Fabergé originally made his bejewelled eggs for the Russian tsar and his family to celebrate Easter. The name became synonymous with luxury and now the new owners of the 160-year-old brand plan to revive its upmarket image.

Bought by mining investors based in South Africa from consumer goods group Unilever in January, Fabergé has been better known of late as a cosmetics brand. However, the investment group Pallinghurst Resources is in the process of hiring a team of luxury goods experts to review the brand and turn it into a high-class gemstone supplier.

In an interview with Reuters, Sean Gilbertson, a partner in the investment group, said: "What we want to do is create the world's leading supplier of branded gemstones. But there is a natural follow on and that is to re-establish Fabergé as the world's leading luxury goods name".

Mr Gilberston is the son of Brian Gilbertson, who is best known for the rapid growth of London-listed mining group BHP Billiton. Brian Gilbertson now runs Pallinghurst, which bought Fabergé for an undisclosed sum and has ambitions to raise $1.5bn (£750m) for investments in the resource sector.

The new owners intend to create a new firm, Fabergé Gemstones, which will not own mines directly but provide rough and polished gemstones to wholesalers. The group aims to be able to tell the ultimate buyer of the stone of its origins, something that has become important to buyers of precious stones who are keen to establish they have been mined legally.

Sean Gilbertson said that the aim was to improve upon the so-called Kimberley process which has governments certifying that a diamond has been mined legally but does not trace the stone any further through the sales process.

"We will go a very important step further than the Kimberley process which ... does not actually track where the stone has come from," he said.

"We're mining people so we are in the process of hiring a team of specialists in the luxury goods sector to re-establish Fabergé as the leading name in luxury goods."

Backstory

Unilever had owned the Fabergé brand since 1989 but has been streamlining its brands under a restructuring programme which has required it to sell off a number of its non-core brands. Peter Carl Fabergé designed his first lavish egg in 1885 for Tsar Alexander III of Russia as an Easter present for his wife. It started a trend and about 50 were made, while two more were never completed. The House of Fabergé was closed down by the Bolshevik regime in 1918, shortly before Fabergé's death, though his relatives ensured that his name lived on.