The Winter Egg by the House of Fabergé
Fabergé was in the news twice this week, for very different reasons. The first was that an incredibly rare Fabergé egg once owned by the Russian Czars sold at Christie’s for an astronomical price. The second was because a man in New Zealand had to be kept under surveillance for six days after swallowing a Fabergé item in a jeweler’s shop.
Fabergé created the Winter Egg in Saint Petersburg in 1913, commissioned by Czar Nicholas II as an Easter gift for his mother. The egg itself is made of frosted rock crystal, decorated on the outside with platinum snowflakes adorned with over four thousand rose-cut diamonds. The egg opens to reveal a bouquet of flowers: wood anemones made from white quartz with gold stems, placed in a platinum basket. In 1913, the Czar paid 24,600 rubles for the egg, or about $370,000 today. By comparison, the average working person in the Russian Empire earned less than 300 rubles a year. Is it any surprise they had a revolution four years later?
Fabergé created fifty-two eggs for the imperial family between 1885 and 1917. Of those still surviving, only seven remain in private hands. The Winter Egg is also considered one of the best items Fabergé ever created, as evidenced by its record-breaking auction sales. The last time was in 2002, when it sold at Christie’s New York for $9.5 million w/p. This time in London, it more than tripled its previous value, selling for £22.86 million w/p, or $30.2 million w/p.
From the incredibly opulent to the comic and bizarre, the other time Fabergé was in the news this week was not because of something sold, but something stolen. Police in Auckland, New Zealand, arrested a man suspected of stealing a Fabergé necklace. They kept him in custody for six days to give him time to return it. This is because he had swallowed the necklace to sneak it out of the store.
The necklace he had swallowed was the Special Edition Octopussy Surprise Locket sold by Fabergé. It is made from green guilloché enamel and eighteen-karat gold, decorated with sixty diamonds and fifteen sapphires. Its design is modeled after the fictional Fabergé egg featured in the 1982 James Bond film Octopussy. Inside the necklace’s pendant, there is a small eighteen-karat gold octopus with black diamond eyes. The pendant itself is just over three inches tall, making it rather cumbersome to swallow, but not impossible. The item is available on Fabergé’s website for $16,500.
Police announced that no medical intervention was necessary to retrieve the necklace, as the suspect had given it up in a “natural” way. Police arrested the suspect not long after he swallowed the necklace. The employees of Partridge Jewellers in Auckland likely called the police when they first saw him, since he had caused a disturbance at the same location only a couple of weeks prior, when he stole an iPad from the shop. He is set to appear in court on December 8th.