Ruby jewellery draws record bids at Geneva auction

Ruby jewellery and a green diamond secured record prices at Sotheby’s “magnificent jewels” auction in Geneva on Tuesday night, which rang up total sales of 37 million francs.

The biggest surprise of the auction at the Hotel Beau Rivage was the intense bidding on the Roxburghe Rubies, comprising a 19th century necklace and earrings, sold for a total of 5.8 million francs, five times the highest estimate.

The sum set a world record auction price for a “ruby suite,” Sotheby’s said. The jewellery, dating from 1884, was owned by 94-year-old Mary Innes-Ker, Duchess of Roxberghe, from Great Britain.

The necklace was sold for 4.3 million francs to a private collector from Asia, David Bennett, Sotheby’s chairman of jewellery for Europe and the Middle East told Swisster.

The earrings sold separately for 1.46 million francs to another Asian purchaser in the jewellery trade, Bennett said.

“It was an exceptional sale,” he said of the auction, which defied the recessionary climate that is clouding the economies of Switzerland and many other countries in the world.

“It was a very exciting day –frankly it exceeded my expectations.”

The auction also saw high prices for yellow, green and blue diamonds, as the appetite for collector jewellery appeared to be unaffected by the economic downturn.

Bennett said the quality of the jewellery attracted a wide number of bidders who aprticipated in the two-hour auction. The only “casualty” was a pear-shaped blue diamond, valued at up to 7.6 million francs, which failed to find a buyer at a sufficiently high price.

By contrast, the Roxburghe  rubies drew many bidders. They had “attracted extraordinary pre-sale attention” at exhibitions in Geneva and elsewhere around the world, including Hong Kong, London and New York, Bennett said

He called the sale of the rubies a “once in a lifetime” opportunity.

They feature a rivière necklace with 24 cushion-shaped rubies and the same number of similar-shaped diamonds mounted in silver and gold.

The earrings were sold separately, although they were housed in the same box as the necklace, Bennett said. Such sets are often broken up for sale at auctions, he said.

The rubies were believed to have been bought from Garrard, the London jeweller, by former British prime minister Archibald Primrose, the Earl of Rosebury, for his wife Hannah, who inherited the estate of her father, banker Mayer de Rothschild.

The jewellery was subsequently bequeathed to Innes-Ker, Primrose’s grandchild.

Other gems drew attention from buyers who frequently bid up prices above estimates. The overall take of 37 million francs compared with a low-end estimate of 30 million francs made before the auction.

Chatila, the Geneva jeweller, paid a record price for a 3.17-carat blue diamond ring of 2.5 million francs that was estimated at 1.6 million to 2.67 million francs.

The jeweller also successfully bid on the largest vivid green diamond to appear at an auction, a gem mounted on a plain yellow gold ring that sold for 3.1 million francs.

A sapphire brooch owned by Daisy Fellowes, a society figure who edited the French edition of Harper’s Bazaar in the 1930s, sold to an unidentified private buyer for 662,500 francs, well above its estimated value of 155,000 to 255,000 francs.

The brooch, designed in the shape of an iris, was made in Cartier’s London workshop in 1940, featuring cushion-shaped sapphires, brilliant-cut diamonds and a stem made from emeralds entwined with diamonds.

The auction was just one of several marking the fall season in Geneva. On Sunday Sotheby’s sold 5.1-million francs’ worth of collectible watches, while Christie’s racked up 19 million francs in sales of rare timepieces on Monday, almost double the amount expected.

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