New York’s Unlikely Role as the World Capital of Imperial Fabergé

New York City holds one of the most significant public collections of Imperial Fabergé outside Russia, anchored by The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Fifth Avenue galleries. Access is free with museum admission. The lineage runs from the Malcolm Forbes collection through the Met’s 1996 “Fabergé in America” exhibition to today’s Matilda Geddings Gray Foundation Collection, on permanent view.

Most people associate Fabergé with the Kremlin Armoury or the private museum Viktor Vekselberg built in St. Petersburg. Fair enough. But Manhattan has quietly functioned as a second capital for these objects since the late 20th century, and the reason has nothing to do with marketing and everything to do with who happened to be buying. A handful of American collectors, publishers, and philanthropists accumulated Imperial-quality Fabergé at a moment when the Soviet government was selling it off cheaply, and a good portion of what they bought never left New York.

That history matters if you’re trying to understand why an egg made for a Romanov Easter gift in 1900 is sitting in a gallery on Fifth Avenue rather than behind glass in Moscow. It also matters if you collect fine jewels, gemstones, or decorative arts yourself, because the story of how these objects moved from Imperial Russia to American drawing rooms to museum vitrines is really a story about liquidity, provenance, and what happens to extraordinary objects when their owners need to convert them into cash or when institutions decide to make them public.

The Malcolm Forbes Connection and How the Eggs Got to Manhattan

Publisher Malcolm Forbes assembled the largest private collection of Fabergé outside Russia, displaying it for years at the Forbes Galleries near Union Square before his family sold much of it through Sotheby’s in 2004. That sale, and the Russian buyer who acquired most of the lots, reshaped how the market values Imperial Fabergé today.

Forbes started buying Fabergé in the 1960s, at a time when the Soviet state had already liquidated a substantial portion of the Imperial collection decades earlier to raise hard currency, and Western interest in Russian decorative arts was thin. He kept buying for three decades, and by the time of his death in 1990 his family held one of the largest private troves of Imperial eggs, cigarette cases, picture frames, and jeweled objects anywhere.

The Forbes Galleries closed to the public in 2004 when the family sold the bulk of the collection through Sotheby’s. Industrialist Viktor Vekselberg acquired nine Imperial Easter eggs in that sale and later returned them to Russia, where they now form the core of the Fabergé Museum in St. Petersburg (Sotheby’s, 2004 Forbes Collection sale records). New York lost that particular trove, but the sale itself became a landmark event that reset public understanding of what these objects were worth, and it is the reason auction estimates for Fabergé jumped so sharply afterward.

The Met’s Fabergé in America Exhibition and the Matilda Geddings Gray Foundation Collection

The Metropolitan Museum of Art mounted “Fabergé in America” in 1996, one of the first major American museum surveys of the House of Fabergé’s work made for or acquired by American collectors. Today the Met maintains a permanent installation drawn from the Matilda Geddings Gray Foundation Collection, giving visitors free, standing access to Imperial-era Fabergé.

The 1996 exhibition mattered because it was the first time a major American institution treated Fabergé not as Russian court curiosity but as a serious subject for art historical study, tracing how pieces made for the Romanovs and Russian aristocracy ended up in the hands of Gilded Age and mid-century American collectors. It drew directly on private lenders, including the Forbes family, and it established the scholarly groundwork that later gifts and loans to the Met would build on.

The Matilda Geddings Gray Foundation, established by a New Orleans collector who acquired Imperial Fabergé pieces in the mid-20th century, has kept a collection on long-term loan to the Met, meaning New Yorkers and visitors don’t need a special exhibition ticket or a private appointment to see Imperial-quality Fabergé. It’s simply part of the museum’s standing decorative arts holdings, which is a rarer arrangement than it sounds. Most institutions with objects of this caliber rotate them in and out of storage or reserve them for ticketed shows.

What You’ll Actually See in The Met’s Fifth Avenue Galleries

Visitors to the Met’s decorative arts galleries encounter Fabergé objects made using the workshop’s signature guilloché enamel technique, gem-set gold work, and the surprise mechanisms associated with the Imperial Easter eggs. The display includes both egg-form pieces and smaller objects like frames, boxes, and jeweled accessories from the same period.

