Rare Fabergé crystal egg sells for record $30.2M at Christie’s auction

A rare crystal and diamond Fabergé egg created for Russian royalty more than a century ago sold for a record-breaking $30.2 million in an auction hosted by Christie’s on Tuesday.

The final price for the Winter Egg, which includes a buyer’s premium, was reached after a three-minute bidding flurry at the auction house’s London office. The hammer price was $25.7 million.

The imperial egg first came to auction in 1994, when it sold for $5.6 million by Christie’s in Geneva. At the time, it was an auction record for a Fabergé egg, but that was broken in 2002 when it sold for $9.6 million in New York.

According to the auction listing, the carved rock crystal egg is engraved on its interior with a frost design. The exterior has rose-cut diamond-set platinum snowflake motifs containing 4,500 tiny diamonds according to the auction listing. The egg sits on a rock crystal base formed as melting ice. The jewelry is adorned with the date “1913,” the year it was commissioned.

The piece opens to reveal a removable tiny basket of bejeweled quartz flowers, which symbolize spring.

“It represents the idea of resurrection capturing the shift from winter’s harshness to the vibrant renewal of spring, and as such has a strong connection to Easter,” Christie’s wrote in the item description.

Czar Nicholas II commissioned the egg as an Easter present for his mother, Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna. It was one of two eggs created by female designer Alma Pihl; her other egg, the Mosaic Egg of 1914, is owned by Britain’s royal family, according to The Associated Press. The egg for the czar’s mother was made in 1913, the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty.

The cost was 24,600 rubles, according to invoices published by Christie’s, making it the third-highest price Fabergé charged for a work.

Margo Oganesian, the head of Christie’s Russian art department, called the Winter Egg “the ‘Mona Lisa’ for decorative arts.”

In an emailed statement, Oganesian said that the new record “reaffirmed the enduring significance” and “rarity and brilliance of what is widely regarded as one of Fabergé’s finest creations, both technically and artistically.”

“This was an exceptional and historic opportunity for collectors to acquire a work of unparalleled importance,” she wrote.

The Winter Egg was held in several private collections after the czar was overthrown in 1917. It was among the valuable items sold by the Bolsheviks to help finance the newly formed Communist Soviet Union. Between 1929 and 1933, it was purchased by Wartski, a jewelry firm based in London, for approximately $30,000. It was then part of various British collections before it disappeared from view in 1975.

There are 43 surviving imperial Fabergé eggs, most of them housed in museums.

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