A Fabergé two-colour gold and enamel frame with portrait miniature, workmaster Victor Aarne, St Petersburg, 1899-1908

Estimate

12,000 - 18,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

height: 6.7cm, 2 5/8 in

oval, the ground with translucent white enamel over a radiating engine-turned ground, chased laurel and bound reed borders, containing a portrait miniature of Princess Aurora of Serbia, ivory back, marked Fabergé, with workmaster's initials, 56 standard, silver-gilt strut, 88 standard

Provenance

Sotheby's New York, 1 December 1998, lot 310

Catalogue Note

Aurora, Princess Demidova of San Donato, was born in Kiev in 1873, the daughter of Paul, the Second Prince of San Donato, and his second wife, Princess Helena Troubetzkoy. She was named for her well-known grandmother, the former Baroness Stjernvall, lady-in-waiting to the Empress Alexandra, wife of Nicholas I. She married Prince Arsene of Serbia (later of Yugoslavia) in St Petersburg in 1892. The marriage was dissolved in 1896, having produced one child, Prince Paul, who later served as Regent of Yugoslavia during the early reign of his nephew, King Peter II. Princess Aurora married the Conte di Noghera the following year and had a daughter by him. She died at Turin in 1904, aged just thirty-one. The present lot remained in the family until it sold in New York in 1998.