Design
The crafting of this imperial egg is credited to Mikhail Perkhin of Fabergé's shop. The egg stands on a base of gold that is painted in opalescent white enamel. The three panels of the base feature motifs of raised gold in four colors, representing the arts and sciences. A serpent, set with diamonds, coils around the stand connecting the base to the egg and up toward the center of the egg. The serpent's head and tongue point to the hour which is indicated in roman numerals on a white band which runs around the egg near the top. This band rotates within the egg to indicate the time, rather than the serpent rotating around the egg. This is the first of the Tsar Imperial Fabergé eggs to feature a working clock. The majority of the egg is enameled in translucent blue and has diamond-studded gold bands and designs ringing the top and bottom of the egg. On each side of the egg a sculpted gold handle arches up in a "C" shape, attached to the egg on the top near the apex and on the lower half of the egg, near the center. One interesting feature is that the egg identified as the Blue Serpent Clock Egg contains no sapphires, while descriptions from the Russian State Historical Archives, the 1917 inventory of confiscated imperial treasure and the 1922 transfer documents for the egg to be moved from the Anichkov Palace to the Sovnarkom all describe the egg as containing sapphires.
Read more about this topic: Blue Serpent Clock Egg
Famous quotes containing the word design:
“If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life ... for fear that I should get some of his good done to me,—some of its virus mingled with my blood.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“With wonderful art he grinds into paint for his picture all his moods and experiences, so that all his forces may be brought to the encounter. Apparently writing without a particular design or responsibility, setting down his soliloquies from time to time, taking advantage of all his humors, when at length the hour comes to declare himself, he puts down in plain English, without quotation marks, what he, Thomas Carlyle, is ready to defend in the face of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.”
—John Adams (1735–1826)