Imperial Coronation Egg, photographed at an exhibition in Rome.

I don't know how I came to know about Faberge eggs, but I know that I must have done so early in childhood because I made my own, when I was eight or so. Mine were certainly humbler - I remember making one with the ballerina from a music box (carefully sawed off with an x-acto knife just below the pointe shoe she twirled on when the key was wound) which was placed inside on a scrap of fabric. This was the first thing I remember making where I thought, having made it, yes, this is more or less what I was imagining.

Once they were made, I did not much care what happened to them -- I gave them to my mother who did not keep any for long; they would be on a shelf for a while and then not, but my attention had long since moved on to something else. It was the making of them which I loved, and which was the entire point of it for me.