The Winter Egg is Home

 

The Winter Egg is back home at Wartski's, the London jeweler, after more than 100 years.  It was in London on December 2, when Christie's auctioned the historic Fabergé egg.  As a part of the Romanov tercentenary celebrations in 1913,  Emperor Nicholas II commissioned the egg as a present for his mother, the Danish-born Empress Marie Feodorovna of Russia.

The Dowager Empress kept the Fabergé egg at her home, the Anichkov Palace in Petersburg.   Her son paid 24,600 roubles for the egg, at the time the third most expensive Fabergé egg.

After the revolution, the Provisional Government placed the egg in the Kremlin Armory.  The Egg was entrusted to the Gokhran in 1922 by Soviet officials.   This department was created in 1920 by the Council of People's Commissars of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to control jewelry, religious works, and other valuables from the former Imperial Family, the Kremlin Armoury, the Russian Orthodox Church, and from confiscated valuables in private collections.

In 1925, the Gokhran sold the egg to Wartski's for £450 (£ 36,000 in 2025).  The egg was sold several times during the 20th century: Baron Alington, Sir Bernard Eckstein, and Arthur Ledbrook.  Twenty years after Ledbrook died in 1974,  the egg was auctioned as Property of a Trust by Christie's.   It sold for £3.5 million.  

The Winter Egg was sold again by Christie's in New York in 2002 for £6.6 million.  These last two sales were record prices for Fabergé.

Sheikh Saud bin Muhammed Al-Thani (1966-2014) was the buyer.   According to Ruzhnikov Fine Arts and Antiques,  Al-Thani was "one of the world’s most rapacious art collectors on either side of the Millennium as Qatar’s culture supremo."  He was accused in 2005 of "misusing public funds" after spending more than £1 billion on artwork.   The Sheik fell out with his family because there were questions about whether he used his fortune or public funds to purchase art.   The final years of his life were spent in London, where he died at age 48.

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At the most recent auction in London, the Winter Egg sold to an unnamed buyer for $30.2 million, again breaking the record for a Fabergé egg.

This photo and the ones above, @Marlene A. Eilers Koenig

The day after the auction, Wartski's Instagram page featured a photo of the egg with the caption: "Returning to the Wartski nest after over 100 years."  The jewelry firm was the sole bidder for the egg. 

https://wartski.com/15808-2/

@Wartski

Since the 2002 auction, there has been a rumor about it.  Some believe that Al-Thani never paid for the Egg, and it has remained at Christie's London office, where they sold the Egg "to recoup money they upfronted back in 2002."

Will Wartski put the Winter Egg on display at their London store or sell it privately to a very wealthy collector or a museum?   The largest collection of Eggs is at a museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.  The second largest collection is at the Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia.  

In late November, I traveled to New York City to see the Winter Egg, which was on display at Christie's in Rockefeller Center. After a week in New York City, the Winter Egg was at Christie's in Hong Kong before being brought back to London for the auction.

 The Winter Egg is breathtakingly beautiful.  Sparkly.   Very Sparkly,  and "laced with platinum snowflakes and encrusted with thousands of tiny rose diamonds."

It would be lovely if Wartski decides to put the Winter Egg on display!  The exquisite gentleness of Alma Pihl's design deserves to be celebrated.

https://www.christies.com/en/stories/an-imperial-winter-egg-by-faberge-commissioned-by-emperor-nicholas-ii-9634fe7df1d84d4e9266f305bec40a02