A Fabergé silver and matte enamel menu holder, workmaster Henrik Wigström, St. Petersburg, circa 1909-1910

the curved officers' assembly menu holder formed as a 1909 pattern collar insignia of the Life-Guards 2nd Rifles Tsarskoselsky Regiment, with applied silver mounts finely chased in imitation of metal embroidery depicting the regimental pattern of stylized ancient Russian shields, bows, and arrows on a blue matte enamel ground, the rim enameled in transparent red, struck with workmaster's initials, Fabergé in Cyrillic, and 88 standard

the red rim with areas of loss and repair, particularly at center, with a 2 mm scratch to the matte blue enamel at far right, the silver with remnants of gilding
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Approximately 30 such menu holders were likely to have been commissioned early in 1910 for use by the officers' assembly at a celebratory meal commemorating the enlargement of the Tsarskoselsky battalion to a regiment. The official date of the change was 16 May 1910. On the battalion and regiment, see The Russian Imperial Guards, Moscow, 2005, pp. 389-390. For a pair of similar menu holders, see G. von Habsburg, ed., Fabergé-Cartier: Rivalen am Zarenhof, Munich, 2003, p. 192, no. 153. We are grateful to Dmitry Gurevich for assistance cataloguing this lot.