Hen with Sapphire Pendant (Fabergé egg)
1886 Imperial Fabergé egg
The Hen with Sapphire Pendant egg or Egg with Hen in Basket is an Imperial Fabergé egg, one in a series of fifty-two jeweled eggs made under the supervision of Peter Carl Fabergé for the Russian Imperial family. It was created in 1886 for Alexander III of Russia, who presented it to his wife, the Empress Maria Feodorovna. It is one of six imperial eggs that are currently lost.
History
The success of the 1885 egg (now known as the First Hen) prompted the tsar to order a second one for 1886, beginning an Easter family tradition which would last until the Russian Revolution. A minister representing the tsar liaised with Fabergé numerous times to discuss the egg's design and composition, specifically requesting delivery before Easter without compromising on quality. The final product cost 3,000 rubles. The Hen with Sapphire Pendant was sent to Tsar Alexander III on April 5, 1886 from Fabergé's workshop. The egg was presented to Tsarina Marie Fedorovna on April 13 of the same year.
Hen with Sapphire Pendant was thereafter housed in the Anichkov Palace until the Russian Revolution, after which its survival and fate becomes uncertain. The Kremlin Armoury's 1922 inventory list includes a description of a silver hen on a stand of gold, which could refer to the egg.
The public source identifies “Hen with Sapphire Pendant (Fabergé egg)” as 1886 Imperial Fabergé egg. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Sapphire, Pendant and Fabergé.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2063836. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1886, 1885 and 1922.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hen with Sapphire Pendant (Fabergé egg)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.