Why Fabergé Eggs Are the Rarest Objects in the Decorative Arts World

Peter Carl Fabergé’s workshop produced 50 Imperial Easter eggs for the Russian Tsars between 1885 and 1916, commissioned first by Alexander III as a gift for his wife and continued by Nicholas II. Only around 44 of those Imperial eggs are known to survive today, scattered across private collections, national museums, and a handful of institutions willing to display them publicly (Britannica). Seven vanished after the 1917 Revolution, when the Bolsheviks seized the Fabergé workshop and much of the Romanov treasury, and their whereabouts remain unresolved.

That scarcity is the entire premise of Fabergé’s value. Unlike a rare watch reference or a limited-edition painting, there is no possibility of a “newly discovered” batch. The number of surviving Imperial eggs is functionally fixed, which means every confirmed sighting, whether in a museum gallery or an auction saleroom, carries outsized cultural and market weight. For a collector, understanding where these objects actually live in the United States, and how they occasionally change hands, matters more than knowing the general history.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: NYC’s Permanent Home for Fabergé

The Metropolitan Museum of Art houses its Fabergé holdings in the European Sculpture and Decorative Arts galleries, first floor, in a space designated Gallery 555. The pieces come from the Matilda Geddings Gray Foundation Collection, and the Met’s own announcement of the installation described it as a long-term view beginning November 22, 2011 (Metropolitan Museum of Art).

Long-term installations at the Met are not guaranteed to be permanent fixtures, and gallery assignments do shift as curatorial priorities change. If you’re planning a dedicated visit to see the Fabergé pieces specifically, call the European Sculpture and Decorative Arts department or check the Met’s current online collection database before you go, rather than relying on the room number alone. One visitor account from 2014 described the display as compact, “really small and in the corner of the room,” which is worth knowing going in. This isn’t a Fabergé wing on the scale of the Hermitage. It’s a tight, jewel-box presentation, and part of the appeal is exactly that intimacy (Flo Visits NYC Exhibitions).

What’s Actually on Display: The Met’s Fabergé Eggs, Named

The Met’s holdings include three named Imperial or Fabergé-workshop eggs: the Danish Palaces Egg (1890), the Imperial Caucasus Egg (1893), and the Imperial Napoleonic Egg (1912), all part of the Matilda Geddings Gray Foundation Collection (per Met object records referenced by Marc Leibowitz, April 2025). Each egg was produced under Fabergé’s supervision and follows the workshop’s signature format: an outer shell rendered in enamel, gold, and gemstones concealing a “surprise” inside, ranging from miniature portraits to working automata.

Matilda Geddings Gray, a Louisiana oil heiress, assembled her Fabergé collection in the mid-20th century, well after the pieces left Russia through the chaotic post-Revolution art market of the 1920s and 1930s, when the Soviet government sold off Imperial treasures for hard currency. Her foundation’s long-term loan to the Met is one of the reasons New York, rather than Washington or Chicago, functions as the East Coast’s primary public access point for Imperial Fabergé.

A Look Back: “Fabergé in America” (1996) and Other Landmark NYC Exhibitions

“Fabergé in America” opened at the Met on February 16, 1996, and brought together 15 of the then-44 known surviving Imperial Easter eggs alongside more than 400 additional Fabergé objects, drawing loans from private collectors and institutions across the country (The New York Times, February 4, 1996; Los Angeles Times, February 11, 1996). It remains the largest concentration of Imperial eggs ever assembled in one American venue, before or since.

The Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian’s design museum on Fifth Avenue, staged a concurrent Fabergé exhibition of its own in the 1990s, giving New Yorkers a rare stretch where two major institutions were showing decorative arts from the same Imperial workshop simultaneously. For collectors who track exhibition history as part of provenance research, these two shows are a useful reference point: many pieces that appeared in “Fabergé in America” later resurfaced at Christie’s or Sotheby’s with the exhibition catalog cited as part of their documented history.

Beyond the Museum: Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and the Auction-House Circuit

New York’s auction houses are the other half of the city’s Fabergé story, and arguably the more dynamic one. Christie’s and Sotheby’s both maintain Russian art departments, and pre-sale exhibitions for major Fabergé lots are open to the public, typically for a window of several days before the sale. These previews are free, unticketed, and one of the only ways to see privately-owned Imperial or workshop-era Fabergé objects up close outside a museum setting.

The distinction matters for collectors: a museum acquisition is effectively off the market, while an auction-house preview signals a piece that’s actively changing hands, with a hammer price about to become public record. If you’re building a serious understanding of current Fabergé valuations, watching auction results is more useful than any museum label, since museum pieces rarely carry current appraised figures. Sale catalogs, condition reports, and provenance chains published by Christie’s and Sotheby’s are the closest thing to real-time market data this category has.

When Fabergé Went Public: The Big Egg Hunt at Rockefeller Center (2014)

In spring 2014, Fabergé itself (the revived contemporary brand, not the historical Imperial workshop) staged “The Big Egg Hunt,” a public art installation that scattered artist-designed eggs across Rockefeller Center and other NYC locations. Contributors included Jeff Koons, Zaha Hadid, Carolina Herrera, and Martha Stewart, each reinterpreting the egg form in a contemporary medium. None of these were historical Imperial eggs, and the event was closer to a scavenger-hunt public art campaign than a decorative arts exhibition.

It’s worth including here for one reason: it’s the event that introduced a huge swath of casual New Yorkers to the Fabergé name for the first time, decades after the brand’s Imperial-era output had already been absorbed into museums and private vaults. If you mention “Fabergé eggs in Rockefeller Center” to a New Yorker of a certain age, this is almost certainly what they remember, and it’s a useful cultural touchpoint even though it has no bearing on the historical eggs’ market value.

Fabergé Beyond New York: Where Else in America to See Imperial Eggs

More than 13 Fabergé eggs are held across U.S. museums, with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond holding five and the Met holding three as part of the Matilda Geddings Gray Foundation (per a museum collections summary, April 2025). The VMFA’s Fabergé collection, also assembled through the Lillian Thomas Pratt bequest decades earlier, is one of the largest Imperial Fabergé holdings outside Russia and predates the Met’s Gray Foundation installation by decades.

If a single-city trip is the goal, New York wins on convenience. If you’re chasing depth of collection, Richmond is a four-hour drive worth making for anyone serious about the subject. Both museums list current hours, admission policies, and, in the VMFA’s case, gallery maps directly on their websites, worth bookmarking before you plan the trip.

For Collectors: Understanding the Value and Provenance of Fabergé and Imperial Russian Objects

Fabergé and comparable Imperial Russian decorative pieces sit in an unusual valuation category. Unlike diamonds or gold, where grading and weight give you a defensible baseline, Fabergé value is driven almost entirely by documented provenance, exhibition history, and workshop attribution. A piece with a clear chain of ownership back to the Imperial court, or one that appeared in “Fabergé in America” or a comparable exhibition catalog, will command a materially different price than a similar object without that paper trail.

This is where things get practical for anyone who owns, inherits, or is considering acquiring a piece attributed to Fabergé or another Imperial Russian workshop. An accurate appraisal requires someone fluent in that provenance research, not a generalist. And once you know what a piece is actually worth, that value can become usable capital without a sale. New York Loan Company lends against fine art, jewelry, and rare collectibles, including Imperial Russian decorative objects, with same-day funding and full discretion, no auction, no public listing, no credit-bureau reporting.