The auction house Sotheby’s announced on Monday the sale of an impressive necklace composed of 500 diamonds dating from the 18th century, a piece of unparalleled technical mastery for the time and with mysterious origins.
From a private Asian collection, this jewel will be offered for sale on November 11 in Geneva. Online bidding will open on October 25 on the auction house’s website.
Composed of three rows of diamonds finished with a diamond tassel at each end, this necklace, which will be presented to the public for the first time in 50 years, is estimated at between 1.8 and 2.8 million dollars (or between 1.6 and 2.5 million euros).
Photo HENRY NICHOLLS / AFP
“It’s a wonderful find because normally 18th century jewellery was broken up to be reused (…) So it’s absolutely fabulous to have an intact Georgian piece of this importance,” Andres White Correal, chairman of Sotheby’s jewellery section, told AFP.
“The jewel has been passed down from family to family. We can go back to the early 20th century, when it was part of the collection of the Marquesses of Anglesey,” he continues.
Photo HENRY NICHOLLS / AFP
This aristocratic family is said to have worn the jewel twice. Once at the coronation of King George VI (1937) and the second time at the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II (1953), George VI’s eldest daughter.
The certainties surrounding this object stop there.
Who was behind the order?
The auction house believes that such an impressive piece of antique jewellery could only have been created for a royal family. It was also “probably created in the decade before the French Revolution”.
Photo HENRY NICHOLLS / AFP
Sotheby’s said it believes “that some of the diamonds featured in this piece of jewelry may have come from the famous necklace linked to the ‘Affair of the Necklace,'” a scam that took place from 1784 to 1786 involving the theft of a diamond necklace that was supposed to go to Marie Antoinette.
But the auction house admits at the same time that to date, no historical source validates this hypothesis.
On the provenance of the diamonds, Sotheby’s believes that they are “likely to have originated from the legendary Golconda mines” in southern India. Diamonds from these mines are still considered today to be the purest and most dazzling ever mined.
The necklace is on public display in London until September 25. It will then begin a tour that will take it to Hong Kong, New York and Taiwan.
