Famous Fabergé Egg Collectors
Mr. Forbes with his eleven Fabergé Eggs which were at the time of purchase all thought to be Imperial Eggs. Today the Spring Flowers Egg and the Resurrection Egg are no longer in the so-called Tsar Imperial category. Malcolm Stevenson Forbes | Victor Vekselberg | Lillian Thomas Pratt | The Royal Collection | Matilda Geddings Gray | Marjorie Merriweather Post | William and Henry Walters | King Farouk of Egypt | Edouard and Maurice Sandoz | India Early Minshall | Prince Rainier III de Monaco | Armand Hammer Malcolm Stevenson Forbes
Malcolm S. Forbes was born on August 19th, 1919 in Brooklyn, New York. In 1946 Malcolm Forbes joined his father at Forbes Magazine. He became publisher of the magazine on his fathers death (1954). Malcolm Forbes' first major acquisition of Fabergé was the Duchess
of Marlborough Egg in 1965. Purchased through auction, it cost nearly three
and a half times the estimate. Malcolm was torn between the thrill of acquiring
the spectacular piece and the fear of having overbid due to auction fever. However,
his worries were quickly alleviated when Alexander Schaffer, the leading authority
on Fabergé in the U.S. at the time, identified himself as the underbidder
and invited Malcolm to view several Fabergé Imperial Easter Eggs in his
possession. Proving to be a serious collector, Malcolm Forbes acquired the 1911
Bay Tree Egg, the 1894
Renaissance Egg and the 1911
Fifteenth Anniversary Egg by
the end of the following year. Victor Vekselberg Russia  Mr. Vekselberg bought 194 Fabergé pieces from the Forbes family, including the 15 Fabergé Eggs. Victor Vekselberg was born in 1957 in the Western Ukraine. He graduated from the Moscow Transportation Engineering Institute in 1979. In 1993, he became Chairman of the Board of Directors of Renova, one of Russia's most progressive investment and business development companies. In 1996 he engineered the first interregional merger in the Russian metals industry, Siberian-Urals Aluminium Company (SUAL), where he remains Chairman of the Board of Directors. In 1997 he was key in building a Russian-United States partnership that acquired the controlling rights to Tyumen Oil Company (TNK), which soon became the third largest Russian oil and gas company. Acting as Chairman of the Executive Board of TNK, he was instrumental in negotiating and establishing a 50-50 joint venture with British Petroleum in the largest private transaction in Russian history. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors and the Vice-President of the joint venture called TNK-BP. According to Forbes Magazine, Mr. Vekselberg is considered by one of the richest men in Russia. Lillian Thomas Pratt      Lillian Thomas Pratt, the wife of General Motors executive John Lee Pratt. She formed her collection - ranging from her well-known jeweled imperial eggs to a humble copper ashtray made just before the Russian revolution - between 1933 and 1946. Lillian Thomas Pratt collected the 1896 Revolving Miniatures Egg, the 1898 Pelican Egg, the 1903 Peter the Great Egg, the 1912 Tsarevich Egg and the 1915 Red Cross with Portraits Egg. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Factsheet: The Lillian Thomas Pratt Collection of Russian Imperial Jewels by Peter Carl Fabergé. The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' Pratt collection is the largest public collection of Fabergé imperial Easter eggs outside Russia. The full Pratt collection numbers approximately 150 creations from the Fabergé workshops. The collection was formed between 1933 and 1946 by Lillian Thomas Pratt of Fredericksburg, Va., the wife of General Motors executive John Lee Pratt. In 1947 she bequeathed several hundred pieces of Russian art, many from the Fabergé workshops, to VMFA. The Royal Collection Images, including the Fabergé Eggs, of The Royal Collection can be seen in the e-Gallery online: Matilda Geddings Gray
The
Matilda Geddings Gray Foundation 
Marjorie Merriweather Post
Marjorie Merriweather Post
was the founder of General Foods,
Inc. She was 27 when her father died, and she became the owner
of the rapidly growing Postum Cereal Company. In 1923 her husband
E.F. Hutton became the chairman of the board of the Postum Cereal
Company, and they developed a larger variety of food products,
including Birdseye Frozen Foods. The company became the General
Foods Corporation. Marjorie Merriweather Post collected the 1895
Twelve Monogram Egg and the 1914
Catherine the Great Egg. William (1819-1894) and Henry Walters (1848-1931)
Henry Walters, like his father William Walters, was a power in the railroad world. In 1884, Atlantic Coast Line directors named him general manager, but in 1902, he would add the titles, Vice-President and Chairman of the Board, positions he would keep until 1931. Not only would be prove himself to be one of the nation's most proficient executives, smoothly merging 32 separate railroads into one, but he was also a world renowned art collector. His father, William Walters, having made money in the liquor business, began shopping for art, usually accompanied by his wife, Ellen. Sadly Ellen died while they were in Paris, but William Walters continued his artistic pursuits. Henry, a teenager, and his sister, Jennie, spent their days in Parisian schools, then came home to another kind of education in fine paintings, sculpture, tapestries and furnishings. Watching his father create an art collection lit a fire inside the young man that never went out, and created a bond between William and Henry Walters. As an adult, Henry continued to follow the trail of acquirable fine art, buying pieces that would be displayed in the art gallery in Baltimore. In New York, beginning in 1903, Henry Walters served on the executive
