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Fabergé’s 'The Winter Egg' Achieves Record $30M
The historic egg, crafted for Russia's ruling family prior to the revolution, was the star of Christie’s recent auction of works by Fabergé.
Earlier this week, “The Winter Egg” set a world auction record for a work by Fabergé when it sold at Christie’s “The Winter Egg and Important Works by Fabergé from a Princely Collection” sale.
London—“The Winter Egg,” a rare rock crystal and diamond Fabergé creation with a storied history, has set a world auction record for a work by Fabergé for the third time in its history.
It sold above its estimate for $30.2 million at a Christie’s sale in London on Dec. 2, shattering the previous record set in 2007 when “The Rothschild Egg” sold for £8.9 million ($11.9 million) in London.
The Winter Egg was commissioned by the last Russian tsar, Emperor Nicholas II, to give to his mother, the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, on Easter Day in 1913.
It is made of rock crystal and adorned with more than 4,000 diamonds. The interior is engraved with a frost design, while the exterior features platinum snowflake motifs set with rose-cut diamonds.
It opens to reveal a platinum woven basket set with rose-cut diamonds and filled with carved white quartz wood anemones, each with a gold wire stem and stamens.
Fabergé designer Alma Theresia Pihl produced the design.
She began as a watercolor copyist at Fabergé and later ventured into jewelry design, working with her uncle, a workmaster named Albert Holmström. When he crafted The Winter Egg, he was working from Pihl’s design, according to Christie’s.
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It sold above its estimate for $30.2 million at a Christie’s sale in London on Dec. 2, shattering the previous record set in 2007 when “The Rothschild Egg” sold for £8.9 million ($11.9 million) in London.
The Winter Egg was commissioned by the last Russian tsar, Emperor Nicholas II, to give to his mother, the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, on Easter Day in 1913.
It is made of rock crystal and adorned with more than 4,000 diamonds. The interior is engraved with a frost design, while the exterior features platinum snowflake motifs set with rose-cut diamonds.
It opens to reveal a platinum woven basket set with rose-cut diamonds and filled with carved white quartz wood anemones, each with a gold wire stem and stamens.
Fabergé designer Alma Theresia Pihl produced the design.
She began as a watercolor copyist at Fabergé and later ventured into jewelry design, working with her uncle, a workmaster named Albert Holmström. When he crafted The Winter Egg, he was working from Pihl’s design, according to Christie’s.
When Nicholas abdicated the throne in February 1917, The Winter Egg, along with several other Imperial eggs, was moved to the Kremlin Armoury in Moscow for safekeeping, though it later ended up in the possession of the new Soviet government.
The egg was sold and changed hands several times in subsequent years before selling at a Christie’s auction in Geneva in 1994 ($9.1 million) and again in New York in 2002 ($9.6 million), achieving a world-record price for an object by Fabergé on both occasions.
It is, according to Christie’s, among the most lavish and best documented of all the Imperial Easter Eggs, which Fabergé produced between 1885 and 1916.
Of the 50 completed eggs, 43 still exist, said the auction house, but only a handful—including The Winter Egg—remain in private collections.
The Winter Egg was the top lot of Christie’s “The Winter Egg and Important Works by Fabergé from a Princely Collection” sale, which is part of its ongoing “Classic Week” in London.
“Today's result sets a new world auction record for a work by Fabergé, reaffirming the enduring significance of this masterpiece and celebrating the rarity and brilliance of what is widely regarded as one of Fabergé's finest creations, both technically and artistically,” said Margo Oganesian, head of Christie's Fabergé and Russian works of art department.
The Fabergé auction, which also featured hardstone figures, animals, objets de vertu, and furniture by the Russian jeweler, garnered £27.8 million ($36.7 million) in total.
Fabergé was recently sold by Gemfields, which had owned the brand since 2013, to U.S.-based tech investment company SMG Capital LLC for $50 million.
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