Lillian Thomas Pratt Personal Papers (SC-07)

Two months after Lillian Thomas Pratt’s death in June 1947, her stunning and expansive collection of Fabergé artworks were unexpectedly bequeathed to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Thought to have been born in 1876 in Philadelphia, details of Pratt’s life still remain sketchy and limited. By 1900, she was working as a stenographer at the Puget Sound Flouring Mill, and in 1917, married her second husband, John Lee Pratt, a self-made millionaire engineer and businessman with General Motors. By 1931, they had settled at Chatham Manor in John’s native Virginia, and Pratt spent over a decade amassing a collection of over 500 items, eighty percent of which is Russian decorative art, mainly Fabergé.

Pratt began collecting while accompanying her husband on business trips to New York City, shopping in her spare time, and possibly becoming enchanted with the Hammer Galleries’ “Russian Imperial Exhibit” at Lord and Taylor in the early 1930s. While the total amount she spent during that time is unknown, she spent $100,000 alone at New York City’s Schaffer Collection. She simultaneously purchased items, including four of her five imperial Easter eggs, from the Hammer Galleries. Her collection includes not only the finest imperial eggs, but also miniature eggs, jewelry, framed photographs, boxes, handles, flowers, and animal figures, among many other types of objects. Whatever her collecting may have been (besides simply furnishing her new home), her fascination with Russian royalty was enduring, and has been shared with museum visitors for over 60 years.

Source: Fabergé: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts