GENEVA — A diamond bracelet that after belonged to France’s Marie Antoinette and a sapphire-and-diamond brooch with matching ear clips that after dangled from a Russian grand duchess are among the many featured objects in auctions of bijou and different collectibles subsequent week in Geneva.
Additionally going below the hammer within the lakeside Swiss metropolis might be a pair of high-top Nike sneakers from the late NBA star Kobe Bryant, the Los Angeles Lakers capturing guard who died in a helicopter crash in California final yr.
The blue, white and gold Nike Air Zoom Huarache 2K4 basketball footwear are anticipated to fetch as much as about $38,000 throughout a Nov. 11 sale at Sotheby’s. Bryant wore the sneakers in a March 17, 2004, victory over the L.A. Clippers, in accordance with the public sale home.
However as standard within the Geneva fall public sale season, diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, rubies and different prized gems would be the highlights of subsequent week’s gross sales at Sotheby’s and rival Christie’s.
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Christie’s is placing up on Tuesday an eye-popping pair of heavy bracelets from the 18th century which can be studded with three rows of small diamonds. The bracelets are billed as one of many final remaining vestiges of Marie Antoinette’s wealthy jewellery cupboard which can be nonetheless accessible on the market.
The public sale home mentioned the famed royal and spouse of King Louis XVI was recognized to have fastidiously wrapped her jewels in cotton herself, hoping to maintain them outdoors revolutionary France – which in the end took her life by way of the guillotine. The bracelets, commissioned round 1776, have been stored inside royal lineage for over 200 years, Christie’s mentioned.
“Regardless of Marie-Antoinette’s seize within the French Revolution and her unlucky demise in 1793, the bracelets survived and have been handed on to her daughter, Madame Royale, after which the Duchess of Parma,” mentioned Max Fawcett, head of Christie’s jewellery division, referring respectively to Marie-Therese of France, the couple’s daughter, and Princess Louise d’Artois, who died in 1864.
“To see them up for public sale at present is a singular alternative for collectors all over the world to personal a chunk of French royal historical past,” Fawcett mentioned.
The pre-sale estimate for the bracelets is as much as $4.38 million. They every weigh 3.42 ounces, and embody “old-cut” diamonds in addition to silver and gold, Christie’s mentioned.
Among the many tons Sotheby’s plans to current on Wednesday is a pair of “completely matched” earrings, every set with 25.8-carat diamonds, that’s anticipated to fetch as much as $5.5 million.
It would additionally showcase a brooch with a 26.8-carat oval sapphire surrounded by diamonds, and matching ear clips that after belonged to Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna and have been whisked out of Russia in the course of the nation’s 1917 revolution. The trio is predicted to garner as a lot as $525,800 (480,000 francs).
“She was the spouse of Grand Duke Vladimir, the son of the tsar, and he or she was actually enthusiastic about jewellery. She had a unbelievable assortment of jewels,” Olivier Wagner, the pinnacle of Sotheby’s Magnificent Jewels gross sales, mentioned.
