A porcelain Easter egg painted on a white ground with a black Imperial double-headed eagle, an official emblem of the Russian state, on the front side and Cyrillic letters ‘HV’, initials for ‘Christ Has Risen‘, on the reverse.
The state coat of arms was used to distinguish the household wares intended for the Imperial residences and the needs of the court. Since the eighteenth century, individual pieces and large services painted with the coat of arms had been produced for the Imperial residences in St Petersburg, Tsarskoe Selo, Gatchina, Krasnoselskoye and Yelagin Island. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the Imperial Porcelain Factory started to produce Easter eggs bearing the coat of arms. Examples of such eggs are in the collection of the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg (ЭРФ-5506 & ЭРФ-5504).