Royal bracelets auctioned for $8M
GENEVA >> A pair of diamond bracelets that belonged to France’s Queen Marie Antoinette sold at auction on Tuesday for 7.46 million Swiss francs ($8.18 million), several times the presale estimate, Christie’s said.
Rahul Kadakia, Christie’s international director of jewelry who conducted the auction, told the Geneva saleroom that the bracelets had stayed in the family for almost 200 years. The buyer was bidding by telephone and not identified.
The hammer price was 6.2 million Swiss francs, but with commission the final price was 7.46 million Swiss francs, Christie’s spokesperson Alexandra Kindermann said.
“These bracelets travelled through time to recount a most important era of French history, with its glamour, glory and drama,” said Francois Curiel, Europe chairman for Christie’s auction house, according to the BBC.
A blue velvet box bearing a label “bracelets of Queen Marie Antoinette” holds the double bracelets, each composed of three strings of diamonds and a large barrette clasp, for a total of 112 diamonds.
Marie Antoinette, who sent a letter from prison in the Tuileries in Paris saying that a wooden chest with jewels would be sent for safekeeping, was guillotined in 1793. Her surviving daughter Marie Therese, Madame Royale, received the jewels on her arrival in Austria, the auction house said.
The bracelets, which were the property of a European royal family, had been expected to fetch $2 million to $4 million, Christie’s said before the sale.
According to the Guardian, Max Fawcett, head of Christie’s jewelry department, said before the sale: “Despite Marie Antoinette’s capture in the French Revolution and her unfortunate death in 1793, the bracelets survived and were passed on to her daughter, Madame Royale, and then the Duchess of Parma.”
An art deco ruby and diamond bracelet, ordered by the Duke of Windsor from Cartier, and offered to his American wife, Wallis Simpson, on their first wedding anniversary by the man who gave up the British throne to marry her, failed to find a new owner in the auction.