Auctioned for a record sum How much would you spend on this Easter egg?
It is a creation made of crystal and diamonds and is considered one of the most beautiful works by jeweler Carl Fabergé: the so-called Winter Egg was auctioned off in London on Tuesday evening for the equivalent of around 23 million francs. Find out more about its history in the video.
03.12.2025, 23:24
SDA
The jeweler Carl Fabergé made the 14-centimetre egg in 1913 on behalf of the Russian Tsar Nicholas II for his mother. It is made of rock crystal, set with around 4,500 diamonds and resembles an ice crystal covered in snowflakes.
Inside it contains a removable miniature bouquet of flowers. The white anemones are made of white quartz with gold wire and are set in a basket made of platinum.
Winter egg was lost for decades
The Winter Egg has already changed hands several times. During the Soviet era, sometime between 1929 and 1933, the Russian government sold the work of art to the London jeweler Wartski in order to earn foreign currency. It was part of various British collections. It was lost between 1975 and 1994, after which it was auctioned by Christie's once before. It was sold again in 2002 and achieved the then record price of 9.6 million dollars in New York.
Easter presents for the Tsar's family
The proceeds of 22.9 million pounds (the equivalent of around 23 million Swiss francs) now achieved in London surpassed the price records of other Fabergé eggs. In 2007, for example, the so-called Rothschild egg, which was not made for the Russian Tsar's family, was sold to a Russian collector for almost 9 million pounds.
Over a period of 31 years, a total of 50 Fabergé Easter eggs were made for the Romanov family, who ruled Russia at the time. They are extremely rare and valuable, emphasized Margo Oganesian from Christie's.
43 Fabergé eggs left
The tradition of commissioning the precious eggs as Easter gifts from Fabergé was established by Tsar Alexander II in the 1880s. His successor Nicholas II placed a fixed order for two Fabergé eggs per year: one for his mother and one for his wife.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 finally put an abrupt end to this costly tradition. Today, only 43 of these Fabergé eggs belonging to the Tsar's family remain, the other seven have been lost.
