A rare 1913 imperial \u2018winter egg\u2019 commissioned for Nicholas II has been sold for $30.2 million<\/p>\n
A Faberg\u00e9 Imperial \u2018Winter Egg\u2019 commissioned for Russia\u2019s last tsar, Nicholas II, sold for a record \u00a322.9 ($30.2 million) at Christie\u2019s in London on Tuesday, the auction house has announced.
\nAccording to Christie\u2019s, the public sale lasted about three minutes, and the buyer was not identified.
\nThe 1913 egg was made for Nicholas II to give his mother, Dowager Empress Maria Fyodorovna, as an Easter gift. It was carved from rock crystal and decorated with platinum and rose-cut diamond-set snowflake motifs, the auction house said, with a base designed as melting ice.
\nInside is a removable \u201csurprise\u201d \u2013 a diamond-set platinum basket holding carved quartz wood anemones with nephrite leaves and garnet centers.
\nThe price exceeded Christie\u2019s presale estimate of more than \u00a320 million, Reuters reported.
\n\u201cThis is one of (the) Imperial Easter Eggs created by Faberge for the Romanovs. And the Winter Egg is arguably the best of them all,\u201d Margo Oganesian, Christie\u2019s head of department for Faberg\u00e9 and Russian works of art, told the outlet.<\/p>\n
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The \u2018Winter Egg\u2019 was designed \u2013 unusually for the time \u2013 by a woman jeweler, Alma Pihl. Legend has it that Pihl, the niece of Faberg\u00e9\u2019s chief jeweler, Albert Holmstrom, got the idea after watching ice crystals form on a shop window at her workshop.
\nFaberg\u00e9\u2019s gem-studded eggs were made for Nicholas II and his predecessor, Alexander III, who presented them as Easter gifts to members of the imperial family. Each typically took about a year to design and produce, and the tsars generally commissioned a new, lavish piece soon after the previous one was delivered.
\nThe historic St. Petersburg jeweler made the imperial eggs for Russia\u2019s Romanov family, and 43 are known to survive. The \u2018Winter Egg\u2019 is one of seven still in private hands, while the rest are either missing or held by institutions and museums.
\nThe Winter Egg disappeared in 1975 and was rediscovered in 1994, according to the auction house. Christie\u2019s has sold it twice before \u2013 in Geneva in 1994 and New York in 2002 \u2013 setting record prices on both occasions, Reuters reported. The Rothschild Faberg\u00e9 Egg fetched $18.5 million in 2007.
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A rare 1913 imperial \u2018winter egg\u2019 commissioned for Nicholas II has been sold for $30.2 million A Faberg\u00e9 Imperial \u2018Winter Egg\u2019 commissioned for Russia\u2019s last tsar, Nicholas II, sold for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-environment","category-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t