Jewelry, timepieces, and other objets d’art were displayed in niches along the walls, while at the center of the gallery, lit softly in five separate cases, stood the imperial eggs bequeathed by the estate of Lillian Thomas Pratt of Fredericksburg. Maddy looked at the Peter the Great egg. It was just over four inches high, made of different shades of gold in rococo cage work, with diamonds and other precious stones set above scrolls and bulrushes. Four miniature watercolors on ivory completed the design, with the one facing her now depicting a hut on the banks of the Neva River, beneath the date of the founding of St. Petersburg. Next to it was a smaller object that had originally been inside the egg itself. Each egg made for the Romanovs had been required to contain a surprise, which, in this case, consisted of a tiny sculpture raised when the top of the egg was opened. It was the bronze figure of a man on horseback, mounted on a bed of sapphire, with a snake being crushed under the horse’s hooves.
