Oscar Holland, CNN

(CNN) — There may soon — potentially very soon — be a time when even the world’s greatest riches are unable to purchase one of Fabergé’s legendary Imperial Eggs. There will simply be none left on the private market.

The storied St. Petersburg jewelry house only ever produced 50 for the Russian Tsars Alexander III and Nicholas II, who commissioned them as Easter gifts between 1885 and 1916. Seven are missing, some of which have not been seen since before the Russian Revolution. The others are mostly in institutions or museums, from Moscow to Virginia, leaving just seven in private ownership.

Of these, some are in “fairly sacrosanct” collections, according to Fabergé expert Kieran McCarthy, meaning only three remain in what he called “truly private” hands and could ever be realistically acquired. “They are incredibly rare,” said McCarthy, who is co-managing director at Wartski, a British antique jewelry dealer specializing in the works of Peter Carl Fabergé. “And they are getting even rarer.”

Now, for the first time in over two decades, one of the three is up for auction. And the eggs’ scarcity is, partly, why auction house Christie’s estimates that 1913’s Winter Egg will fetch “in excess of” £20 million ($26 million) in London next month. Should this price be realized, the 112-year-old curio would not only set an auction record for a Fabergé egg — it would obliterate the one the Winter Egg itself set in 2002.

Supply and demand aside, Christie’s believes its astronomical estimate reflects the object’s unique artistic qualities. Made from a block of clear quartz, the egg looks as if it has been carved from ice and dusted with frost. Engraved snowflakes sparkle with rose-cut diamonds; platinum trickles down the base as if it were thawing in spring sunshine.

“It’s like holding a lump of ice in your hand,” said McCarthy, who has previously handled the Winter Egg. “It’s like alchemy in reverse, turning precious materials into a moment of nature.”

Like all Imperial Eggs, this one also opens to reveal a “surprise.” And although the objets d’art hidden inside Fabergé eggs were typically feats of intricate mechanics (a miniature wind-up steam train, or a clockwork songbird flapping its wings), the Winter Egg’s surprise is rooted in nature: a hanging basket filled with wood anemones. Usually among the first flowers to bloom after Russia’s notoriously frigid winter, their tiny petals are carved from white quartz and sat on nephrite stems, with bright green garnets dotting their stamens.

McCarthy, who curated the 2021 exhibition “Fabergé in London: Romance to Revolution” at the Victoria & Albert Museum, said the Winter Egg is “perceived to be the greatest of them all,” calling it “the most iconic Russian work of art, quite arguably, ever.”

The head of Christie’s Fabergé and Russian artworks department, Margo Oganesian, concurred, describing it as “the most spectacular, artistically inventive and unusual” of the 50 Imperial Eggs. And although the auction house clearly has commercial motives to trumpet the object’s status, Oganesian pointed to invoices proving it has always been among the most valuable. Nicholas II paid 24,600 rubles for it — the third-highest sum Fabergé ever charged for a work. The two costlier eggs are, unsurprisingly, both in museum collections, she added.

The Winter Egg’s price tag was relative not to the materials it was carved from, but to the craftmanship required to transform them into snow and ice. Clear quartz, also known as rock crystal, is by no means the rarest or most expensive mineral, but it is exceptionally brittle and difficult to work with. And although the egg is covered in diamonds — around 4,500 of them — the stones are small enough to be of “no intrinsic value,” McCarthy said, adding: “The value comes purely in the artistic expression of them and the use of them to create this scintillating idea of frost.”

Timeless design

Nicholas II commissioned the Winter Egg as a gift for his mother, Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, who had received one annually from her husband (and Nicholas’ father) Alexander III, until his death in 1894. The eggs took the best part of a year to produce and were ordered shortly after the latest had been delivered. The tsar never gave Fabergé specific instructions or ideas — he, too, seemingly enjoyed the surprise.

With its muted palette and simple inner workings, the Winter Egg was not an archetypally ostentatious, bejeweled Fabergé creation. That difference is, today, a selling point, Oganesian said. “Most of them are based on historical styles — of Rococo or Neoclassicism — but the Winter Egg is an object in its own style,” she said, adding “the design is timeless — it’s so modern.”

Unusually for patriarchal Russia (and for, at the time, an almost exclusively male jewelry industry), the design originated from one of Fabergé’s female “workmasters,” Alma Pihl. Initially hired to document the house’s inventory as a drafter and watercolorist, she had joined the workshop of her uncle, Fabergé’s chief jeweler Albert Holmström, in 1908.

As the — perhaps apocryphal — origin story goes, Pihl came up with the idea while gazing out of the window from her workshop bench. She saw ice crystals forming on the glass and wondered how their appearance might be recreated in jewelry. (Christie’s says this tale is “possible,” and McCarthy goes further to say there is “no real reason to disbelieve it.”) Holmström then brought her design to life with a team of jewelers, each responsible for different parts of the egg.

World War I broke out a year after the egg was delivered to Nicholas II, who was toppled by the Bolsheviks before the conflict’s conclusion. The newly formed Soviet state quickly sold off many of the empire’s treasures to raise funds — and often below market value. The Winter Egg was among them, purchased by Wartski in the late 1920s or 1930s for just £450 (roughly $30,000 in today’s money). It then passed through a succession of private British collections before disappearing and considered lost for almost two decades from 1975.

The Winter Egg reappeared in 1994 and was soon offered at Christie’s in Geneva, where it fetched over 7.2 million Swiss francs (then $5.6 million) and set a new auction record for a Fabergé egg. It broke its own record eight years later, at the same auctioneer’s New York saleroom, its price tag jumping to $9.6 million. Christie’s has never disclosed the buyer’s identity but confirmed to CNN that the “noble” who acquired the item in 2002 is behind next month’s sale.

‘Compromised’ markets

The egg’s next destination, given Christie’s fierce defense of its clients’ privacy, may never be known. It is, nonetheless, a question that is intriguing experts.

According to McCarthy, the two biggest Fabergé markets of recent decades, the United States and Russia (which he said has seen “a huge fervor for the repatriation of Russian works of art to Russian soil”) are both “highly compromised.” Importing the artwork to the US would incur a 35% tariff, McCarthy explained, meaning millions of dollars in additional duties. Russia, meanwhile, is currently subject to strict sanctions. Even having “reasonable cause to suspect” that assets will end up in Russian hands constitutes a breach. “There could potentially not have been a worse time to sell this egg,” he said.

“In the recent past, Middle Eastern museums — with their striving to acquire great works of art in order to broaden their appeal and develop a post-oil economy — would have been (the obvious) destination for this egg,” McCarthy added. “But whether they have an appetite for this particular one, at the moment, I have no idea whatsoever. The natural destination in different circumstances, would, of course, have been Russia. Institutions in Russia, I’m sure, would like it. But, of course, they should not buy it, technically.”

In a statement, Christie’s told CNN that it operated a “global anti-money laundering (AML) and sanctions compliance program” that includes “client due diligence and screening checks,” though the auction house did not confirm whether additional checks were in place to ensure the Winter Egg was not purchased by a Russian proxy. “We remain committed to complying with all relevant AML and sanctions laws, including any applicable luxury goods prohibitions,” the statement added.

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