The Imperial Eggs on Permanent View

The centerpiece of any Fabergé visit to the Met is the opportunity to examine an Imperial Easter egg at close range, something even serious collectors rarely get to do outside a museum setting. These eggs were commissioned by Tsar Alexander III and later Tsar Nicholas II as annual Easter gifts, each one built around a “surprise,” a miniature object or mechanism concealed inside the shell, ranging from a tiny portrait to a working clockwork bird.

Standing in front of one, you notice details that photographs never capture: the depth of the translucent enamel over engine-turned gold, the way the goldsmith’s hinge work is nearly invisible, the restraint in the gem-setting compared to the flashier jewelry of the same era. Fabergé’s workshop, under master craftsmen like Michael Perkhin and Henrik Wigström, prized precision and proportion over sheer carat weight, which is part of why connoisseurs value the workmanship as much as the materials.

Beyond the Eggs: Fabergé’s Broader Workshop Output

The eggs get the headlines, but the Met’s holdings and the broader Fabergé story include cigarette cases, desk seals, picture frames, and jeweled animal figures that show the same workshop’s range. These smaller objects were the House of Fabergé’s actual commercial bread and butter, produced in far greater numbers than the Imperial eggs.

For a collector, these secondary objects are worth studying closely, because they’re the pieces most likely to appear at auction or in dealer inventory today. The Imperial eggs themselves are almost entirely accounted for in museums and a small number of private collections. If you’re building any real familiarity with Fabergé as a category, the frames and cases teach you the hallmark systems, workshop marks, and enamel quality benchmarks you’ll need to authenticate anything you might actually buy.

Other Places to See Fabergé Work in New York

Beyond the Met, New York’s major auction houses occasionally hold Fabergé pieces in their pre-sale exhibitions, open to the public free of charge during preview weeks. The Forbes Galleries, once a free public destination for Fabergé, closed permanently after the 2004 collection sale and no longer operates.

If you want to see Fabergé outside a scheduled auction preview, the Met is genuinely the only reliable, year-round destination in the city. Auction house viewings are worth tracking if you’re serious about the category, since they’re often the only chance to see a piece before it disappears into private hands again, but they depend entirely on what’s been consigned that season.

Why These Objects Now Command Tens of Millions at Auction

Imperial Fabergé eggs have moved from mid-six-figure valuations in the mid-20th century to eight-figure territory today, driven by scarcity, Russian buyer demand following the 2000s oil wealth boom, and the 2004 Forbes sale that publicly reset market expectations. Only around 50 Imperial eggs were ever made, and most are already in institutional hands.

The math here is simple and unforgiving: there is a fixed, tiny supply (roughly 50 Imperial eggs produced between 1885 and 1916, with several lost or unaccounted for since the Russian Revolution) against a growing global pool of collectors who want one. When the “Third Imperial Egg,” missing for decades, surfaced and was identified by London dealer Wartski, it sold privately in 2014 for a figure widely reported in the tens of millions. That single transaction told the market something it hadn’t fully absorbed: even a mid-tier Imperial egg, not one of the famous showpieces, could be worth more than most people’s homes.

This is where the story connects to something practical. Objects at this level of rarity and value, whether it’s an Imperial Fabergé egg, a museum-quality diamond, or a significant watch collection, carry a kind of financial density that most assets don’t. A collector holding a single exceptional piece is often sitting on more liquidity than they realize, but converting that value into usable cash without a fire-sale auction or a slow gallery consignment is its own challenge.

Planning Your Visit: Practical Tips for Seeing Fabergé at The Met

The Met’s Fabergé objects are displayed in the museum’s European decorative arts galleries on Fifth Avenue, included with general admission, and best viewed on a weekday morning when the museum is least crowded. No advance reservation or special ticket is required to see the permanent collection.

Because the Fabergé pieces sit within the museum’s broader decorative arts holdings rather than in a standalone gallery, they’re easy to walk past if you don’t know where to look. Check the Met’s current gallery map or ask a docent when you arrive, since gallery reinstallations happen periodically and the exact room numbers shift. Bring a loupe if you have one; museum lighting is designed for the room, not for close inspection of enamel work, and a magnified look at the guilloché pattern under an Imperial egg’s translucent enamel is worth the extra effort.

If you’re visiting specifically for Fabergé, pair the trip with a look at the Met’s broader Russian and European jeweled arts holdings nearby, and check the museum’s temporary exhibition calendar before you go. Loan exhibitions occasionally bring additional Fabergé pieces from other institutions or private collections into the city for a limited run, and those windows are worth planning around if your schedule allows it.