A jewel-encrusted Fabergé egg, once owned by the mother of Russia's last emperor, has sold for a record £22.9 million at auction in London. The Winter egg, commissioned in 1913 by Emperor Nicholas II as an Easter gift for his mother, Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, is considered one of the most lavish of the imperial creations by jeweller Peter Carl Fabergé.
The egg, made of rock crystal with a frost design engraved on the inside and rose-cut diamond-set platinum snowflake motifs on the outside, was sold by Christie's on Tuesday. The sale price set a new world record for a Fabergé piece, surpassing the previous record of £8.9 million set in 2007 for the Rothschild egg.
After the Russian Revolution in 1917, the egg was moved from St Petersburg to the Kremlin armoury. In the 1920s, the Soviet government sold it off, and it was later acquired by Wartski of London, selling to a British collector for £1,500 in 1934. The egg was believed missing for two decades between 1975 and 1994, before being sold at Christie's for £6.8 million, and again in 2002 for £7.1 million.
Margo Oganesian, Christie's head of department for Fabergé and Russian works of art, said: 'Christie's is honoured to have been entrusted with the sale of the exquisite Winter egg by Fabergé for the third time in our history. Today's result sets a new world auction record for a work by Fabergé, reaffirming the enduring significance of this masterpiece.'
