A rare Fabergé egg pendant, workmaster Michael Perchin, St Petersburg, 1902

carved of smoky quartz to simulate water, the two halves held by a two-colour gold laurel band, inscribed in Cyrillic Pepi -- Levaschova, 28-29 Mar 1902; 56 standard

G. von Habsburg, Fabergé: Imperial Craftsman and His World, London, 2000, no. 368, p. 173, illustrated.

Levaschova was the holiday home of the Fabergé family.  Bainbridge recalls Agathon Fabergé visiting him in Hampstead in 1937: "Every evening for two months... we sat and talked AND TALKED.  Of the idiosyncracies of his father and stories about him; memories of his home at Levaschova on the Finnish border where I spent so many happy days with him and his family...." (p. 17)  The present lot is one of the last objects to come out of the Perchin workshops, its date coming shortly before the workmaster entered a lunatic asylum.