Word: imperiale
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Russia's last imperial family, the Romanovs, celebrated Easter with decorative eggs, the traditional symbol of Christ's Resurrection. They were not, however, the kind of gift a child might paint and put in a basket. Beginning in 1885, the Czars commissioned Russian Jeweler Carl Faberge to create a series...
The story began in 1977. Aryeh, an avid collector of Russian artifacts who had emigrated from Iran to the U.S., owned some 100 of Faberge's plain enamel eggs, which were made for ordinary collectors and not monarchs. Hearing that an Imperial egg was being auctioned off by Christie's...
After Shahnaz won the egg with a bid of $250,000, Aryeh flew to Geneva to pick up his purchase. He was disappointed with its appearance and refused to pay, fearing that it was a fake. Says Aryeh: "Faberge made very few Imperial eggs, and they are all masterpieces. The...
Aryeh returned to his home in the U.S., a 31-room Georgian mansion in Kings Point, N.Y., where he lives with his wife and five children. Then, last June, he learned that Publisher Malcolm Forbes paid $1.76 million for a Faberge with a crowing rooster inside. The purchase gave Forbes...
Two weeks before the auction, Christie's New York president, Christopher Burge, told Aryeh that the house would not sell his egg. The reason was that Snowman now said it was not an Imperial egg but rather one of Faberge's pretty but less valuable baubles. Other experts noted that...