NEW YORK. - The collection of Faberge Eggs purchased from the Forbes family a month ago will be touring Russia beginning in May. The tour will begin in the Kremlin, where a collection of 10 imperial Faberge eggs, the world’s largest, already sits. Bob Burkett, a spokesman for Viktor Vekselberg, a Russian billionaire who purchased the Forbes collection for an estimated $90 million last month, said dates for the tour have not yet been set and will announced in early April. But he said stops will include Moscow and the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. From St. Petersburg, the eggs will go to Yekaterinburg, where the Russian imperial family was executed in 1918.
When he purchased the eggs, Vekselberg said Yekaterinburg would be logical for a display because Czar Nicholas II and the Empress Alexandra, to whom he gave the prized Coronation Egg, were executed there. Malcolm S. Forbes, the late publisher and editor of Forbes magazine, collected the eggs from the 1960s until his death in 1990.
The eggs and other choice pieces from the collection, including stone carvings, gold cigarette cases and gem-studded picture frames, will remain on display at Sotheby’s New York galleries before Vekselberg returns the collection to Russia. The unique Faberge jewels, which earlier belonged to the family of American media magnates Forbes, will return to Russia at the beginning of April. Viktor Vekselberg, the new owner of the collection, spoke about it on Thursday at the New York farewell exhibition of the gem of the collection, the nine Easter Eggs, which belonged in the past to the Russian imperial family.
"At first, the collection will be shown in the Moscow Kremlin, and this will happen in the middle of May. The exhibition will be opened by Patriarch Alexis II. We have agreed with him about it at our meeting early in March," Viktor Vekselberg told RIA Novosti. The Faberge jewelry firm was founded in Russia in the 19th century by Frenchman Carl Faberge and fulfilled the orders of the imperial family.
Source: www.artdaily.com | 
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