Carl Fabergé was born in St. Petersburg in 1846 and at the age of twenty-four took over his father’s jewelry business. In the words of a close friend, Fabergé was a "genius on the rampage, always in search of something on which to vent his creative skill". He became world famous for his work, most remarkably for his series of exquisite Easter eggs which he designed and fashioned in gold and precious jewels for the Russian royal family and the wealthy of the age. The business flourished until World War I and the Russian Revolution forced Fabergé to close his workshop and flee to Switzerland. where he died there in 1920. With the collapse of the Czarist Russian Empire and the ensuing famine of 1921, the Crown Jewels and other priceless treasures of the Romanovs were in danger of being swept into oblivion. At this time, a young American physician, Armand Hammer, arrived in Russia as a volunteer relief worker. Along with many other superb treasures, Hammer was able to purchase, through direct negotiations with the Russian government, a dozen of Fabergé’s priceless Imperial Easter Eggs. At the Imperial Russian Exhibition in London in 1935, the bejeweled eggs excited interest and amazement but their rarity and value made them only fleetingly accessible to the public at large. In 1990, on the eve of the second revolution which was to shake the communist Russian Empire, Hammer’s namesake and a doctor of the Classics, Armand D’Angour, visited the Kremlin with an idea and a mission to popularize Fabergé’s work and to bring the wonderful heritage of Russia into a worldwide domain. The result was an authorized collection of a dozen printed-metal products in tribute to the greatness of Fabergé, conceived in collaboration with and to the high standards of design required of the Curator of Antiquities at the Kremlin, Moscow. The TBI Faberge collection of finely printed metal eggs each inspired by the designs of Carl Fabergé have since been produced and are now available to commoners and kings exclusively from: The Box b.v. Laan van de Kreeft 100 7324 BX Apeldoorn Holland www.theboxnl.com Tel: 0031 (0)55 360 3851 Fax: 0031 (0)55 360 3854