Title:
Faberge Eggs: 'Miraculous, Marvelous Works of
Detail'
Description: This is
a VOA Special English General News Report.
See text below
Text:
Many people are interested in the beautiful objects
created by the jeweler Karl Faberge. Geza von
Habsburg recently or organized a show of his work at
the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. He says people are
interested in the work of Faberge because of its
link to the last tsar of Russia. Nicholas II and his
family were murdered in 1918 during the Russian
Revolution.
GEZA VON HABSBURG: "One of the major reasons people
bought and buy Faberge is the connection with the
imperial family. He was very close to them and they
commissioned things for their personal use."
Geza von Habsburg gathered more than 500 objects for
the exhibit. They included seven of the jeweler's
most famous works, the Imperial Easter eggs.
ALEX NYERGES: "Only 50 were ever created; 40 or 42
are known to exist. Seven are here all at the same
time."
Alex Nyerges is director of the Virginia Museum of
Fine Arts. The museum has five Imperial Easter eggs
in its permanent collection.
ALEX NYERGES: "The eggs are miraculous, marvelous
works of detail. They are not just works of art in
terms of beauty, but they are mechanically precise."
Each Faberge egg has movable parts and a surprise
inside. The most valuable ones are said to be worth
25 to 30 million dollars. They were made as Easter
gifts beginning in 1885, for the wife of Alexander
III. His son, Nicholas II, continued the tradition.
The Imperial Easter Eggs represent only a part of
Karl Faberge's production. During his career, his
business produced over 150,000 unique objects. Not
all were for the tsar's family. A crystal Egg was
made for Emanuel Nobel, nephew of Alfred Nobel, the
man for whom the Nobel Prize is named.
Faberge was also a silversmith and created the
Russian crown jewels. But Geza von Habsburg says
very little of Faberge's jewelry and silver work
remains.
GEZA VON HABSBURG: "Of the jewelry, 95 percent was
destroyed by the Bolsheviks. Of the silver, 95
percent was melted down by the Bolsheviks. They were
in dire need of money after the revolution."
What they did not destroy, they sold.
ALEX NYERGES: "These works started coming out of
Russia in the 1920s and the 1930s, and there was a
great mania for collecting Faberge starting in the
1930s in this country. And there were a couple of
key collectors."
Lillian Pratt was one of them. When she died in
1947, she left more than 150 of her Faberge pieces
to the Virginia Museum. Today it has the largest
collection of Faberge outside of Russia.
As for Faberge, he fled Russia during the
revolution. He died in Switzerland two years later,
but his works of art live on. I'm Bob Doughty.
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Hi. I
personally reviewed this video and found it appropriate for
the news section of English Global Group. This
is a Voice of America video which covers an interesting
topic in Special English. I would appreciate some feedback from both
students and teachers about this video. You can comment in
the window below using any of a number of different services
including Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, and Hotmail.
