Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

SOTHEBY'S

Swedish queen’s pearls in $95-million auction

A pearl necklace that belonged to Josephine de Beauharnais, a 19th-century queen of Sweden, sold at auction in Geneva on Wednesday for $3.42 million — more than twice its appraised value.

Published: 13 November 2014 09:16 CET
Swedish queen's pearls in $95-million auction
Graff ruby and diamond ring sold for $8.6 million. Photo: Sotheby's

It was one lot in a sale of high-end jewellery organized by auction house Sotheby's that raised a total of $95 million.
   
Josephine, who was queen consort of Sweden and Norway from 1844 to 1859, bore the same name as her illustrious grandmother, Josephine de Beauharnais (1763-1814) — the first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte.
   
The necklace, which includes seven pear-shaped pearls, had an estimated value of between $800,000 and $1.5 million.
   
Wednesday's sale also included several pieces from the collection of Greek financier Dimitri Mavrommatis with an estimated combined value of $20 million, which sold for $27.8 million.
   
The star of the collection was an 8.62-carat Burmese ruby set in a ring known as the Graff Ruby, acquired by London jeweller Laurence Graff in 2006 for $3.6 million.
   
Graff sold it to Mavrommatis for an undisclosed sum, and it garnered $8.6 million on Wednesday.

A rare sapphire and diamond ring from the collection sold for $6 million.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

DIAMOND

Rare pink diamond to go under hammer in Geneva

An extremely rare pink diamond will be auctioned in Geneva on November 11 by Sotheby's, which says it is worth between $23 and $38 million.

Published: 8 November 2020 12:54 CET
Rare pink diamond to go under hammer in Geneva
A model poses with the “The Spirit of the Rose” diamond during a press preview on Friday. Photo: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP
Named “The Spirit of the Rose” after a famous Russian ballet, the 14.83-carat diamond mined in Russia is the biggest ever to go under the hammer in its category — “fancy vivid purple-pink”.
 
The occurrence of pink diamonds in nature is extremely rare in any size,” Gary Schuler, head of Sotheby's jewellery division, said in a statement. “Only one per cent of all pink diamonds are larger than 10-carats.”
   
Speaking to AFP, Benoit Repellin, head of fine jewellery auctions at Sotheby's Geneva, said the oval-shaped diamond was “completely pure.”
 
 
READ ALSO: 
 
The rough diamond was unearthed by Russia's Alrosa — one of the world's leading diamond producers — in the Republic of Sakha in the northeast of the country in July 2017.
   
Repellin said it took a painstaking year for cutting masters to turn the diamond into its polished form.
   
Sotheby's said the world auction record for a diamond and any gemstone or jewel was the “CTF Pink Star”, a 59.60-carat oval pink diamond that sold for $71.2 million in Hong Kong in 2017.
   
According to Repellin, five out of the 10 most valuable diamonds ever sold at auction were pink.
   
The sale of this gem coincides with the closure of the world's largest pink diamond mine in Australia after it exhausted its reserves of the precious stones.
   
The Argyle mine, in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia, churned out more than 90 percent of the world's pink diamonds.
SHOW COMMENTS