Faberge Egg Returns for Record Price
The Rothschild Faberge egg was sold yesterday by Christie's auction house in London for $18.5 million, a record for a Faberge work. It was the first time that purchaser Alexander Ivanov, or any other Russian, bid from the auditorium. Christie's has a special isolated room on its premises for bidders' privacy. Bidding began at £4.8 million, with one bidder on the telephone competing against Ivanov. The bidding reached £8 million before Ivanov won. With the auction house's commission, the egg will cost £8,980,500. The previous record for a Faberge purchase was set in 2002 when an Arab sheikh bought the Winter Egg for $9.6 million.
Ivanov, a collector and Faberge expert, is also director of the Russian National Museum, the oldest private museum in Russia, which already has two Faberge eggs, one made of Karelian birch in 1917 and an unfinished egg intended for Tsarevich Alexey. The pink enamel egg with gold engraving is large – 30 cm. tall with its stand – and contains a clock and a mechanical rooster. It was the most expensive egg Faberge ever created.
After the sale of the Rothschild egg, works by were put on auction. They were the last items belonging to the family of the artist's model whom he called Daphnis. Many of the items were sold without reserves and drawings and landscapes were sold at less than their starting prices. Most of his works fetched sums several times their starting prices, however. Watercolors of the naked Daphnis sold for between £20,000 and £100,000. His Tired Traveler sold for £850,000, after starting at £100,000. The most expensive of his pieces that evening was Romantic Pursuit, which went of £1.4 million.
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All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 29, 2007
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