Word: shahnaz
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...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 in Geneva, he asked his sister Shahnaz, who lived in Switzerland, to try to buy it. This particular egg was supposedly commissioned for the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty in 1913 by Czarina Alexandra for her husband Nicholas II. It opens to reveal a tiny statue of Nicholas astride a horse...
...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 one I opened in Switzerland was junk." Christie's officials insisted the egg was genuine. After months of haggling, Christie's sued Aryeh. Finally, the auction house produced a letter from British Art Expert A. Kenneth Snowman, the world's leading authority on Faberge, who declared the egg "undoubtedly...
...private life. He seldom smiled, and his voice lacked warmth or expression. His first marriage, to Egypt's Princess Fawzia, King Farouk's sister, ended in a 1948 divorce when the Shah concluded that she could not give him a male heir (a daughter, Princess Shahnaz, is now 39). Three years later, the Shah married Soraya Esfandiari, a beautiful Iranian commoner. He divorced her in 1958, again because the union failed to produce an heir. In 1959, he married Farah Diba, then a 21-year-old architecture student in Paris. Sensitive and compassionate, Farah sought to soften...