Fabergé Egg Likely to Set World Record For The Third Time
- Editor OGN Daily
- 4 hours ago
- 2 min read
For the imperial families ruling Russia’s empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, even Easter eggs were sometimes made of diamonds.
Between 1885 and 1916, the luxury jewelry firm House of Fabergé created 50 decadent Imperial Easter Eggs Russia's ruling elite. This particular one was commissioned in 1913 by the emperor Nicholas II as an Easter present for his mother, Maria Feodorovna; the 'Winter Egg' was designed by one of the rare female designers at House of Fabergé: Alma Pihl.
Born into a Finnish family of master craftsmen and designers, Pihl had a prodigious talent, and her exquisite creation is expected to fetch a record-setting $27 million at Christie’s in London in December this year - the third time it is heading to auction. Originally it cost the emperor 24,600 roubles - for context, the average Russian factory worker in 1913 earned 22 roubles a month, reports ArtNet
It was first sold by Christie’s at a Geneva auction in 1994 for roughly $11.6 million today, setting the world record for a Fabergé item. Eight years later, the egg cracked the same record when it went for $9,579,500 (roughly $17.2 million today) at another Christie’s auction in New York. “This is an extraordinary chance for collectors to acquire what is arguably one of Fabergé’s finest creations, both technically and artistically,” says Margo Oganesian, who oversees Fabergé and Russian art for Christie’s.
Carved in rock crystal, the Winter Egg is an ode to the transition into spring. The egg’s shell is adorned with a rose-cut diamond-set platinum snowflake pattern. It opens to reveal a hanging platinum basket set with rose-cut diamonds, which holds a bouquet of white flowers. The egg sits upon a rock-crystal base that mimics a block of melting ice.
The decadent egg tradition came to an end with the revolution, during which the czars were overthrown and the Fabergé family fled Russia. According to Christie’s, a jeweler in London purchased the Winter Egg for just £450 in the late 1920s or early 1930s. It subsequently passed through the hands of a number of English collectors and ultimately vanished for two decades, until it was rediscovered and auctioned in 1994.
