the handle naturalistically carved from a single piece of brown agate in the form of an owl, its eyes set with rose diamonds, with chased gold claws, stood on a gold mount enamelled translucent pink over an engraved ground, with a circular uncut gold seal.
Contained in its original silk and velvet lined fitted holly wood case, the lid silk stamped ‘Fabergé, St .Petersburg, Moscow, London’ in Cyrillic beneath the Imperial warrant.
Workmaster: Fedor Afanassiev
St. Petersburg, 1908-1917
Inventory number: 20183
Height 2.7 cm.
Provenance
Purchased by the Dowager Tsarina Marie Feodorovna from Fabergé in St. Petersburg on 15th April 1910 for 25 roubles.
HRH Thyra, Princess of Denmark, The Crown Princess of Hanover, Duchess of Cumberland and Teviotdale.
HRH Princess Olga of Hanover and Cumberland, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland, Duchess of Brunswick-Luneburg.
Ernest Augustus IV Prince of Hanover, Hereditary Prince of Brunswick,
HRH Monika, Princess of Hanover, Countess zu Solms-Laubach.
Illustrated
Fabergé Hofjuwelier de Zaren, at the Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Munich, 1986-1987, number 212.
Fabergé-Cartier at the Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Munich, 2004, number 261.