On February 21, 1913, the whole Russia celebrated the 300th anniversary of the reign of the Romanovs. Three centuries earlier the 16-year-old boyar Mikhail Fyodorovich Romanov acceded to the throne, thereby becoming the founder of the new dynasty. The jubilee was celebrated as a great and solemn event. The Court jeweller Carl Fabergé, who often chronicled important events in the life of the Russian Empire in his Easter masterpieces, devoted a 1913 egg to the jubilee of the Romanov House. The major political theme demanded special artistic embodiment. The set of brilliant imperial Easter eggs would hardly include another commemoration, so replete with imperial emblems.

The basis underlining the egg pattern was the miniature copy of the state escutcheon, which had become a part of royal regalia since the 17th century and which is preserved in the Moscow Kremlin Museums. The escutcheon itself was made of wood coated with red velvet and decorated with jade lining and rock crystal and studded with precious stones and enamels. The masters of the Fabergé firm made a copy of the escutcheon from bright red and purple glass. Glimmers from the internal inclusions create a modulating red velvet surface. The base on which the egg rests is made of gilded silver and takes the form of the tree-sided heraldic eagle clutching a sceptre and orb. The top and bottom of the egg are decorated with large flat diamonds under which the dates 1613 and 1913 (on the top) and the monogram of the Empress (below) are etched in silver foil with niello. The egg itself is a remarkable work of art: the golden body is coated with white guilloche enamel and decorated with the chased golden web with embossed heraldic double-headed eagles, crowns and imperial chalets. Every detail is extremely fine and clear-cut. The jewellers of Wigström’s workshop made brilliant use of a decorative technique which is called 'cagework'. It includes frame, netting and grating. However, the primary decoration of the 1913 Easter masterpiece was without doubt 18 miniature portraits of the tsars of the Romanov dynasty. They are done in watercolour on bone and placed under the convex rock crystal plates. The portraits are framed with small diamonds known as 'monarch stones' which encircle the royal visages gracing many of Fabergé’s works. In the Easter egg, the members of the dynasty are arranged in chronological order, with only one exception: Nicholas II’s portrait is placed between the portraits of his father Alexander III and Peter I.

The miniature portraits display exceptionally keen workmanship, sharpness of detail, perfection of design and careful regard for the depiction of costumes and accessories. The author of these miniatures was Valery Zuev, a well-known Petersburg miniaturist painter who collaborated with Fabergé firm.

The surprise inside the Romanov Tercentenary egg plainly illustrates the expansion and consolidation of the Russian state achieved by the crowned members of the ruling dynasty. Inside the egg there is a revolving blue steel globe that colors the seas and oceans with a golden appliqué design of the Northern Hemisphere on both halves. One side shows Russia’s borders of 1613 and the other – of 1913. The surprise inside this Easter egg is a visual and tangible embodiment of the idea that over the past 300 years of the Romanov House rule, the Moscow State had become a vast Russian Empire spanning an immense territory. The egg, devoted to the jubilee of the Romanov dynasty, is an original embodiment of the political manifesto of the age when the Russian Empire was one of the most powerful nations in the world. This image was enshrined in the multi-coloured golden patterning of an Easter egg fashioned by the great jeweller.