declaring: “There is simply nothing to say, except: ‘What nonsense!’”
The museum claimed that the Vacheron Constantin pocket watch concealed within the egg was produced “much later than 1887”, and that “similar cheap eggs were produced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries”.
The V&A said in response that “all objects in the exhibition comply with the V&A’S due diligence procedures.
Behind the row lies a fierce rivalry between two Russian tycoons, each of whom has founded a museum dedicated to the craft of jeweller Carl Fabergé.
The Fabergé Museum in Badenbaden, a popular tourist destination for wealthy Russians, was founded by Alexander Ivanov.
Mr Ivanov made his fortune importing Amstrad computers to Russia. He began buying antiques, focusing on Fabergé, and in 2007 paid £9million for an egg at auction in London, declaring it “cheap”. Mr Ivanov has faced accusations of buying fakes himself. Andrew Ruzhnikov, a London-based Russian art dealer, alleged last year that several objects acquired by Mr Ivanov and on display at the Hermitage museum were fakes. Mr Ivanov denied the claims.
The V&A has not borrowed any of the Baden-baden museum eggs, which may have ruffled feathers.
It has instead borrowed items from the Fabergé Museum in St Petersburg, owned by Mr Ivanov’s rival, billionaire Viktor Vekselberg.
The co-curator of the V&A exhibition is Kieran Mccarthy, of Mayfair jewellers Wartski, and a Fabergé expert. It was Mr Mccarthy who verified the discovery of the Third Imperial Easter Egg, and he is also on the advisory board of the St Petersburg museum.
The Third Imperial Easter Egg came to light in 2014, in what Mr Mccarthy likened to “Indiana Jones being presented with the Lost Ark”.
The scrap metal dealer who bought it from an antiques stall had tried to sell it, but it ended up languishing in his kitchen for years, according to Mr Mccarthy, until one night he Googled “egg” and “Vacherin Constantin” – the name on the timepiece inside – and found a 2011 Daily Telegraph article with the headline: “Is this £20 million nest-egg on your mantelpiece?”
He contacted Mr Mccarthy, who was named in the piece, and who flew over to meet him. The art expert said at the time. “I examined it and said: ‘You have an Imperial Fabergé Easter Egg.’ He literally fell to the floor in astonishment.”
Fabergé made 50 Imperial Easter Eggs for the tsar and his family. Seized by the Bolsheviks, many were sold overseas. Three are in the Royal Collection. Seven remain unaccounted for.