The rare objet de fantasie – pictured on the front page with its original holly box – was consigned for sale at the Cotswold Auction Company in Cirencester by a local family.
Estimated at £60,000- 80,000, it drew six bidders on the phone and one in the room on September 10. An overseas buyer on the phone eventually placed the winning bid that with buyer’s premium was over £460,000.
The piece is marked for workmaster Mikhail Perchin (maker of all but three of the imperial Easter eggs) and can be dated to c.1899-1903.
It has an excel lent provenance. The piece carried the import marks for George Stockwell (dated 1928) and had been in the same family since it was purchased in 1929 from Wartski in London for £75. It was also the piece pictured in Kenneth Snowman’s 1962 ‘bible’ The Art of Carl Fabergé.
The gold, jade and rock crystal Fabergé sedan chair by Michael Perchin comes in its original silk-lined holly box.
Sedan chairs are among the rarest of the series of jewelled objets de fantasie produced by Fabergé that include similar models of tables and chairs. Fewer than 10 are known.
Workshop ledgers document one purchased by Nicholas II in 1896 for 900 roubles while another in guilloché enamel, bought from Fabergé by the Dutch rubber magnate Maximillian Neuscheller, was sold at Christie’s in London in 2017 for £700,000.
Cotswold Auction Company's Elizabeth Poole said: “The family are over the moon with the result. They watched the auction online and celebrated with champagne. It is a fantastic result.”
