What does it mean to be lost in your art? 

    Morgan Fleming, a Kansas City jeweler, inspired by Peter Carl Faberge’s work, designed his own masterpiece titled “Morgan’s Egg in Renaissance Style.”

        “I didn’t know if I ever existed before the egg. It totally changed my life,” he told me when I interviewed him in the 1990s.

        He labored for six years on this million-dollar masterpiece. Fleming fit the profile of a mad scientist obsessed with his project who rarely left his lab. His family had tremendous faith in him, though he rarely saw him. Neither did his friends. Or customers. He hired out repairs to focus on finishing the regal egg.

        Every detail he painstakingly perfected for his Imperial Easter Egg. The stunning sterling silver egg features 18-carat gold lattice work dotted with 51 clusters, each featuring four diamonds accented with a ruby center. The gold base is trimmed with intricate white, red, and green enamel designs.

        Fleming thought he’d finish the egg in a year, but he estimated he devoted 4,500 hours. Other jewelers worked with him to replicate the design details. But he reminded me that Faberge employed around 400 craftsmen. His workforce produced one jeweled egg a year for the tsar, who presented the egg as an Easter gift for the tsarina. 

        Despite the setbacks and sacrifices, Fleming told me that he never contemplated failure. He was remarkable in his determination and imagination.

    (Footnote: I’ll work on this mystery to see where this extraordinary egg resides now.)