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Kutchinsky's Egg : A Family's Story of Obsession, Love, and Loss
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Overview
A riveting, heart-stopping family memoir that blends art, obsession, and love as the author searches for the spectacular jeweled egg that consumed her father's dreams--and spelled her family's downfall. When she was eleven years old, Serena Kutchinsky's life changed forever. Her father Paul, who owned the high-end jewelry company the House of Kutchinsky, set out to create the world's largest jeweled egg--one to rival Faberg 's masterpieces. He succeeded, but at a ruinous price. The Argyle Library Egg was astonishing: two feet tall, made of solid gold, and dripping with pink diamonds. But when Paul was unable to secure a buyer, the House of Kutchinsky collapsed, his marriage fell apart, and he sank into a spiral of drink and drugs. Within ten years he was dead. As for the egg, it was seized by business partners and disappeared without a trace. Over time, the mystery of the egg began to eat away at Serena. Why did her father risk everything for the pursuit of this audacious dream? And where in the world was his extravagant, ill-fated creation, which had been lost for decades and was estimated to now be worth more than 30 million. Desperate for answers, she set out in search of the egg--and an elusive understanding of her late father. The journey begins in the slums of London's East End where her great-great-grandparents arrived as Jewish immigrants from Russia--and ends in the most unexpected of places. Echoing the intimacy of The Hare with Amber Eyes, Kutchinsky's Egg is a spellbinding historical mystery that explores the glittering yet shadowy world of high-end jewelry, the rise and fall of a family empire, and the complex bond between a father and daughter.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9781668079096
- ISBN-10: 1668079097
- Publisher: Scribner Book Company
- Publish Date: March 2026
- Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.05 pounds
- Page Count: 320
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When Serena Kutchinsky was 9, her father confided: “I’m going to make a giant golden egg, the biggest in the world. Bigger than Fabergé’s.” He promised it would be “nearly as tall and beautiful as you, with thousands of pink diamonds in it.” In Kutchinsky's Egg: A Family's Story of Obsession, Love, and Loss, the award-winning British journalist shows how he did just that, but in the process destroyed his family and their nearly century-old business.
Born into a family of successful London jewelers, Paul Kutchinsky dreamed big and lived large, once chatting with Prince Charles about Aston Martins. However, his life became as eyepoppingly far-fetched as the 2-foot-tall egg itself—which took 7,000 hours to make, using 15 kilograms of gold and 24,000 rare pink diamonds. Spectators crowded around during its world tour, launched in 1990. Paul hoped to sell jeweled art like the egg to wealthy Middle Easterners, while upstaging European rivals like Cartier. Unfortunately, his scheme “mutated into a corrosive ambition that consumed him.” Ten years after the egg’s debut, Paul Kutchinsky was dead.
When Kutchinsky felt compelled to tell her late father’s story, no one wanted to discuss it. “Bloody egg,” was all her mother would say. But Kutchinsky’s journalistic training served her well as she traced the origins of her father’s trade. When she set out, she didn’t even know if his ancestors had been Russian or Polish. What’s more, she had no idea what had happened to his creation. “The thought that Dad’s egg was out there somewhere gnawed at me,” she writes. “If I could see it again, then I might finally understand why he risked so much to make it.”
Kutchinsky’s personal connection enriches this bizarre narrative from start to finish. As she painstakingly unwinds this generational and globe-spanning story—full of twists, betrayals and startling events—her prose sparkles like the diamond-studded objet d’art at the center of it all. She walks the fine line of infusing love and empathy into her writing while managing to dispassionately lay bare her father’s failings, as well as those of her grandfather, Jo. Having always felt a kinship with her father’s personality, Kutchinsky confesses her fear that “somehow I was destined to repeat his mistakes.”
While viewing family videos, Kutchinsky laments that it’s “like re-watching old episodes of a soap opera when you know the tragic fates that befall your favorite characters.” Like The Orchid Thief and The Feather Thief, Kutchinsky’s Egg is a glittering insider’s look at a tragically consuming obsession.
When Serena Kutchinsky was 9, her father confided: “I’m going to make a giant golden egg, the biggest in the world. Bigger than Fabergé’s.” He promised it would be “nearly as tall and beautiful as you, with thousands of pink diamonds in it.” In Kutchinsky's Egg: A Family's Story of Obsession, Love, and Loss, the award-winning British journalist shows how he did just that, but in the process destroyed his family and their nearly century-old business.
Born into a family of successful London jewelers, Paul Kutchinsky dreamed big and lived large, once chatting with Prince Charles about Aston Martins. However, his life became as eyepoppingly far-fetched as the 2-foot-tall egg itself—which took 7,000 hours to make, using 15 kilograms of gold and 24,000 rare pink diamonds. Spectators crowded around during its world tour, launched in 1990. Paul hoped to sell jeweled art like the egg to wealthy Middle Easterners, while upstaging European rivals like Cartier. Unfortunately, his scheme “mutated into a corrosive ambition that consumed him.” Ten years after the egg’s debut, Paul Kutchinsky was dead.
When Kutchinsky felt compelled to tell her late father’s story, no one wanted to discuss it. “Bloody egg,” was all her mother would say. But Kutchinsky’s journalistic training served her well as she traced the origins of her father’s trade. When she set out, she didn’t even know if his ancestors had been Russian or Polish. What’s more, she had no idea what had happened to his creation. “The thought that Dad’s egg was out there somewhere gnawed at me,” she writes. “If I could see it again, then I might finally understand why he risked so much to make it.”
Kutchinsky’s personal connection enriches this bizarre narrative from start to finish. As she painstakingly unwinds this generational and globe-spanning story—full of twists, betrayals and startling events—her prose sparkles like the diamond-studded objet d’art at the center of it all. She walks the fine line of infusing love and empathy into her writing while managing to dispassionately lay bare her father’s failings, as well as those of her grandfather, Jo. Having always felt a kinship with her father’s personality, Kutchinsky confesses her fear that “somehow I was destined to repeat his mistakes.”
While viewing family videos, Kutchinsky laments that it’s “like re-watching old episodes of a soap opera when you know the tragic fates that befall your favorite characters.” Like The Orchid Thief and The Feather Thief, Kutchinsky’s Egg is a glittering insider’s look at a tragically consuming obsession.