The Fabergé Imperial Easter eggs, made for Russian Tsars between 1885 and 1917, are among the most expensive decorative objects ever created. The 'Winter Egg' sold for $9.6 million in 2002.
Between 1885 and 1917, the House of Fabergé produced fifty-two Imperial Easter eggs for the Russian royal family. Tsar Alexander III commissioned the first for his wife, Maria Feodorovna, in 1885. His son Nicholas II continued the tradition without interruption until the Revolution ended it. Each egg was a commission with a guaranteed delivery for Easter morning, and each was required to contain a surprise. Beyond those two constraints, the workshops of Peter Carl Fabergé operated with near-total creative freedom. The results are among the most technically complex decorative objects ever produced, and the prices they command at auction reflect both their craftsmanship and their association with a dynasty that ceased to exist.
## Construction and Craftsmanship
Fabergé ran a workshop system, not a single atelier. Different master craftsmen were responsible for different eggs, each signing their work with a hallmark. Henrik Wigström, Michael Perchin, and August Holmström were among the most prominent. The workshops employed goldsmiths, enamelers, gemstone cutters, and miniature painters working in close coordination.
The enameling technique used on most Imperial eggs is guilloche enamel, in which translucent colored enamel is fired over a mechanically engraved metal surface. The engraving creates a pattern visible through the enamel, producing an iridescent depth that cannot be replicated by surface painting alone. Achieving consistent color across a curved surface required multiple firings and extensive polishing between each layer. A single egg could take months of labor.
Materials included gold, silver, platinum, diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and pearls. Some eggs incorporated rock crystal, nephrite, or other semi-precious stones as structural elements. The surprises hidden inside ranged from miniature portraits of the royal family to a fully functional clockwork locomotive scaled to fit inside the egg's interior cavity.
The Winter Egg, completed in 1913 and sold at Christie's London for $9.6 million in 2002, is made of rock crystal representing ice, with a basket of platinum snowdrops inside whose petals open when a mechanism is engaged. It is considered one of the most technically accomplished of the series.
## Revolution, Dispersal, and the Auction Market
The February Revolution of 1917 and the subsequent Bolshevik seizure of power ended the Fabergé commission. The royal family was executed in 1918. The Soviet government, faced with pressing economic needs, sold many of the Imperial eggs and their contents through various channels during the 1920s and 1930s. Armand Hammer, the American businessman, purchased several during this period and sold them on to American collectors.
Of the fifty-two confirmed Imperial eggs, forty-six are accounted for. Three are in the Kremlin Armory Museum in Moscow. Several are held by private collectors who rarely put them on public display. Eight were purchased by the oligarch Viktor Vekselberg from the Forbes Magazine collection in 2004 for a reported $100 million and are now displayed at the Fabergé Museum in St. Petersburg.
Six eggs remain missing. Their locations are unknown. In 2014, an American antique dealer bought what appeared to be a gold egg at a Midwest scrap market for roughly $14,000, intending to melt it for the metal value. Research established it as the Third Imperial Easter Egg, made in 1887 and missing since the 1920s. Its estimated value is over $33 million.
## Easter and the Russian Orthodox Tradition
The Easter egg commission was not arbitrary. Russian Orthodox Easter is the most significant holiday in the liturgical calendar, and the exchange of eggs as gifts had been a Russian Easter custom for centuries before Fabergé. The traditional greeting on Easter morning, *Khristos Voskrese* (Christ is risen), is accompanied by the giving of red eggs, echoing the Byzantine tradition that connects the egg's symbolism to resurrection. Alexander III's commission placed the Imperial family's gift-giving practice within that existing tradition, then elevated it to an extreme expression of wealth and technical achievement. The Fabergé egg is what happens when a folk custom intersects with the resources of an absolute monarchy and the skills of the finest craftsmen in Europe.