The Winter Egg (1913): Fabergé’s Technical Apex and the Legacy of Alma Pihl

Photo: Courtesy of Christie's

When Emperor Nicholas II presented the Winter Egg to the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna on Easter Day 1913, the object was already regarded within the Fabergé workshops as one of the most demanding commissions ever undertaken for the Imperial family. Now returning to Christie’s with an estimate exceeding $26 million, the Winter Egg re-emerges as a case study in authorship, innovation, and the final years of Romanov patronage.

Commissioned during the Romanov tercentenary, the Winter Egg marked a pivotal shift in Fabergé’s approach to imperial design. For three decades, the annual Easter commissions required the creation of completely original concepts—never repeated, never previewed, and always delivered under strict confidentiality. Nicholas II did not see the eggs before Holy Week. For the craftsmen in St. Petersburg, the process was defined by pressure, precision, and the risk of presenting an unfinished or unsatisfactory piece to the Tsar.

The 1913 egg became exceptional due to the involvement of Alma Pihl, a 20-year-old designer whose entry into Fabergé began with producing life-size watercolor records of newly completed pieces. Her technical drawings were so exact that they became the internal standard for documenting stock items. But it was her independent sketchwork—noticed by her uncle, the master workmaster Albert Holmström—that shifted her trajectory. Holmström brought her into his workshop, and several of her test designs were produced as Fabergé jewels. The Winter Egg, executed under his direction, is the first major imperial object fully attributed to her hand.

Photo: Courtesy of Christie's

The design rejects historical stylistic categories. Instead of Rococo, Neoclassical, or traditional Muscovite vocabulary, it articulates a controlled naturalism. The transparent rock crystal shell is carved to replicate frozen glass, with platinum channels set with more than 4,000 diamonds positioned individually—each stone calibrated to maintain the visual rhythm of frost. The rock crystal base, shaped to resemble melting ice, required a rare faceting technique documented in Fabergé’s workshop registers before 1917. Platinum rivulets applied across the surface were executed separately and mounted with microscopic pins, a method that significantly increased production time.

Inside, the egg opens to reveal a platinum basket of wood anemones—white quartz petals, demantoid garnet centers, nephrite leaves, and gold stems. The arrangement is recorded in the Fabergé archive as a “naturalistic botanical study,” a category reserved for only a few pieces. Several flowers are open, others remain half-closed, reflecting Alma Pihl’s habit of sketching plants directly from life.

The Dowager Empress owned the egg only briefly. After Nicholas II’s abdication in 1917, the Winter Egg was transferred to the Kremlin Armoury, later appearing in Bolshevik inventory photographs from the 1920s. Like many imperial objects, it was sold abroad as the Soviet state sought foreign currency. It eventually reached a British private collection and later entered the auction market, setting world-record prices at Christie’s Geneva in 1994 and Christie’s New York in 2002, where it sold for $9.6 million.

The 2025 auction—“The Winter Egg and Important Works by Fabergé from a Princely Collection”—positions the object for a possible third record. Christie’s lists the estimate as “on request; in excess of £20 million,” surpassing $26 million. “The Winter Egg is arguably the best of them all,” noted Margo Oganesian, Head of Fabergé and Russian Works of Art at Christie’s. “Its design, its technique, and its history place it in a category of its own.”

The sale forms part of “Classic Week” at Christie’s (2–11 December), which includes the “Old Masters Evening Sale” featuring Gerrit Dou’s early musician portrait The Flute Player, estimated at £2–3 million. More than a century after its creation, the Winter Egg returns not only as an imperial relic but as a fully documented work of authorship—one that defines Fabergé’s technical peak and marks the final chapter of Romanov patronage.