300

Magnet #879 - Romanov Tercentenary Faberge Egg

This Faberge egg for the Romanov Tercentenary, was gifted by Nicholas II to his wife Alexandra, in honor of 300 years of Romanov rule, which started started in 1613 with Michael, and ended with the execution of the Romanov family in 1918. Very sad.

But the egg itself is gorgeous (aren't they all), and made from gold and silver, diamonds and more diamonds, turquoise and enamel. It's dotted with 18 little watercolor portraits of the Romanov line, which included the likes of Catherine the Great.

But the pretty prize inside is a little blue enamel and gold globe that rotates (!!!!) and shows the territories they ruled in 1613 on one side, and what they ruled in 1913.

The fact that the globe rotates (!!!!) seriously just makes me want to touch it. Like, I just want to play with these eggs. It also makes me wonder if the Romanov kids were allowed to mess around the eggs just sitting on the shelves at home. Cuz, hi, that would be superawesome. Go long, Tsarevich Alexei, go long!!!

Anyway, I picked this egg today, because of two reasons. First, because last night's Lie to Me, had a Faberge-like egg that was part of a robbery, and people were getting beat up for it, and to my knowledge, even to the end, never even acknowledged what the egg was.

And, second, because I wanted to report back about the happiest place inside the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Faberge room, which was kind of like a Faberge egg itself - small in size, but with absolute treasures inside.

It was a pretty small and unassuming room, off to the side. But as you step in, you see there are several display windows just chockful of Faberge decorative pieces. Remember, they have the largest amassed collection of Faberge outside Russia. So they had the six eggs in their collections, plus a bunch of baby eggs, umbrella handles, picture frames and other doodads belonging to the Romanov family.

Quite an amazing collection. I wish I'd had more time to explore it, but who knows, maybe one day, I'll exit off of I-95 to visit them again. Although, at this point, the more I visit the Kremlin website for more information, the more I really want to visit.

I will say, I was quite disappointed that the gift shop didn't have any egg magnets. They had egg card holders, though totally out of my price range, what with the semi-precious stones and all, but no egg magnets?

Hmph.