Toby Faber

A look at the history of the amazing Faberge Eggs and the Romanov family behind their creation.

The book starts with the origins of the Faberge family and the creation and operation of his workshop and then quickly moves on to delve much more deeply into the history of the Romanov family and how the tradition of the Faberge Easter Eggs got started.
In and out of the authors coverage of the Romanov's there is some discussion of the work that went into the eggs but mostly this book was about the Romanov's and how the eggs fit into their lives.
If I were to have a serious complaint about this book this would be it. While I did learn more about the Faberge family and the eggs than I had ever known before, way, way more time was spend on the Romanov's that I wish had been spent more on the eggs themselves or what went into their creation

My secondary complaint is the lack of color plates of the eggs themselves, it was so frustrating to read descriptions of these wonderful eggs but not be able to see more than a few of them. I do understand how expensive color plates can be and I have no idea how restrictive with the images of the eggs the current owners might be. It was still very frustrating.

My last complaint would be the last few chapters where it just became a listing of who bought them and how and when and while I expect that is interesting to true scholars, I found it tedious.

All that said I did really enjoy this book and looked forward to getting back to reading it when I had to put it down. It was well written, had more details then I had read before about either top but never really felt dry and scholarly (the last few chapters aside) and I got a feel for these historical figures as real people.

This would be a good starting point for anyone interested in either Faberge or the Romanov’s.… (altro)