A Fabergé egg and the jeweled elephant designed to fit inside it are being reunited for the first time in almost a century, thanks to a loan from Queen Elizabeth II to a Texas museum.
A gallery opening Monday at the Houston Museum of Natural Science features the elephant, which was only recently discovered to be the egg’s missing “surprise.”
“It is a remarkable opportunity to see the two together and marvel at Fabergé’s workmanship,” said Caroline de Guitaut, a curator at the Royal Collection Trust.
De Guitaut announced in 2015 that she had discovered that the small elephant in the Queen’s collection was created by the famed Russian artisan Peter Carl Fabergé.
“It had been sitting there, in many ways in plain sight, minding its own business in a display case,” she said.
The Imperial Diamond Trellis Egg, originally an Easter gift from Russian Czar Alexander III to his wife in 1892, belongs to a Houston couple whose private collection of items created by Fabergé is housed at the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
The reunited pieces will be displayed in a new gallery showcasing more than 600 Fabergé items from Dorothy and Artie McFerrin, which have been part of the museum for several years.
Joel Bartsch, president of the Houston museum, stated that the elephant will remain on display there for one year before returning to England.
De Guitaut said the elephant caught her eye because it appeared to match the published description of the missing elephant. Upon careful examination, she eventually determined that the tower on the elephant’s back had a lid and found the Fabergé mark on the inside rim.
“I did feel quite giddy, somewhat dizzy, and a little faint,” de Guitaut said.
She stated that the two items were believed to have last been together when the Russian government sold them around 1922.
De Guitaut said the elephant, which walks and moves its head when wound, was purchased in 1935 by King George V, apparently without the knowledge that it was a Fabergé piece.
She noted that Fabergé only made 50 eggs for the Russian Imperial family as Easter gifts; only 43 are known to survive.