Crystal Fabergé egg shatters record, fetching $46m at auction
Faberge's The Winter Egg is considered one of his most beautiful creations. (AP: Kirsty Wigglesworth)
In short:
Faberge's The Winter Egg sells for nearly 23 million British pounds ($46 million), smashing the sales record for the legendary jeweller of Imperial Russia.
Carved from delicate rock crystal, the icy-looking piece is studded with about 4,500 rose-cut diamonds.
It was commissioned in 1913 as a present from Nicholas II to his mother.
A rare crystal-diamond Fabergé egg has sold at a London auction for 22.9 million British pounds ($46 million), smashing records.
The Winter Egg, bought by an unidentified buyer, was just one of seven of the opulent ovoids remaining in private hands, according to Christie's London auction house.
The 10-centimetre-tall egg is made from finely carved rock crystal, covered in a delicate snowflake motif wrought in platinum with 4,500 tiny diamonds.
It opens to reveal a removable tiny basket of bejewelled quartz flowers symbolising spring.
The Winter Egg's design was the work of a female jeweller in the team, Alma Pihl.
Carl Fabergé and his company created more than 50 of the eggs for Russia's imperial family between 1885 and 1917, each elaborately unique and containing a hidden surprise.
Tsar Alexander III started the tradition by presenting an egg to his wife each Easter. His successor, Nicholas II, extended the gift to his wife and mother.
The egg and its base are sculpted from crystal featuring diamond-encrusted platinum snowflakes. (AP: Kirsty Wigglesworth)
Nicholas II commissioned the egg for his mother, Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, as an Easter present in 1913.
The Romanov royal family ruled Russia for 300 years before the 1917 revolution ousted it. Nicholas and his family were executed in 1918.
Bought by a London dealer for 450 British pounds when the cash-strapped communist authorities sold many of Russia's artistic treasures in the 1920s, the egg changed hands several times.
It was believed lost for two decades until it was auctioned by Christie's in 1994 and again in 2002.
It is the third time the delicate creation has set an auction record for a work by Fabergé, Christie's said.
Margo Oganesian, the head of Christie's Russian art department, called the egg "the 'Mona Lisa' for decorative arts," a superb example of craft and design.
There are 43 surviving imperial Fabergé eggs, most of them in museums.
AP/AFP