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Faberge Danish Palaces Egg
Date: 1891
Height: 4 inches
Markings: MP (Michael Perchin), crossed anchors, 56
Covered in translucent pink enamel, this egg is topped by a star sapphire and mounted with borders of gold leaf, diamonds, and emeralds.
Inside was the surprise, a screen of miniature portraits by Krijitsky, dated 1891, depicting palaces and houses the Czarina lived in while she was a Danish princess (before she married Alexander III). The first and last miniatures are of yachts.
A star sapphire within a cluster of rose diamonds and chased gold laurel leaves surmounts this trois-couleur gold egg which is enamelled a translucent pink on a guilloche pattern of repeated crosses.
The egg is divided into twelve panels by broad bands consisting each of a line of rose diamonds within continuous laurel leaf borders chased in gold, an emerald is set at each intersection of the lines of rose diamonds.
A folding screen of miniature paintings framed in vari-coloured gold is recessed within the egg. Painted on mother-of-pearl, eight of the ten panels depict palaces and residences in Denmark where the Empress spent her childhood.
 
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