Wednesday, 29th November 2006 (3412 views)

London's two most famous auction houses are this week celebrating all things Russian, with a host of unique gold and silver luxury items going under the hammer.

Sotheby's will be auctioning a gold and diamond Faberge snuff box as one of its largest attractions and it is estimated to fetch between £500,000 and £700,000.

Another Carl Faberge piece to undergo a bidding battle will be a silver and diamond baroque clock handed to Emperor Alexander III and Empress Maria Feodorovna that has the potential to be the most expensive piece of Russian art ever to be sold at auction with a predicted price tag of $10 million (£5.1 million).

Christie's Russian expert Alexis de Tiesenhausen remarked: "If we had extremely serious interest for Russian paintings in the last four or five years, in the last one or two years we have renewed interest for Faberge items among the collectors."

The most expensive Russian artwork ever auctioned is currently the Winter Egg, another Faberge item, that sold for $6.9 million (£3.5 million) in 2002.

 

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