A rare moment in the world of high jewelry electrified Christie’s London on Tuesday, when Fabergé’s 1913 Imperial Winter Egg achieved a staggering £22.9 million ($30.2 million) — setting a new world auction record for any Fabergé object. The dazzling result followed an intense three-minute bidding war that had collectors in the room and on the phones vying for one of the most celebrated Imperial Easter Eggs ever created.
Bidding opened at £17 million before vaulting upward in rapid increments. Multiple international bidders remained engaged as the price hit £19 million, prompting a brief but breathless pause. Then, a final flurry of competing bids culminated in a decisive £19.5 million offer from a collector seated in the saleroom. With the premium and fees, the price rose to £22.9 million. Christie’s confirmed that the successful buyer has elected to remain anonymous.
“This result sets a new world auction record for a work by Fabergé,” said Margo Oganesian, head of Christie’s Fabergé and Russian Works of Art. “It reaffirms the rarity, brilliance and enduring cultural significance of this masterpiece.”
The Imperial Winter Egg is widely regarded as Fabergé’s most artistically original creation. Commissioned by Tsar Nicholas II as an Easter gift for his mother, Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, the 1913 piece channels the ethereal fragility of a Russian winter.
Its design was conceived by Alma Theresia Pihl, one of the only female designers to work in Fabergé’s St. Petersburg workshops — and today recognized as one of the firm’s most innovative artists. Only 25 at the time, Pihl was inspired by frost patterns crystallizing across her workshop window. She translated these fleeting ice formations into a jewel-encrusted language of snowflakes and shimmer that still feels modern more than a century later.
Carved from rock crystal as thin and clear as glass, the egg is overlaid with 4,500 rose-cut diamonds set in platinum. It rests on a sculpted rock-crystal base that resembles a melting block of ice, its surface streaked with diamond-set rivulets that suggest spring’s first thaw. Inside lies the signature Fabergé “surprise”: a delicate basket of white quartz anemones, complete with demantoid garnet pistils and nephrite leaves.
Between 1885 and 1916, the House of Fabergé produced only 50 Imperial Easter Eggs for the Russian royal family. Today, just seven remain in private hands. Most are owned by museums, national collections or are missing entirely — a reality that makes any auction appearance of an Imperial Egg an event of global interest.
The 1913 Winter Egg has appeared at auction only twice before, and always at Christie’s. In 1994, it sold in Geneva for 7.3 million Swiss francs (about $9 million). In 2002, it broke its own record when it earned $9.6 million in New York. With this year’s landmark £22.9 million ($30.2 million) result, the egg has once again reset the Fabergé market.
Credits: Images courtesy of Christie’s Images Ltd 2025.