Christie’s organizes tour of highlights of its Magnificent Jewels sale

Christie’s Geneva is organizing a tour of highlights of its Magnificent Jewels sale slated on 17 May at the Four Seasons Hotel des Bergues. The tour is reaching places like Hong Kong, London, New York from 30 March to 8 May. Between 5-8 May the highlights will be shown alongside the 20th Century Art preview, before they return to Geneva.

The Magnificent Jewels auction will offer around 250 exceptional jewels.

Jewels by Maison Boehmer et Bassenge are also being offered on sale. Having sold the first unique jewels over the course of 2016, Christie’s will present two further pieces this spring in Geneva. La Légende - a diamond and cultured pearl necklace containing a 92.15 carat heart shaped, D colour, Flawless diamonds. It is estimated at US$14-20 million. It is the largest D Flawless heart shaped diamond ever to be offered at auction. La Vie Bohème is a pair of chandelier earrings, each with an asymmetrical pink diamond bow, a pear-shaped diamond connecting link, each suspending a marquise-cut diamond weighing approximately 10.07 and 10.05 carats. Each drop is a D colour, Flawless clarity diamond, with perfectly symmetrical cuts. The estimate for this pair of earrings is US$ 2-3 million.

A 15.03 carat ruby of Burmese origin with a pigeon blood colour and so few inclusions will also be seen on sale.

A Kashmir sapphire weighing 14.88 carats is characterised by an attractive blue colour and an excellent purity, a combination rarely encountered in sapphires from Kashmir of this size (estimate: US$1.0-1.5 million).

In June 2004 Christie’s offered for sale “The Doris Duke Collection”, which totalled just under US$12 million and was at the time the highest sale total for any private jewellery collection sold at auction in America. The ‘Diamond and platinum necklace mounting, by Cartier’ was originally purchased at Cartier New York on April 30, 1937 for $65,000. Only the mounting was auctioned in 2004 as Doris Duke had all of the larger diamonds in this important necklace unmounted. The buyer subsequently replaced all of the missing stones with age appropriate diamonds, restoring the necklace to its former glory which will be offered at auction with a pre-sale estimate of US$ 3-5 million.

Another highlight is the property of an elegant Lady, a diamond necklace by Chopard, suspending a pear-shaped diamond weighing approximately 56.03 carats, and offered with an estimate of US$5-7 million.

Diamonds in all colours, such as a Fancy Deep Blue square-cut diamond weighing approximately 4.05 carats (estimate: US$4.2-5.2 million) or the 7.97 carats Fancy Intense Blue cushion-shaped diamond, carrying an estimate of US$2.5-3.0 and signed jewellery from famous houses, including Boucheron, Cartier, Harry Winston and JAR will be part of the Magnificent Jewels sale.