This egg was presented by Tsar Nicholas II to his mother, Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, in 1915 as a tribute to her service as head of the Russian Red Cross. The egg is decorated with five bands of white guilloché enamel, each with a different pattern.

The surprise inside the egg is a hinged, folding screen of five oval miniature portraits of women from the House of Romanov, each wearing the uniform of the Red Cross.

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The other thing we did in Richmond was visit the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, not something I’d normally do on a first visit to a place, but I have long wanted to see their collection of five Fabergé eggs, and this was my chance to do it.

Bird food, posted earlier: