A unique 1913 imperial ‘winter egg,’ originally commissioned for Nicholas II, has achieved a sale price of $30.2 million.
A Fabergé Imperial ‘Winter Egg,’ created for Nicholas II, Russia’s last tsar, achieved a record-breaking £22.9 million ($30.2 million) at a Christie’s auction in London on Tuesday, as announced by the auction house.
Christie’s reported that the public auction concluded in approximately three minutes, and the buyer’s identity was not disclosed.
Commissioned in 1913, the egg was intended as an Easter gift from Nicholas II to his mother, Dowager Empress Maria Fyodorovna. It was crafted from rock crystal and adorned with platinum and rose-cut diamond snowflake motifs, with its base designed to resemble melting ice, according to the auction house.
Within the egg is a removable “surprise”: a platinum basket set with diamonds, containing carved quartz wood anemones with nephrite leaves and garnet centers.
The final price surpassed Christie’s pre-sale valuation of over £20 million, Reuters noted.
Margo Oganesian, Christie’s head of department for Fabergé and Russian works of art, commented to the outlet, “This is one of (the) Imperial Easter Eggs created by Faberge for the Romanovs. And the Winter Egg is arguably the best of them all.”
Unusually for its period, the ‘Winter Egg’ was designed by a woman jeweler, Alma Pihl. Legend suggests that Pihl, the niece of Fabergé’s chief jeweler, Albert Holmstrom, conceived the design after observing ice crystals forming on a shop window at her workshop.
Fabergé’s gem-encrusted eggs were produced for Nicholas II and his predecessor, Alexander III, who presented them as Easter gifts to members of the imperial family. Each piece typically required about a year for design and production, and the tsars generally commissioned a new, elaborate item shortly after the previous one was delivered.
The esteemed St. Petersburg jeweler crafted the imperial eggs for Russia’s Romanov family, with 43 known to still exist. The ‘Winter Egg’ is one of just seven that remain in private collections; the others are either missing or held by institutions and museums.
The Winter Egg vanished in 1975 and was rediscovered in 1994, according to the auction house. Christie’s has previously sold it twice—in Geneva in 1994 and New York in 2002—setting new record prices on both occasions, Reuters reported. The Rothschild Fabergé Egg, for comparison, sold for $18.5 million in 2007.