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Faberge Egg Draws An $18.5 Million Bid

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The Associated Press

Published: November 29, 2007

Updated: 11/28/2007 11:22 pm

LONDON - A rare enamel-and-gold Faberge egg that had been in the Rothschild banking family for more than a century sold for record $18.5 million at auction Wednesday.

The sale of the translucent pink egg topped with a diamond-studded cockerel was the highest for a Faberge work of art, Christie's auction house said. The price also broke the record for Russian artwork, excluding paintings, easily beating the $9.6 million paid for a Faberge egg in New York in 2002, Christie's said.

"It holds an amazing fascination for just about everybody, from James Bond onwards as far as I remember," said Anthony Philips, Christie's Russian art specialist. "It's just a magic name. The quality is fantastic. There's a romantic association with the Russian Revolution. They're of stunning workmanship."

Prices for Russian art have escalated as the country's increased wealth makes its way on the international art market. Sales of Russian art at Christie's rose from $27 million in 2004 to $79 million in 2006, and were on track to raise millions more this year, spokesman Matthew Patton said.

Russian Czar Alexander III commissioned the first of the elaborate eggs from craftsman Peter Carl Faberge as an Easter gift for his wife, Empress Maria Fedorovna.

The empress was so enamored of that 1885 piece - an enameled egg with a gold yolk, gold hen, miniature diamond crown and ruby egg inside - that the czar commissioned a new egg every Easter.

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