The Beilin-Makagon Art Foundation to participate in the exhibition Fabergé in London: Romance to Revolution at the Victoria & Albert Museum

The Beilin-Makagon Art Foundation (BEMAF) is pleased to announce the loan of two of the collection’s most important objects to the exhibition Fabergé in London: Romance to Revolution. They will be on view at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum from 20 November 2021 to 8 May 2022. The exhibition is the first to be devoted to the legendary Russian goldsmith and his little-known London branch. BEMAF’s diamond-set gold and enamel cigarette case and salmon pink enamel vanity case were both purchased by American heiress Nancy Leeds (1873-1923), a great connoisseur of jewelry and objects of vertu perhaps best known for the purchase in 1913 of the Cartier Diamond Loop tiara. That same year she purchased the gold and enamel cigarette case from Fabergé for £220. It was the most expensive item ever sold at the London branch. 

The exhibition, which is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog with essays by leading scholars in the field, includes close to 200 objects selected from the most important public and private collections in the world, including the Royal Collection, the Moscow Kremlin Museums, the Hermitage, the Link of Times Foundation, Fabergé Museum, St. Petersburg, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Fersman Mineralogical Museum, the McFerrin Foundation, the Sandoz Foundation, Wartski, and A La Vieille Russie. According to the museum’s press office, some of the key rarities on display will include:

• “The Peacock Egg of 1907-8, shown on public display for the first time in over a decade. This rock crystal egg, finely engraved with rocaille, contains a surprise of an enamelled gold peacock automaton, perched in the branches of a coloured gold tree with flowers in enamel and precious stones. The peacock, when lifted from the tree, placed on a flat surface and wound up, proudly struts around and fans out its tail feathers.”

• “The collection on display will include several that have never before been shown in the UK including the largest Imperial Egg – the Moscow Kremlin Egg – inspired by the architecture of the Dormition Cathedral, on loan from the Moscow Kremlin Museums. The Alexander Palace Egg, featuring watercolour portraits of the children of Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra – and containing a surprise model of the palace inside – will also take centre stage alongside the Tercentenary Egg, created to celebrate 300 years of the Romanov dynasty, only a few years before the dynasty crumbled. Other eggs that will feature include Empress Alexandra Feodorovna’s Basket of Flowers Egg, lent by Her Majesty The Queen from the Royal Collection.” 

• “Two rare human sculptures that only after the Imperial easter eggs are considered the most coveted of his creations with less than 50 ever recorded; a pair of figurine portraits of the private bodyguards of the Dowager Empress and the Tsarina, commissioned by Emperor Nicholas II in 1912, reunited for the first time in over 100 years since they were confiscated following the Russian Revolution in 1917, along with nearly all of the imperial family’s personal possessions. One of the figures remained in Pavlovsk Palace south of St Petersburg while his brother-in-arms was bought by a wealthy Fabergé collector in New York City, discovered in the family attic during a house clearance and later sold at auction in 2013.”

• “Other star objects include a commission from King Edward of his faithful wirehaired fox terrier Caesar, a notebook given by Emperor Nicholas II and his wife Empress Alexandra Feodorovna to Queen Victoria for Christmas in 1896, and a sparkling aquamarine and diamond tiara – a token of love from Frederick Francis IV, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin to his bride Princess Alexandra of Hanover and Cumberland.”

The exhibition catalog is now available for pre-order through multiple booksellers.