Yesterday at 5 p.m. local time, Christie's Classic Week in London opened with strong interest. The programme began with the sale titled The Winter Egg and Important Works by Fabergé from a Princely Collection. There had been persistent, though unverified, rumours that the anonymous collector was the Emir of Qatar.
See also: An Imperial Fabergé Egg Comes to Christie’s
The top lot in the forty-eight lot sale was the Winter Egg, one of the few imperial Fabergé eggs still in private hands. This was the third time Christie's has handled the egg, which Tsar Nicholas II presented to his mother, Maria Feodorovna, for Easter in 1913. The house first sold it in Geneva in 1994, where it achieved CHF 7,263,500, and again in New York in 2002, when it fetched US$9,579,500. Both results set new world records for a Fabergé piece at the time.
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After Geneva and New York, it was London's turn to offer a suitable stage for the Imperial Winter Egg. Listed as lot seven, bidding opened at £17 million. The egg had already drawn significant international interest and quickly found a buyer. The hammer came down at £19,500,000, and with the buyer's premium included, the total reached £22,895,000 (about $30.5 million).
This result restores the Winter Egg's position as Fabergé's most expensive creation. It had been overtaken in 2007 by the Rothschild Egg of 1902, which sold for £8,980,500 (about $11.9 million).
See also: Flea Market Fabergé: The Third Imperial Egg
Other notable lots in the sale, that reached £27,803,964 with a sell-through rate of 92 percent, included a rare figure of a street painter from 1916 (£1,514,000), a miniature sleigh from around 1890 (£736,600) and an important album of Fabergé designs from 1911 to 1916 (£508,000). A bonbonnière made between 1899 and 1903 proved especially sought after, rising from an estimate of £30,000 to £50,000 to a final price of £304,800. Other strong results included a table bell, estimated at £20,000 to £30,000 and sold for £177,800, and a rare rooster figurine, estimated at £50,000 to £70,000 and sold for £254,000.
Margo Oganesian, Christie's Head of Department, Fabergé and Russian Works of Art, was more than satisfied: “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 and celebrating the rarity and brilliance of what is widely regarded as one of Fabergé's finest creations, both technically and artistically. With only a handful of Imperial Easter Eggs remaining in private hands, this was an exceptional and historic opportunity for collectors to acquire a work of unparalleled importance. Christie's reaffirmed its market leadership for Fabergé with the sale of this erudite collection, attracting fierce competition from bidders around the world, and engaging both collectors and the wider public globally with the legacy of Fabergé.”
