Kremlin Opens a Treasure Chest of Faberge : Art: The show--with an admission fee of about 12 cents--marks the 150th anniversary of the firm’s founding.

Faberge.

The very name epitomizes the exquisite taste and spendthrift follies of Russia’s czars. Now, jewelry, silverware and Easter surprise boxes worth millions of dollars--the glowing, sparkling handiwork of Russia’s most famed goldsmith--have been put on exhibit in the heart of ancient Russia, the Moscow Kremlin.

Touted as the largest exhibition to date of Karl G. Faberge’s creations in his native land, the collection displays more than 70 works, ranging from the fabled Easter eggs that made the firm’s name in the late 19th Century to tiny model ships and a toy train consisting of five gold cars pulled by a platinum steam engine, complete with its matchstick-sized gold winding key. (The train was a birthday present for one of the Romanov grand princes.)

The exhibit commemorates the 150th anniversary of the firm’s founding in 1842 and includes 13 objects discovered during renovation of an old building in Moscow in 1990.

In Russia, this is the most unequivocal official tribute yet to the goldsmith’s greatness, experts say. Up to now, some Faberge masterpieces were on display in the prestigious Kremlin Armory.

But the Great Soviet Encyclopedia refused to print a word about Faberge, probably because his name is inseparably tied in the public mind to catering to the wanton needs of the Russian imperial family.

Before the 1917 Russian Revolution, two generations of the Faberge family worked to make their modest St. Petersburg jewelry shop into Russia’s biggest. By 1900, the firm employed 500 craftsmen and had branched into other countries.

But it was in 1886, according to Alla M. Terekhova, a State Armory expert on Faberge jewelry, that the firm made a qualitative leap, employing independent goldsmith Mikhail E. Perkhin. His shop produced the first of the now-celebrated eggs with surprises inside; the Romanovs offered them to each other as Easter gifts.

Each egg, Terekhova said, took almost a year to make and it was because of them that the Faberge stand at the Paris World Exhibition in 1900 caused a stir and earned Karl G. Faberge, the head of the firm at the time, the Legion of Honor.

The last reliably known egg of this type was crafted in 1916, in the middle of World War I, and reflected Russia’s frame of mind at the time: a steel casing more like a bomb than an egg, positioned on four supports in the form of artillery shells with an abandoned painter’s palette inside as the surprise.

As visitors to the Kremlin exhibition eyed the glittering diamond dragonflies, gold-and-emerald beetles and breathtaking Easter eggs one recent day, a worried administrator peered in disbelief into the virtually empty visitors’ book.

“No one writes anything--only some foreigners have scribbled something here! What’s the matter?” the official asked.

The reason proved simple enough: Few Russians were prepared to believe that they were seeing the real thing.

“Oh, we know everything has been sold for dollars,” said one young couple, introducing themselves as Andrei and Irina. “Why get excited over replicas?”

“Oh, no, all exhibits are genuine,” protested Galina Nikolayeva, the expert in charge of the exhibition. “What’s more, they represent Faberge’s top achievement. Recently, one of his Easter eggs went at Sotheby’s for $3.2 million. We have 10 such eggs on display here and each would have fetched more.”

Despite such claims, there was nothing suggestive of reinforced security on the premises, apart from what seemed to be ultrasonic sensors in the unimaginatively lit display boxes.

The exhibition site, the Kremlin bell tower, though ancient and prestigious, was shabby enough to warrant its own renovation, perhaps with the promise of discovering yet another lost cache of fabulous works by Faberge.

The exhibit will run until Jan. 15. Admission is 25 rubles--about 12 cents.