Karelian Birch (Fabergé egg)


The Karelian Birch egg, also known as the Birch Egg, was an unfinished 1917 Easter egg designed under the supervision of Peter Carl Fabergé for the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, as an Easter gift to his mother, the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna. It was the second to last Fabergé egg made, before Constellation. Whereabouts unknown.
The Birch Egg was due to be completed and delivered to the Tsar on Easter 1917. Before the egg was delivered however, the February Revolution took place and Nicholas II was forced to abdicate on 15 March.
A number of the Fabergé Imperial Easter eggs created during World War I, utilized less costly materials. However, the Karelian Birch egg was the only one to use an organic substance as a primary construction element.

History and description

Fabergé's eldest son, Eugène, told Henry Bainbridge that as far as he could remember, the dowager empress’s 1917 Easter egg was to be of Karelian birch. This one-line reference was all that was known of it until Tatiana Fabergé uncovered new evidence in her family files. She found a letter from Franz Birbaum, Fabergé’s chief designer, to Eugène Fabergé in August 1922. It says:
Likewise, Birbaum says in his memoirs in 1919:

Surprise

Virtually nothing is known about the possible surprise. A wooden egg with surprise inside is described in an inventory made of treasures taken from the palace of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich, brother to Tsar Alexander III, five days after the 1917 October Revolution. However, this is probably a different egg, since it appears to be finished and did not belong to the dowager empress:
Birbaum states in the abovementioned memoirs written in 1919 that the two Easter eggs for 1917 were both unfinished.
On the other hand, in August 1922 Birbaum mentions in a letter to Fabergé's eldest son, Eugène, what may well be the Karelian Birch Egg and its surprise:

A questioned authenticity egg

In November 2002, it was announced that the 1917 Karelian Birch Easter Egg by Fabergé had been purchased by the privately owned Russian National Museum in Moscow, which has no premises. Alexander Ivanov, the director of the Museum, declined to name the Egg's previous owner, who he said lived in London and descended from a family of Russian emigres, saying only that the Egg cost the museum "millions of dollars".
For several years now, this questioned Egg has been on display at Ivanov's so-called Fabergé Museum in Baden-Baden, which houses his Fabergé/Fauxbergé collection. The complete purchase, consisted of the egg itself, the case, the wind-up key for the surprise, Fabergé's "original" invoice to Nicholas II, and a letter from Fabergé to Alexander Kerensky complaining about not being paid and asking that the egg be delivered. The surprise itself was not in the collector's possession.
In an article published in 2005 in The Art Newspaper, experts were not convinced about the authenticity of this and another "Imperial" Easter egg owned by Ivanov.
Likewise, this egg was included in the catalogue of a controversial exhibition held in the Hermitage Museum titled "Fabergé: Jeweller to the Imperial Court", along with five other eggs from Ivanov's museum in Baden-Baden, all of which were identified as Fauxbergé by experts.