committee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and 10 years later he
became second vice president, a position he retained for the rest
of his life. His experiences on a number of museum committees may
have resulted in a change of direction in his collecting after World
War I. Walters now appeared less concerned with acquiring works representative
of various fields and more committed to objects of major historical
and artistic significance. Website: The Walters Art Museum The Walters Art Museum Fact Sheet: http://walters.planitapps.com/news_art_museum/press_general_fact.aspx#ItemsCollection Background on the Walters Art Museum: http://walters.planitapps.com/news_art_museum/press_general_background.aspx   King Farouk I of Egypt
King Farouk I of Egypt, who reigned from 1936 until 1952, was a prolific collector. His taste for the rare and unusual was the catalyst for his assemblage of a diverse collection of items from around the world. His coin collection included an estimated 8,500 gold coins and medals. King Farouk's possessions when he abdicated were compared to the contents of Versailles in 1793! After World War II, Egypt was left in chaos, especially following its defeat in the 1948 war with Israel. The Free Officers (a group of dissident military officers), led by Abdel Nasser, overthrew British-backed King Farouk on the 23rd of July, 1952 (an event now named the Revolution of 1952). Three days later, the king officially abdicated and the first independent Arab Republic of Egypt was formed. After the Egyptian military forced King Farouk to flee the country in 1952, the entire Farouk Collection was auctioned by Sotheby's Cairo. The new Egyptian government complained to Sotheby's that the prices were poor. But Farouk had collected so much, including Fabergé work of various kinds, that single lots often contained up to three pieces. It took days and days to sell it all. The two Farouk eggs, the 1906 Imperial Swan Egg and the 1898 Kelch Hen Egg brought relatively healthy prices. Farouk, the last king of Egypt, lived thirteen years after he was deposed. He died in 1965 in Rome and was buried in the mosque Ar-Rifai, in Cairo, Egypt. Edouard and Maurice Sandoz Foundation
Fondation Edouard et Maurice Sandoz
India Early Minshall
India Early Minshall was one of the five major Fabergé collectors in the 1930's. She acquired the Lapis Lazuli Egg and the 1915 Tsar Imperial Red Cross Triptych Egg. Prince Rainier III Prince Albert II
Prince Rainier III de Monaco  Prince Rainier III, grandson of Prince Louis II on his mothers side, Princess Charlotte and son of Prince Pierre, Count of Polignac, succeeded his grandfather on May 9, 1949. During the course of his reign, one of the longest in the history of Monaco, Prince Rainier III intensified, expanded and diversified the enterprises committed to during the preceding three reigns: from the political, diplomatic, international, economic and social domains, to the educational, scientific, cultural, communications and sports domains. To this he adds the industrial dimension. Through bold land retrieval from the seas, he expanded national territory by one fifth of its surface. The most significant political reform due to the initiative taken by Prince Rainier III, consists of the promulgation of a new constitution, establishing modern principles without repudiating tradition. In 1997 Monaco commemorated the 700th anniversary of the arrival of the Grimaldi family to the rock of Monaco. In 1999 the 50th anniversary of the succession to the throne of HSH Prince Rainier III was commemorated. Prince Rainier died april 6, 2005 and was succeeded July 12, 2005 by his son Prince Albert II. The man who managed to get most of the Fabergé Eggs was a man who was well known in the United States, Armand Hammer. A great entrepreneur, president of Occidental Petroleum and personal friend of Lenin, his father was founder of the Communist party in the United States. Recognizing that the treasures of a dynasty were being swept into oblivion, the eminent businessman and socialist sympathizer brought ten of the Eggs to America in the early 1930's. Hammer set up business and heavily marketed and promoted the sale of these riches, but during the Depression years, even the most stable American fortunes had faltered. A friend of Hammer's ironically observed that while the Fabergé Eggs were indisputably beautiful, they were not, in fact, edible. Hammer arrived in New York in 1931 with thousands of Russian works of art to be sold on behalf of the Soviets. At the time there was no money (deepest Depression) nobody was interested, until he struck on the idea of marketing these things through department stores. And he took them through North America , from the East coast to the West coast, stopping at department stores in every major city and touting these things, lecturing about how he discovered these things. And they caught on! There were five major collectors in the
early days in the United States: Matilda Geddings Gray, Lillian Thomas Pratt, Marjorie Merriweather Post, India Early Minshall and Malcolm S. Forbes. Though some Imperial Eggs originally
sold at auction for as little as four or five hundred dollars, it
took several decades for the Eggs to gain recognition as magnificent
works of art. Now they are valued in the millions. Page updated: 2008-05-24
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