Game of Thrones has inspired a lot of pop culture books, art and much more but now the most priciest of merchandise inspired by the HBO medieval fantasy drama has been created. A Fabergé egg, modeled after the dragon eggs that were gifted to Daenerys Targaryen has been created with white diamonds, pink sapphires, moonstones and rubies. The shell has been moulded from sheets of 18-karat white gold and the enamel scales made from crushed light blue, grey, mauve and violet glass. A white gold dragon tail is wrapped around the egg base.
This custom-made jewelled marvel is no more up for grabs as it was already bought in April by an anonymous US buyer for $2.2 million, even before Fabergé workmaster Paul Jones and his artisans begun making it.
So, what is a Faberge egg and how many are there today?
The First Egg
For more than a century, Faberge has been equated to wealth, grandeur and world’s most costliest Easter eggs. The House of Fabergé was founded by Gustav Fabergé in 1842 in St. Petersburg, Russia, whose son, Peter Carl Fabergé added the Faberge eggs to their collection. The first ‘imperial’ Fabergé egg was made back in 1885, when the Russian Tsar Alexander III asked a gift to be made for his wife, Empress Maria Feodorovna for Easter.
The eggs were handmade using precious metals such as gold, diamonds and semi-precious stones. They used to have layers and often one opened to reveal a surprise of some sort inside, again made of precious stones or of high quality.
The jewellery house was made the official supplier for the Russian royal family after the Tsar and Tsarina loved the eggs and Faberge continue to enjoy the patronage until in 1917 the Romanov rule came to an end with the birth of the world’s first Communist state.
Lost Treasures
The Tsar’s family fled St. Petersburg and had to leave the prized eggs behind and some of them went missing too. As of today, only 43 of these imperial eggs are believed to exist from the royal household. They can be found in museums and private collections worldwide.
The imperial eggs were looted and taken to Moscow during the Russian Revolution, some were sold and 10 were taken to Moscow’s Kremlin Armoury Museum and 8 went missing. The egg’s surprises were also sold separately sometimes and thus some of the eggs are found incomplete.
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