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Introducing the Making of the iconic Fabergé x Game of Thrones Egg

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In April this year, we hatched our new collaboration with Warner Bros. Consumer Products to commemorate the extraordinary story of HBO®’s award-winning television series Game of Thrones. This surprise collaboration fused our superior craftsmanship and artistic ingenuity with one of the 21st century’s most popular shows.

This unique creation has been co-designed by our Designer Liisa Tallgren and Michele Clapton, the Emmy® and BAFTA® winning costume designer from Game of Thrones. We have been pleased to document this special creation being brought to life by Fabergé Workmaster Paul Jones and his team, with the completed egg unveiled to VIP guests and press on Friday 10th December 2021, in Los Angeles, USA.

This short feature film completes the journey of the Fabergé x Game of Thrones Egg, offering viewers behind-the-scenes access, as Workmaster Paul Jones oversees a small team of craftspeople as they make our initial dream, a reality. The idea of one Workmaster overseeing a project of this scale, and employing the very best craftspeople in their field, continues the tradition of Peter Carl Fabergé and how he was renowned for working on Imperial Eggs, over a century ago. We continue to uphold Peter Carl’s legacy with every new ‘Imperial Class’ Egg objet made today.

The film begins with Paul Jones at his workbench in Kent, England. Away from view, the sheets of 18k white gold have already been spun by a specialist ‘spinner’, who has moulded the egg-shaped shells, ready to be passed onto Paul and his team. The pattern of the egg design has been drawn directly onto the white gold, in free form, from Liisa Tallgren and Michelle Clapton’s original design. The pieces, which form the basis of the egg, have then been sawn out by hand.

The next stage, visible within the film, is the ‘opening up’ of the metal which will later ‘receive’ the gemstones. Meanwhile, watch as a craftsman located in Surrey, England engraves the metal by hand in preparation for the enamelling phase to take place to provide the underlying texture to the outer dragon shell. Throughout all these stages, the egg has been dissembled and reassembled to ensure all of its parts still fit together. The pieces are also polished at every new stage in the process – this is demonstrated within the film, with the inner black rhodium-plated ‘dragon skeleton’ shell polished using a specialist machine.

Next, watch as the enamelling paste is made by crushing the coloured glass and combining this with water to make a paste. Three to four layers of enamel, in mauve, light blue, grey and violet hues, are then painstakingly painted by hand onto the engraving work, and in between each layer of enamel, the piece is fired in a kiln and then polished by hand. The layering of the enamel, firing and re-polishing, especially in relation to the curved surface of the egg, presented additional complexity. The translucent and luminous effects of the glaze are enhanced by firing the enamel with a slight degree of curvature, lying minimally higher at the centre and aligning with the metal at the borders. Before the enamelling paste was formed, the craftspeople created the ‘frit’, a glass coating material available in slurry or powdered form, that will later become the molten enamel used in this part of the process.

The exceptional rubies used within this piece were chosen especially for their shape and cut and can be seen featured within the inside of the shell amongst a spectrum of pear-shaped and marquise-cut rubies, set in castle style, which graduate into pink sapphires and then into white diamonds. The pièce de résistance is the pear-shaped 4.06ct Mozambican ruby, responsibly sourced from Gemfields and set in 18k rose gold, that sits proudly within the black rhodium plated 18k white gold crown which is the central surprise. The crown was conceptualised by Michele Clapton and is a miniature version of the crown that she says she would have created for Daenerys should she have held the Iron Throne. Each precious ruby has been especially precision cut and polished to enhance their natural lustre, and the consistency of colour and quality has been rigorously quality-controlled at every stage.

Positioned fully closed, the egg displays artfully placed gaps between the outer ‘blades’, where glimpses of the inside of the egg can be seen. Look a little closer, and the moonstones also shine out amongst the white diamonds on the base. The egg slowly unfurls its outer and inner layer, by clockwise rotation of the top layer of the mechanism concealed within the 18k white gold dragon tail at the base of the egg, which is set with white diamonds. The outer layer unfurls first followed by the inner layer as the base continues to be rotated. To close the egg, the same method is practiced by rotating the base anticlockwise.

Fabergé Workmaster Paul Jones says:

“The mechanism was designed and built specifically for this piece, as the required effect of two eggs opening at different times with a delay was specific to this piece, and to my knowledge has not been done before now. The main challenge of this was to achieve the desired effect while offering an easy operation experience for the client and rendering the mechanism and linkages virtually invisible. The design process was a time-consuming one, as it required moving joints and linkages by fractions of a millimetre until the effect was achieved. This was done with the aid of computer-aided design before being built and refined in reality. The vast majority of this piece is hand- fabricated, in much the same way that Peter Carl Fabergé would have done over a century ago, with some parts manufactured using modern technology, and all parts finished and assembled by hand.

The main challenge of a creation like this, aside from the actual making of the piece itself, is the way that all the components should be made and fit in relation to each other; the order that they should be made and assembled to hide what should be hidden, and to maintain the overall aesthetic while achieving the successful function. There is no “text book” to refer to for this, rather this knowledge is a result of many years of experience gained by working on pieces of this nature, a knowledge that can only be kept alive by projects like this continuing to be commissioned. Long may it prevail!”.

The film comes to a close with the Fabergé x Game of Thrones Egg in all its glory, ready to be shown to the world and to inspire future generations to come.