#imperial egg

[pwlanier]

A magnificent and highly Imperial Winter Egg, by Fabergé. Designed by Alma Theresia Pihl, workmaster Albert Holström, St Petersburg, 1913. The egg with base 14.2 cm high; the surprise 8.2 cm high. Estimate on request; in excess of £20 million. © Christie's Images Ltd 2025

The Winter Egg presents the viewer with an ethereal vision of beauty and tranquil wonder, achieved through exceptional design and exquisite craftsmanship. The egg is finely carved in rock crystal, delicately engraved on the interior with a frost design, while the exterior is applied with rose-cut diamond-set platinum snowflake motifs, with two vertical diamond-set platinum borders concealing a hinge on the side and a cabochon moonstone dated 1913. The egg is on a rock-crystal base formed as a block of melting ice, applied with rose-cut diamond-set platinum rivulets, centring a platinum pin in the middle to support the egg, and opens to reveal the 'surprise' suspended from a platinum hook. This comprises a double-handled trelliswork platinum basket, set throughout with rose-cut diamonds, full of finely carved white quartz wood anemones, each spring flower with gold wire stem and stamens, the centre set with a demantoid garnet, the leaves delicately carved in nephrite, emerging from a bed of gold moss. The base of the basket is engraved 'FABERGÉ 1913'. It was commissioned at an extraordinary cost of 24,600 roubles.

The Winter Egg is among the best documented of all the Imperial Easter Eggs. Following the 1917 Revolution, it was transferred from St Petersburg to the Kremlin Armoury in Moscow along with many other valuable possessions of the Imperial family. In the 1920s, the newly established Soviet government began selling art treasures from the Hermitage and other national collections, including personal belongings of the Romanovs. In desperate need of money, the regime sold many Imperial Easter Eggs to collectors and dealers in Europe and the United States, often for only a fraction of their value. The Winter Egg was acquired by Wartski of London in the late 1920s or early 1930s for £450. Wartski sold the Egg in 1934 to Napier Sturt, 3rd Baron Alington, a British collector and landowner, for £1,500. It later entered the collection of Sir Bernard Eckstein, a prominent British art collector, subsequently selling at auction in London in 1949, listed as property of Sir Bernard Eckstein, where it was purchased by Mr. Arthur Bryan Ledbrook for £1,700. The Egg disappeared in 1975 after Ledbrook's death. In 1994 it was rediscovered and sold at a Christie's auction in Geneva the same year, setting a world record for a work by Fabergé at 7,263,500 Swiss francs. Eight years later, on 19 April 2002, the Egg was once again put up for auction at Christie's, this time in New York, where it again set a world record of $9,579,500.

Courtesy Alain Truong

[darlenefblog]

This amazing Faberge egg is coming up for auction. The Winter Egg was one of only two designed by a woman, Alma Pihl. Of the 43 known surviving eggs only 7 are in private hands; this egg being sold for the third time. Expected to sell for around 27 million dollars.

This Rare Fabergé Egg Might Set a World Record at Auction for the Third Time in Its History

Story by Ella Feldman, Smithsonian Magazine

For the imperial families at the helm of 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 for the Russian imperial family. One of them is expected to fetch a record-setting $27 million at an auction held by Christie’s in London on December 2—its third time going under the hammer.

Thought to be lost for almost two decades, the Winter Egg was first sold by Christie’s at a Geneva auction in 1994. It sold for 7,263,500 Swiss francs, setting the world record for a Fabergé item. Eight years later, the egg cracked the same record when it went for $9,579,500 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,” Margo Oganesian, who oversees Fabergé and Russian art for Christie’s, says in a statement. “It would undoubtedly enhance the most distinguished collection.”

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 piece is “richly imbued with clear Easter symbolism,” per Christie’s description. “It represents the idea of resurrection, capturing the shift from winter’s harshness to the vibrant renewal of spring.”

Commissioned in 1913 by the emperor Nicholas II as an Easter present for his mother, the Winter Egg was designed by one of the rare female designers at House of Fabergé: Alma Pihl. Born into a family of Finnish jewelers who worked for the firm, Pihl’s first job was watercoloring life-size renditions of Fabergé designs for the company’s archival records.

But in her free time, Pihl sketched her own ornate designs, which caught the attention of her uncle, Albert Holmström. He ordered some of her designs to be executed by Fabergé, kicking off her career as a designer. Her drawings were the basis for the Winter Egg and the Mosaic Egg of 1914, which is now in the United Kingdom’s Royal Collection.

“The snowflake design famously came to life when Alma, seeking inspiration, gazed out of her frost-covered workshop window and saw ice crystals forming ‘like a garden of exquisite frozen flowers,’” according to Christie’s description.

From design to creation, most Imperial Easter Eggs took almost a year to complete, wrote Franz Birbaum, Fabergé’s chief designer, in his 1919 memoirs. “Work began soon after Easter and was hardly finished by Holy Week of the following year,” he wrote. The jewelry house had complete creative control over the design of the eggs, he noted.

Before the 1917 Russian Revolution, the country saw “this last gasp of imperial patronage colliding with craftsmanship,” Fabergé expert Kieran McCarthy told CNN’s Susannah Cullinane in 2015. Russian rulers’ “daily lives were lived at such a height of luxury that you couldn’t really excite them with anything of intrinsic value. It was always about the craftsmanship.”

The decadent egg tradition came to an end with the revolution, during which the czars were overthrown and the Fabergé family fled Russia. The Bolsheviks confiscated many of the Easter Eggs, some of which they sold.

At that time, “the ‘bourgeois’ commodities valued by the old regime had been branded ideologically worthless and immoral,” wrote Apollo magazine’s Digby Warde-Aldam in 2014. “The Fabergé eggs—almost all of which were in the hands of the government—were almost certainly the most reprehensible symbols of the past.”

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.

Of the 50 Imperial Easter Eggs made at the turn of the century, 43 have survived. Most of them are in museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Hillwood Estate in Washington, D.C., the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Fabergé Museum in St. Petersburg. Only seven are in private collections, including the soon-to-be-auctioned Winter Egg.

[wgm-beautiful-world]

FABERGÉ EGG - Laurel Tree Egg - The most expensive imperial egg created - RUSSIA

[winterhill-aria]

The Laurel Egg, also known as orange tree egg by Faberge

[winterhill-aria]

Faberge

[winterhill-aria]

Faberge, St Petersburg

[vintage-treasures]

The Winter Egg, Rock Crystal, Platinum, Gold, and Gemstone (1913) "The most beautiful Fabergé egg ever made" was created by Alma Pihl for Fabergé. This illusion of ice and flowers was a gift from Tsar Nicholas II to his mother, Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna. Cut from thin rock crystal with an engraved frost design, it sparkles with 3,246 tiny diamonds in platinum snowflakes. The interior "surprise" is a platinum basket holding white quartz, gold, and green garnet flowers. It is one of only seven Imperial Eggs remaining in private hands.

Location. Christie's, London for auction on December 2, 2025. Dim. 14.2 cm H.