A model of a sedan chair by Fabergé made of gold, jade and rock crystal was sold at an auction in Gloucestershire for £380,000 to a bidder on the phone.

Extracted from Antiques Trade Gazette | Roland Arkell, Laura Chesters

The rare item by the workshop of the famed Peter Carl Fabergé was consigned for sale at the Cotswold Auction Company in Cirencester by a local family.

Estimated at £60,000-80,000, it drew a number of bidders on the phone and one in the room today (September 10). An overseas buyer on the phone eventually placed the winning bid at £380,000 (plus buyer’s premium of 22% plus VAT).

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 excellent provenance, having been in the same family since it was purchased in 1929 from Wartski in London for £75.

Sedan chairs are among the rarest objets de fantasie produced by Fabergé (fewer than 10 are known). Workshop ledgers document one purchased by Nicholas II in 1896 for 900 roubles.

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.

The example in Cirencester was pictured in Kenneth Snowman’s 1962 ‘bible’ The Art of Carl Fabergé.