A Faberge egg commissioned by a Russian tsar has sold for a record £22.9m at auction in London.
The 4in (10cm) tall Winter Egg is crafted from rock crystal, covered in a delicate snowflake motif wrought in platinum and set with 4,500 tiny diamonds.
London auction house Christie’s said it was the third time the egg had set a world record price for a Faberge item.
Craftsman Peter Carl Faberge and his company created more than 50 of the eggs for Russia‘s imperial royal family between 1885 and 1917, each elaborately unique and containing a hidden surprise.
The Winter Egg opens to reveal a removable tiny basket of quartz flowers symbolising spring.
Tsar Nicholas II commissioned the egg for his mother, Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, as an Easter present in 1913.
It was one of two created by female designer Alma Pihl. Her other egg is owned by the UK royal family.
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The Romanov royal family ruled Russia for 300 years before the 1917 revolution ousted it. Nicholas and his family were executed in 1918.
The £22.9m sale price topped the £8.9m paid at a 2007 Christie’s auction for another Faberge egg created for the Rothschild banking family.
The Winter Egg had been previously bought by a London dealer for as little as £450 when the cash-strapped Communist authorities sold off some of Russia’s artistic treasures in the 1920s.
While it has changed hands several times, it was believed to be lost until it was auctioned by Christie’s in 1994 and then again in 2002 – both times for record amounts for a Faberge item.
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Margo Oganesian, the head of Christie’s Russian art department, called the egg “the ‘Mona Lisa’ for decorative arts”, a superb example of craft and design.
Christie’s said it is “widely regarded as one of the most original and artistically inventive Easter eggs that Faberge created for the Imperial family”.
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The design represents resurrection and the shift from winter to spring, and has a strong connection to Easter.
There are 43 surviving imperial Faberge eggs, most are in museums.
