Harnessing 20 highly skilled masters, the objet embodies 139 fine, white pearls with a golden lustre, 3,305 diamonds, carved rock crystal and mother-of-pearl set on white and yellow gold.

Paying homage to the forthcoming centenary of the last Fabergé Imperial Eggs ever created, Fabergé has crafted a spectacular, one-of-a-kind egg objet in collaboration with the Al Fardan family, one of the world's most renowned collectors of pearls. The new masterpiece was unveiled at the prestigious Doha Jewellery and Watches exhibition which took place last month in Qatar.

The natural pearls adorning the egg were hand selected by Hussain Ibrahim Al-Fardan from his personal collection.

"I have a passion for natural pearls and it took me many years to build my current collection gathering some of the most extraordinary pearls in the world," said Al-Fardan. "Fabergé has a great history in making jewelry for royalty, and a truly precious Fabergé Egg is a luxury treasure and the symbol of a long-gone era of opulence. This is why I partnered with Fabergé to combine these two traditional treasures: the Fabergé Egg and natural Arabian Gulf pearls, to create an exceptional piece."

The Fabergé Pearl Egg (pictured above) draws inspiration from the formation of a pearl within an oyster, and the egg's painstakingly-crafted mother-of-pearl exterior opens to reveal a unique grey pearl of 12.17 carats, sourced from the Arabian Gulf and exhibiting exceptional purity and a highly unusual shade of grey.

Harnessing 20 highly skilled workmasters, the objet embodies 139 fine, white pearls with a golden luster, 3,305 diamonds, carved rock crystal and mother-of-pearl set on white and yellow gold. Each pearl showcased on the Fabergé Pearl Egg was hand-selected by Hussain Ibrahim Al Fardan from his private collection. An ingenious mechanism enables the entire outer shell to rotate on its base, simultaneously opening in six sections to unveil its treasure.

The Pearl Egg is accompanied by a sumptuous Fabergé necklace of white pearls, diamonds and mother of pearl featuring a scallop motif, and finished with an exquisite 19.44 carat white pearl drop. 
 

The egg is the first of its kind commissioned since World War I. 

Peter Carl Fabergé and his company designed 50 bejeweled eggs for the Russian Imperial Family from 1885 to 1917. Alexander III and Nicholas II commissioned the most famous "Imperial" eggs as Easter gifts for their wives and mothers. The meticulously crafted objets d'art were produced up until the Russian Revolution, when the Fabergé family fled Russia.

Faberge's last Imperial creation -- the Steel Military Egg -- was commissioned in 1916 by the Tsar just months before he was removed from power by the Russian Revolution and forced to abdicate in February 1917. Nicholas II had arranged the egg as a present for his wife, Alexandra.

The tradition of giving decorative eggs was started by his father, Tsar Alexander III, who surprised his wife Empress Maria with a jeweled Easter egg in 1885.

The new egg has been crafted "to mark the upcoming (100th) anniversary since the last Imperial egg was commissioned," Faberge's spokeswoman Alize Morand stated. She said the egg would be the first of several that will soon be unveiled by Faberge.

After going on show for the first time, the egg will be sold at the end of the five-day exhibition in Qatar and there are already buyers interested in the piece. One estimate put the value of the new egg at $2 million.

But Morand would not confirm that and said the price could only be known "on application" for interested buyers. She added that several people had already expressed their desire to buy the piece.

The $2 million price tag may end up being a conservative estimate. The last Imperial egg to be auctioned reportedly went for more than $30 million when sold last year and the last officially known price for an egg was $18.5 million, which was sold at Christie's in London in 2007.

Faberge says that 50 eggs in total were commissioned and 43 of those are known to have survived the Russian Revolution.

The Mystery of the Lost "Amber Room" 

Dubbed the Eighth Wonder of the World, the Amber Room was an ornate chamber made of amber panels.

Designed by sculptor Andreas Schlüter, it was started in 1701, and originally installed in Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin, home of the kings of Prussia. But during a state visit, the room caught the eye of Peter the Great. The Prussian monarch, Frederick William I, keen to cement a union with Russia, decided to donate the room to the Russian Tsar. It was moved to the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, then installed at the Summer Palace in 1755. Where it remained undisturbed until the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in 1941. Despite the best attempt by the Russians to hide the exquisite panels behind flimsy wallpaper, the Germans soon found the Amber Room, and dismantled it in  just 36 hours, before shipping it to Konigsberg Castle on Germany's Baltic coast, now the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. 

And then - without any explanations, leads nor clues - it disappeared.

The original Amber Room, Catherine Palace, Tsarskoye Selo, 1931

The reconstructed Amber Room, Catherine Palace, St. Petersburg, 2003

When Peter the Great, who was an ally of Friedrich I, visited the room he was astonished and greatly impressed. Friedrich I, looking to strengthen his alliance with Russia against Sweden, subsequently offered the room as a gift to Peter the Great in 1716. The large decorative panels of The Amber Room were shipped to Russia in 18 gigantic boxes, after which they were first installed as part of an art collection in St. Petersburg's Winter Palace.. In 1755, Czarina Elizabeth had the room moved to the Catherine Palace in Pushkin, where it would later be used as a meditation chamber for the Czarina and a gathering place for Catherine the Great.

 

The space at the Catherine Palace where The Amber Room was erected was a larger room than it had previously occupied, and thus went under a redesign by the Italian designer Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli to further expand it to both fill in the extra space and enhance its magnificence even more. More gold, amber, and gems were brought in, and when renovations were eventually completed, The Amber Room was comprised of around 6 tons of amber and gems, was 55.8 feet in length, and covered around 200 square feet with glittering beauty. It has been estimated by historians as having a total value of around 200 million dollars in today's money. 

 

The Amber Room was passed down to subsequent rulers in Russia, for whom it remained a priceless showcase of the palace and a source of pride until 1941 when Hitler's troops took the palace.

 

As bombs exploded throughout the city, the curators and officials of the Catherine Palace frantically tried to disassemble the Amber Room in order to move it elsewhere and therefore prevent it from being looted. As they did so, the amber panels began to crumble due to having weakened over the years. Hesitant to cause further damage to the priceless artifact, desperate officials ended up hiding the panels under wallpaper, gauze, and cotton in a last ditch effort to keep it out of German hands. The ruse did not fool the Nazi forces, who quickly discovered the famous prize.

The Amber Room Catherine Palace after it was plundered by the Nazis in 1945

The Germans were extremely efficient in their ability to dismantle the Amber Room. Within 36 hours it had been packed into 27 crates and moved to the Baltic city of Königsberg, presently Kaliningrad, and put on display. In 1943 it was stored at Königsberg Castle in a museum, where it became a favorite of the museum's director, Alfred Rohde. Rhode had a fascination with amber, and reportedly spent a good amount of time studying the intricate craftsmanship of the panels. As the end of WWII loomed, plans were put into place to pack the panels into crates and store them away from the approaching Allied forces. These efforts were too slow, soon. Königsberg Castle was bombed along with most of the rest of the city, and it was presumed that the Amber Room had been destroyed as well. The Amber Room has never been seen since.

A detail of the replica of Russia's legendary Amber Room, in the Catherine Palace outside St Petersburg, after 20 years of painstaking reconstruction by Russian craftsmen.

A rare photo of the original Amber Room

The reconstructed Amber Room, Catherine Palace, St. Petersburg, 2003

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