Top of the jewellery lots Jewellery once worn by two controversial royal women goes under the hammer this month, including bracelets belonging to the French queen Marie Antoinette
Above right The Duchess of Windsor photographed by Cecil Beaton in 1939, wearing the diamond and ruby Left The diamond
bracelets were sent to Brussels by the imprisoned queen for safekeeping
Below The art deco
T
wo diamond bracelets that Marie Antoinette (1755-1793) entrusted to a friend before her execution could make £3m at a sale in Geneva this month. The stunning jewels, which contain 112 diamonds, were among her few surviving possessions sent from France before she and her husband, King Louis XIV, were captured during the French Revolution. On 11 January 1791, two years before she was guillotined, the Brussels ambassador Count MercyArgenteau received a letter from the queen, then a prisoner in the Tuileries, telling him her jewellery was being sent to him in a wooden chest for safekeeping. After the royal couple were executed in 1793 the jewellery ended up with their eldest daughter, MarieTherese, who was exiled to Britain. When she died in 1851 her jewellery was divided among her three nieces and nephews, the Count and Countess of Chambord and the Duchess of Parma. The French queen could not resist jewellery – especially diamonds. In the spring of 1776, she bought
Cartier bracelet was a gift on the duchess’s first wedding anniversary
the two diamond bracelets on sale this month for 250,000 livres, a huge sum at the time.
DUCHESS OF WINDSOR Meanwhile, at the same Christie’s sale, an art deco diamond and ruby bracelet, given to the Duchess of Windsor by her husband, the Duke of Windsor, on their first wedding anniversary, has an estimate of £740,000 to £1.6m. The rubies and diamonds set in the bracelet originally featured on a necklace, but Cartier made them into a bracelet in 1937. The duke famously abdicated the British throne to marry the twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson. To mark love, passion, good fortune, courage and prosperity, he chose rubies to take the centre stage of this unique jewel. The couple were married in France at the Château de Candé in June 1937. For years the Windsor’s were a fixture of international society and are still remembered for their chic lifestyle, the duchess’s style and her impressive jewellery. The bracelet is appearing at auction for the first time since the landmark 1987 sale of jewels belonging to the Duchess of Windsor, which sold for £31m – six times its pre-sale estimate. The sale takes place at the Four Seasons Hotel des Bergues in Geneva on November 9, for more details go to www.christies.com
‘The French queen could not resist jewellery – especially diamonds. In the spring of 1776, she bought the two diamond bracelets on sale for 250,000 livres, a huge sum at the time’ ANTIQUE COLLECTING 69
