On the second day of winter, Christie’s London Classic Week sale will feature the Winter Egg masterpiece by Fabergé. Created at the height of Imperial Russia, it could now fetch up to $26.9 million. The jeweled egg is one of Fabergé’s most famous works, and was commissioned by Emperor Nicholas II in 1914 as a present for his mother Maria Feodorovna. Since then, it has broken auction records at least two times.
It’s carved from rock crystal and encased in diamond-set platinum snowflakes. The cold austere exterior gives way to the first spring flowers inside. As you open the egg interior, you see a basket of white quartz anemones with demantoid garnet pollen and green nephrite stems resting on gold moss. The delicate floral arrangement hangs inside the egg on a hook.
The custom jewelry design’s creator Alma Theresia Pihl found her inspiration when gazing through a frosted window of her workshop. Pihl was born in a family of Finnish jewelers and started working at Fabergé in 1909 at the age of 21. At first, she was painting design sketches before being promoted to jewelry making. The Mosaic Egg, her other famous creation, is now kept as part of England’s Royal Collection.
Photo courtesy of Christie’s.
Of all Imperial Easter Eggs, this one is considered to be the most innovative and was created to honor the three-century anniversary of the tsar dynasty. The piece was moved from St. Petersburg to the Kremlin after the Revolution. The egg became a part of a private collection in the 1920s. Then it changed hands a few times until it finally resurfaced in 1994, dazzling the whole jewelry world with its beauty. When it sold for $9 million at Christie’s Geneva three decades ago, it broke records for the first time. But then it made a comeback at a New York sale in 2002, this time selling for a little over $9.6 million.
According to the auction house, it’s a masterpiece in terms of artistic implementation and technical skills. The piece illustrates the concept of rebirth with an icy exterior that gently transitions to a flowery interior. Rose-cut diamonds encircle the rivulet of the crystal base that resembles melting ice. The head of Fabergé and Russian art, Margo Oganesian, states that the auction house is privileged to have such a piece, as only 6 other Imperial Easter Egg pieces remain in private collections. For example, the Rothschild Egg sold for $12 million in 2007, setting Christie’s record for a Fabergé auction.
48 more Fabergé pieces, with some even valued at $2.75 million, will be auctioned off at the December sale, featuring not only the Winter Egg but also other important artworks from the Princely Collection by Fabergé.
The Winter Egg can be considered one of Fabergé’s most complicated and poetic artworks. The Olertis team hopes that this shiny reminder of the lost empire will bring millions at the Christie’s sale and have jewelry enthusiasts gasp in awe when seeing its otherworldly beauty.
