Royal jewels and Kobe Bryant’s shoes set for Geneva auction
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 jewellery and different collectibles subsequent week in Geneva.
Additionally going below the hammer within the lakeside Swiss metropolis will likely 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 35,000 Swiss francs (about $38,000) throughout a November 11 sale at Sotheby’s. Bryant wore the sneakers in a March 17, 2004, victory over the L.A. Clippers, in response to the public sale home.
However as ordinary 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.
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 obtainable on the market.
The public sale home stated the famed royal and spouse of King Louis XVI was identified to have rigorously wrapped her jewels in cotton herself, hoping to maintain them outdoors revolutionary France – which finally 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 stated.
“Regardless of Marie-Antoinette’s seize within the French Revolution and her unlucky loss of life in 1793, the bracelets survived and have been handed on to her daughter, Madame Royale, after which the Duchess of Parma,” stated 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 around the globe to personal a bit of French royal historical past,” Fawcett stated.
The pre-sale estimate for the bracelets is as much as 4 million Swiss francs ($4.38 million). They every weigh 97 grams (3.42 ounces), and embrace “old-cut” diamonds in addition to silver and gold, Christie’s stated.
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 million francs ($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 anticipated to garner as a lot as 480,000 francs ($525,800).
“She was the spouse of Grand Duke Vladimir, the son of the tsar, and she or he was actually captivated with jewellery. She had a unbelievable assortment of jewels,” Olivier Wagner, the top of Sotheby’s Magnificent Jewels gross sales, stated.
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