Rare Fabergé egg sells for record £22.9million at auction

How much would you pay for a diamond-studded crystal egg?

Well, one has just sold for almost £23million at an auction in London.

Known as The Winter Egg, it is one of the rarest creations by the famous jeweller Carl Fabergé - as well as being considered one of his most beautiful.

It beat the previous record price for a Fabergé egg, by more than £13 million.

The egg is decorated with 4,500 diamonds and is finely carved in rock crystal.

It is engraved on the interior with a frost design, while the exterior has rose-cut diamond-set platinum snowflake motifs.

It was sold at Christie's auction house to an anonymous bidder for £22,895,000.

The previous record for a Fabergé egg was £8.9m paid at auction, nearly twenty years ago.

Faberge and his company created more than 50 of the eggs for Russia's royal family between 1885 and 1917, each elaborately unique and containing a hidden surprise.

Some have been lost over time, so as a result, they are worth a lot of money and are often sold for millions of pounds when they go to auction.

The Winter Egg was a jewel-studded Easter gift for the mother of Russia's last emperor, Tsar Nicholas II.

Auction house Christie's said it is "widely regarded as one of the most original and artistically inventive Easter eggs that Faberge created for the Imperial family".

There are 43 surviving imperial Faberge eggs, most are in museums.