November 27, 2025 / 4:47 PM EST / AP
A rare Fabergé egg made for Russia’s ruling family before the 1917 revolution is bound for auction and is expected to fetch more than $26 million. Christie’s says the Winter Egg, one of seven imperial eggs still in private hands, will be offered at the auction house’s London headquarters on Dec. 2.
The 4-inch-tall egg is carved from rock crystal and decorated with a snowflake design in platinum set with about 4,500 tiny diamonds. It opens to reveal a removable basket of bejewelled quartz flowers meant to symbolize spring.
Margo Oganesian, head of Christie’s Russian art department, compared the Winter Egg to a luxurious Kinder Surprise and called it “the ‘Mona Lisa’ for decorative arts.” The egg was one of just two imperial designs by Alma Pihl, a female designer at Fabergé; the other Pihl egg is in the collection of Britain’s royal family. Czar Nicholas II commissioned the Winter Egg in 1913 as an Easter gift for his mother, the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna.
Peter Carl Fabergé and his firm produced more than 50 imperial eggs between 1885 and 1917, each uniquely crafted and hiding a surprise inside. The Romanov dynasty, which had ruled Russia for roughly 300 years, was toppled in 1917; Nicholas II and his family were executed in 1918.
After the revolution, Soviet authorities sold off artworks in the 1920s and a London dealer purchased the Winter Egg for 450 pounds. The egg was believed lost for about two decades until Christie’s sold it in 1994 for more than 7 million Swiss francs (roughly $5.6 million at the time). It later fetched $9.6 million in 2002. The Winter Egg is now expected to exceed the $18.5 million record paid at a 2007 Christie’s sale for a Fabergé egg made for the Rothschild family.
There are 43 surviving imperial Fabergé eggs, most of which are held in museums.