When diamonds are your best friend
Perhaps it is a sign of unsettled times that the shiny stones have been reaching big prices
DIAMONDS are famously a girl’s best friend, the bigger the better. During unsettled times, they are favourites with refugees, although, in those cases, small is best. During the Second World War, alternative currencies had to be portable and easy to secrete. Favourites included gold watch chains, which could be expended link by link, stamps, which had a set value anywhere in the world where a Stanley Gibbons catalogue was available, and industrial diamonds, which could lurk in the fluff of a waistcoat pocket.
Similarly, Marie Antoinette reputedly paid her guards a pearl at a time to allow her glimpses of her imprisoned children. Even less uncomfortably situated people are wise to have a cache of jewellery when the world goes mad.
It may, then, have been a sign of the times that diamonds seemed particularly in demand in the mid-may sale held by Catherine Southon Auctioneers at Farleigh Court Golf Club, Warlingham, Surrey. The two most expensive items, a necklace and a pair of earclips, had been brought by the same vendor to an earlier valuation day at the club.
The early- or mid-victorian graduated rivière necklace of 51 diamonds (Fig 1) was estimated to £20,000 and, after considerable competition, sold to a private bidder for £60,536. The vendor had bought it in 1948 from Garrard’s of Regent Street, but the price at that time was not disclosed. The diamond-set earclips designed as flowers were catalogued as ‘in the style of Cartier’ (Fig 2) and estimated to £12,000. The price, by a British bidder, was £29,624.
A further indication of the present desirability of diamonds came a few lots later when another pair of floral earclips, this time signed by Cartier and estimated to £3,000, made £8,243. Here, the diamonds were subsidiary to sapphires and rubies.
Southon’s sale, marking the firm’s 10th year in business, included a charming older piece of jewellery, plus a memento of Queen Victoria’s favourite, John Brown. The first, an enameldecorated gold locket (Fig 4), was dated to about 1690 and estimated to £800. It was heart shaped, surmounted by an earl’s coronet and applied with cupids, birds and baskets of flowers. Inside, suitably enough, was a lock of hair, and the inscription ‘There is no Sting in Sweets I bring’, the sweets being the flowers without Cupid’s arrows. The price, paid by the trade, was £5,240.
The Victorian relic, which made £4,895, was a silver chamber candlestick and snuffer engraved ‘From VR Xmas 1871’ and with the initials JB (Fig 3). It was made or retailed by Garrard and had emerged from the same golfclub valuation day.
When valuing opium weights, it would be as well not to have indulged beforehand. Two lots of South-east Asian bronze figures in the forms of birds and animals came up at Olympia Auctions on May 11. One consisted of six birds sitting on cushions (or nests?), measuring an average 1in high (Fig 5). They were 12th-century Burmese opium weights and sold for £5,200. However, five similar figures came from Indonesia, as well as Burma, and were a couple of centuries later. Only one, a monkey, was definitely an opium weight. Accordingly, the lot price was only £416.
In the same sale, a Chinese reverse-painted mirror dating from the third quarter of the 18th century (Fig 6) reached £10,400. The glass itself is likely to have been French made, being of higher quality than any available locally. One side would be fully silvered and then Chinese artists would trace the outlines of a design, indicating where the mercury was to be removed, and the painting done with a fine wire brush.
It was an attractive scene, with buildings on the far side