The museum’s visitors never fail to take note of the snuffbox in the Blue Room displayed alongside the imperial Coronation Easter egg. For many years, it was thought that this was Empress Alexandra Feodorovna’s gift to her husband, Nicholas II, on Easter 1897. However, after an investigation into the archives it became clear that although this beautiful snuffbox made by August Homström was a gift on Easter 1897, it was given not to the Emperor, but to Field Marshal Lieutenant Arthur von Bolfras, head of the military law firm of the Austrian Emperor Franz I. The occasion for such an expensive official present (it cost 1300 rubles, while the Coronation egg cost 5500 rubles) was Franz I’s visit to St. Petersburg in March of that year.
The Coronation snuffbox changed hands several times before it was purchased by Malcolm Forbes at a Christie’s auction (Geneva, 26 May 1978). Exactly one year later, in 1979, Forbes acquired two imperial Easter eggs: the Coronation egg of 1897 and the Lilies of the Valley egg of 1898, both created for Empress Alexandra Feodorovna.
The snuffbox’s lid features 18 two-headed eagles and 17 diamonds against gold-colored enamel, along with the diamonds in the crown and in the oval surrounding the imperial monogram. Of particular note is the technique used to attach the black enamel eagles. In the 1950s, the jeweler and enamelist Georg Stein explained that the golden-yellow enamel was placed first, after which the object was put in a water-filled receptacle where the holes for those eagles were then drilled.