Author and Mad-blog contributor Mark Tungate writes about a brand with a Russian heritage – Fabergé.

When I heard a few months ago that a mining group called Pallinghurst had acquired Fabergé, I wondered what had happened to the brand since the 19th century, when it was associated with fabulous jewelled Easter eggs. The story was even more intriguing than I’d hoped.

Peter Carl Fabergé was born in Saint Petersburg on 30 May 1846. He joined his father’s jewellery business in 1864 and took over the running of the firm eight years later.

The Easter of 1885 was a turning point for Fabergé. Tsar Alexander III wanted a 20th wedding anniversary gift for his wife, the Tsarina Maria Fedorovna, so he commissioned Fabergé to create an exquisite egg. The jeweller delivered it to the palace on Easter morning. At first it appeared to be a simple enamelled egg. Inside, however, there was a golden yoke. In Russian doll style, the yoke yielded a golden hen. And nestling within that was a miniature of the imperial crown, encrusted with diamonds, and an egg-shaped ruby.

Each year, Fabergé was commissioned to create another egg. When Nicholas II ascended to the throne after Alexander’s death, he continued the tradition. The Imperial eggs were exhibited at the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris, transforming the House of Fabergé into an international brand. The orders poured in for fine jewellery, silverware and tableware.

During the revolution, Fabergé fled with his family on the last train to Riga – and then to Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Lausanne. He died in 1920 and was buried in Cannes, France. Fabergé’s sons Eugene and Alexander set up shop in Paris, where they ran a small workshop called Fabergé & Company. However, they were forced to take legal action against a businessman named Sam Rubin, who had begun marketing cosmetics and perfumes under the Fabergé name.

Rubin had got the idea for the brand from one of his acquaintances: the oil tycoon Armand Hammer, a collector of Fabergé eggs. Lacking the finances to pursue their legal action, the Fabergé heirs eventually ceded the name to Rubin for US$25,000. He later sold the business to another company, Rayette, for US$26 million.

Renamed Fabergé Inc, the company sold products like the aftershaves Brut (‘Splash it all over’) and Denim (‘For the man who doesn’t have to try too hard’). Another company, McGregor, briefly owned the Fabergé brand before Unilever acquired it for US$1.5 billion in 1989.

Having fallen from intoxicating luxury to mass market, Fabergé was ready to be revived. A lifeline appeared in 2007, when Pallinghurst announced that it had purchased the Fabergé brand name. A new collection of Fabergé jewellery (not including eggs) was unveiled online at the end of 2009. See www.faberge.com

But what happened to the original jewel-encrusted eggs? There were fifty in all. Nine were acquired in 2004 by a Russian energy tycoon from the family of the late publisher Malcolm Forbes. Ten are housed in the Kremlin. Five are at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Queen Elizabeth owns three. Most of the others are divided among collectors around the world. And eight have vanished entirely.

This post is adapted from Mark Tungate’s current book, Luxury World: the Past, Present and Future of Luxury Brands.