Are there official maker's records or archives from the House of Fabergé detailing each imperial egg?
Executive summary
There is no single, sealed “maker’s archive” published by the original House of Fabergé that comprehensively lists every Imperial Egg; researchers rely on a mix of Fabergé’s invoices and notebooks, imperial inventories, museum archives and modern compilations to reconstruct provenance and descriptions (see Fabergé Research bibliography and chronology) [1] [2]. Major institutions and specialists—Christie’s, the Fabergé company, the Fabergé Museum and dedicated research sites—publish catalogues, inventories and scholarly updates that together form the working record of the 50 Imperial Eggs and their variants [3] [4] [5].
1. What surviving primary records exist and where they’re reported
Contemporary primary traces survive in invoices, Fabergé workshop notes and imperial inventories—documents that researchers have cited repeatedly. The Fabergé Research bibliography and chronological pages gather these documentary fragments (invoices, sales ledgers, workshop notations) and point to published updates and newly discovered sales ledgers from Fabergé’s London branch and Moscow imperial inventories [1] [2]. Museums with historic Fabergé collections also maintain archives of acquisition letters, invoices and related paperwork—examples include the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ Lillian Thomas Pratt Archives that hold invoices, letters and other provenance documents for items in that collection [6].
2. What the Fabergé company and auction houses publish
The modern Fabergé brand and auction houses publish detailed catalogues and object histories but these are curatorial publications, not always verbatim reproductions of original workshop ledgers. Christie’s, for instance, provides authoritative object descriptions, historical context and provenance notes for the Winter Egg and notes the broader total of 50 Imperial Eggs with survival counts [4] [3]. Fabergé’s own website also summarizes the Imperial Eggs series and the firm’s historic output—useful for public reference but not a replacement for archival scholarship [5] [7].
3. Scholarly reconstructions and the role of independent researchers
Specialist scholars and independent research projects have done the painstaking work of collating records into usable lists. The Fabergé Research Site compiles a chronology and bibliography, updating descriptions and provenances from classic sources (Lowes & McCanless) and later discoveries, and explicitly cites items like sales ledgers and page fragments from archives [2] [1]. Journalists and historians likewise rely on those reconstructions when they report counts (e.g., “50 made, 43/44/44 known to survive” appears across sources) because documentary gaps mean exact survival numbers vary between accounts [4] [8] [9].
4. Why there’s no single definitive “maker’s book” for every egg
The House of Fabergé operated through multiple workshops and workmasters across St. Petersburg, Moscow and Odesa, producing invoices and design notebooks rather than one central ledger that survived intact [3]. The Russian Revolution, Soviet disposals and subsequent sales scattered objects and paperwork; Bolshevik inventories and later 1919–1920 lists survive in fragmentary form and are used alongside Fabergé invoices to match descriptions to extant eggs [2] [10]. Researchers therefore synthesize partial primary records, museum archives and auction documentation to produce the canonical lists used today [1] [2].
5. Disagreement, uncertainty and where gaps remain
Sources disagree on precise survivor counts and on provenance for several eggs. Some accounts cite 43 surviving Imperial Eggs, others 44 or 46 depending on which fragmentary items and possible prototypes are counted [4] [8] [9]. The Fabergé Research Site and specialist historians note missing pieces, ambiguous inventory entries and eggs known only from old photographs or invoice descriptions—areas where “not found in current reporting” would be an overstatement because the literature documents the uncertainty [2] [10].
6. How to access the best documentation
For the most reliable reconstruction, consult specialist bibliographies and object-by-object chronologies: the Fabergé Research Site’s bibliography and egg chronology compile primary-document citations and publication history [1] [2]. For individual object histories and provenance, major auction house catalogues (Christie’s) and museum archives (e.g., VMFA’s Pratt Archives) publish inventories, photos and correspondence that together create the practical “archive” scholars use [4] [6].
Limitations and bottom line: there is no single extant, authoritative “maker’s record” that lists and illustrates each Imperial Egg in one original Fabergé book; instead, a mosaic of workshop invoices, imperial inventories, museum archives and modern scholarship constitutes the working record used by experts today [1] [2] [4].