THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 9, 1996 TAG: 9609080278
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ROBERT LITTLE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: 110 lines
A world-class exhibit was not enough for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
Nor was a standard black-tie tribute.
Even 15 Faberge imperial eggs - some of the most fabulously ornamented works of art in the history of fabulous ornamentation - were, quite simply, not enough.
British stage and party designer Michael Howells, renowned among those who know about such things, borrowed from the French to explain.
``Un oeuf,'' he said, ``is never enough.''
Obviously not.
Intent on heaving upon the commonwealth a social event of historic proportions, the Virginia Museum hired Howells to summon the entire Russian House of Romanov to Virginia Saturday.
All of it. The crystal palaces. The Hall of Mirrors. The moss and the birch trees. Even a wooden bridge across the gurgling Volga with timpani pounding and snowflakes trickling off the taffeta.
Throughout its marble halls and in three parking-lot tents, the Virginia Museum re-created the czarist dynasty Saturday night. Organizers whipped up a menu of stuffed pheasant, sturgeon, a ginger pear mousse and some ``confectionary treasures,'' then charged as much as $5,000 a couple to get in.
Even before the first quail egg cracked, Virginians already were calling the Faberge Ball the party of the decade.
``It's big. It's ornate. It's glitzy,'' Richmonder Barbara Johnson observed Saturday night, marking time over a steaming demitasse.
``But people like that. In Virginia, we've never seen anything like it.''
The Virginia capital is certainly no newcomer to the elaborate fete, where the men all dress alike, the women shudder at the thought and the hemlines drop as the admission price rises.
And the Virginia Museum is no stranger to the products of Russian imperial jeweler Peter Carl Faberge. The museum enjoys a permanent collection of objects from the Faberge workshops, including five of the famed Easter eggs crafted as gifts for the Romanov czarinas.
But Saturday night was something beyond all of that.
For two months, the Virginia Museum is home to an elaborate collection of Faberge pieces from around the United States, including more than 400 bejeweled sculptures, boxes, cigarette cases, umbrella handles and other objects. And 15 Faberge eggs - each with a ``surprise'' painting, statuette or mechanism inside.
The collection has been to New York and San Francisco, and it will visit New Orleans and Cleveland when it leaves Richmond.
In Virginia, such a celebrated exhibit comes along less frequently than the locusts.
Saturday, the museum decided to make merry accordingly.
``This is not just any other ball in town,'' declared Faberge Ball chairwoman Pam Reynolds. ``This is a ball we wanted no one to forget.''
Reynolds wore a dress crafted from 55 scarves of the type sold in the museum gift shop and honoring the late Lillian Thomas Pratt, benefactor of the museum's Faberge collection. The front of the dress sprouted a garden of fresh-cut lilies.
She was only slightly more conspicuous than most.
The guest list ranged from the eye-raising to the exotic. From Prince Stanislav Shuvalov-Amirkanian of St. Petersburg, to New York's hairdresser extraordinaire Garren.
For every few cummerbunds there was a chest of medals or an ambassadorial sash. There was even a tiara or two.
The regular Virginia celebrities were there. Author Patricia Cornwell. Surnames like Gottwald (Ethyl Corp.) and Ukrop (the Richmond-based supermarket chain of the same name). The governor and his wife, shadowed by an official photographer taking snapshots of everyone who shook their hands.
More than 1,500 people attended, most sitting at corporate tables of 10 purchased for $10,000 each. The cheapest seats cost $550 a couple. The hefty price accounted for the only real hand-wringing over the event. Even some of the state's more professional socialites aren't used to fronting so much for the chance to be seen where they must.
The party grossed more than $1.7 million, organizers said. They won't say how much the caterers and musicians and decorators and party engineers will leave for the museum's endowment fund. They did say much was donated for the event.
The goal of the event, Reynolds said, was to promote the museum and the exhibit and to pump up the coffers. And to make people think the Russian czars were reveling in Richmond.
And if not for the incessant Macarena dancing and a Village People song or two, they might have pulled it off.
But another goal was clearly to provoke reactions like the one from Allison Long of Fairfax, as she left the marble ``Revolution Room'' and looked out across the vast expanse of the main ``Imperial Garden.''
``Wow,'' she said.
``What do you mean?'' her date turned to ask.
``I mean, wow,'' she answered before walking inside.
Museum public affairs manager Suzanne Hall said it all, sitting in a golden ladder-back chair waiting for the chocolate truffles beneath a drape of deep red bunting: ``I can't believe we're in a parking lot,'' she said. MEMO: The Faberge exhibit at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is open
seven days a week and continues through Nov. 3. Ticket information is
available by calling (800) 311-EGGS. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
HUY NGUYEN
The Virginian-Pilot
A glass re-creation of a Faberge egg as the centerpiece at the
Faberge Ball at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond.
Pamela Reynolds, chair-woman of the ball and Gov. George Allen greet
guests outside the museum.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Dr. Jonathan Rosefsky and his daughter Katherine Rosefsky look at
one of the Faberge eggs on display during the Faberge Ball. by CNB