For the third time in its history, the Winter Egg is now the most valuable Fabergé item ever sold
The Winter Egg was designed by Alma Pihl, one of the few female designers at the House of Fabergé. Czar Nicholas II gifted it to his mother, Maria Feodorovna, in 1913.
Henry Nicholls / AFP via Getty Images
A crystal Fabergé egg cracked a new world record at auction this week, selling for $30,244,295 to an anonymous buyer.
The luxury object is one of 50 bejeweled Easter eggs created by the House of Fabergé for the Romanovs, Russia’s imperial family. Known as the Winter Egg, it was crafted for the czar Nicholas II to give his mother in 1913, four years before he abdicated his throne amid the tumult of the Russian Revolution.
Tuesday’s record-breaking sale at Christie’s London marked the Winter Egg’s third time going under the hammer. It was first sold by Christie’s in 1994 for 7.3 million Swiss francs, setting what was then a world record for a Fabergé item. Eight years later, in 2002, the egg broke its own record when it fetched $9.6 million at a Christie’s auction in New York City.
Fun facts: What is the House of Fabergé?
The Winter Egg’s record stood until 2007, when the Rothschild Egg, a dazzling 1902 specimen featuring a clock and an automaton, sold for $18.5 million at another Christie’s auction. Now, the Winter Egg has claimed the record once again.
The sale reaffirmed “the enduring significance” and “rarity and brilliance of what is widely regarded as one of Fabergé’s finest creations, both technically and artistically,” says Margo Oganesian, head of Christie’s Faberge and Russian art department, in a statement.
“This was an exceptional and historic opportunity for collectors to acquire a work of unparalleled importance,” she adds.
The Fabergé Winter Egg adorned with more than 4000 diamonds | Christie’s
Carved out of rock crystal, the Winter Egg is an ode to the titular season’s transition into spring. Platinum snowflakes set with rose-cut diamonds adorn its shell. Nestled inside, a hanging platinum basket holds a bouquet of white quartz flowers. The egg sits on a rock crystal base that mimics a block of melting ice, representing “the idea of resurrection [and] capturing the shift from winter’s harshness to the vibrant renewal of spring,” according to an October Christie’s statement.
The Winter Egg is especially rare because it was designed by Alma Pihl, one of Fabergé’s few female designers. Pihl, a member of a prominent family of Finnish jewelers, was initially tasked with rendering life-size watercolors of Fabergé designs for the company’s records. But in her free time, she sketched her own designs, too. They caught the attention of her uncle, Albert Holmström, who ordered some of them into production. In addition to the Winter Egg, Pihl designed the Mosaic Egg, which Nicholas gifted to his wife in 1914. Featuring a platinum mesh mosaic pattern fitted with diamonds, rubies and other precious gems, the Mosaic Egg is now owned by the British royal family.
Outside observers might envision Fabergé eggs as grand objects “the size of the Empire State Building, with diamonds the size of footballs,” Fabergé expert Kieran McCarthy told CNN’s Susannah Cullinane in 2015. In truth, he added, “It’s a very delicate and small object, and people never anticipate that Fabergé eggs can be that size.”
The Winter Egg holds a basket of white quartz flowers. Courtesy of Christie’s/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/03/93/0393a747-d0d0-4430-a152-2c502f1a1063/winter-egg.png)
Russia’s last imperial family lived “at such a height of luxury that you couldn’t really excite them with anything of intrinsic value,” McCarthy said. “It was always about the craftsmanship.”
The Russian Revolution brought this era of decadence to an end. After seizing power, the Bolsheviks confiscated many of the Romanovs’ eggs, which they viewed as “almost certainly the most reprehensible symbols of the past,” wrote Apollo magazine’s Digby Warde-Aldam in 2014. Over the next several decades, the communist regime sold many Fabergé eggs piecemeal to overseas collectors.
A London buyer purchased the Winter Egg for just £450 between 1929 and 1933, according to Christie’s. A series of English collectors owned the object before it vanished in 1975. It only re-emerged in 1994, when it was first auctioned.
Today, just 43 imperial Fabergé eggs survive. Most of them are housed in museums around the world. Only seven, including the recently auctioned egg, are owned by private collectors. As the Associated Press reports, Oganesian has described the Winter Egg as “the Mona Lisa for decorative arts.”
