A rare Fabergé masterpiece has made auction history. The Winter Egg, a stunning creation once linked to Russian royalty, sold for £22.8 million ($30.2 million) at Christie’s London on December 2, setting a new record as the most valuable Fabergé egg ever auctioned.
When the later Romanov emperors sought to honour the cherished women in their lives, they turned to the artistry of Fabergé eggs. From 1885 until just before the Russian Revolution in 1916, Alexander III and his son, Nicholas II, commissioned a total of 50 of these exquisite creations from the House of Fabergé. Each Imperial egg was a masterpiece—intricate, lavish, extraordinarily costly—and required nearly a full year to complete.
Designed by Alma Pihl—one of the few women working in St. Petersburg’s jewelry workshops in the early 1900s—the Winter Egg reflects her extraordinary talent. Born into a Finnish family of master designers, Pihl joined Fabergé at 20, sketching life-size watercolour records of the workshop’s creations. While drafting designs for a commission of 40 small jewels, she was inspired by the ice crystals on her windowpane, a motif that became her signature snowflake design.
The Winter Egg captures the stark beauty of the season: a crystal “ice” base just beginning to melt in glints of platinum and diamond, and an egg surface shimmering with Pihl’s frosted diamond pattern. Inside sits a basket of white quartz flowers—some open with flashes of green, others still closed, waiting for spring. Christie’s describes it as one of Fabergé’s most lavish Imperial creations. It cost 24,600 roubles, at a time when the average Russian factory worker earned just 22 roubles a month—a symbol of the excess that fueled resentment of the Romanovs. After the Revolution, the egg was seized by the state and later sold to a London jeweller to raise funds.
Throughout the 20th century, it passed through several British collections before reaching Christie’s Geneva in 1994, where it set a Fabergé record at 7.3 million Swiss francs. It surpassed itself again at Christie’s New York in 2002, selling for $9.6 million. For years, the Rothschild Egg—sold in 2007 for £8.9 million—held the price record. Not anymore.
Source: ArtNet