Sotheby’s to auction jewels of Duchess of Windsor
A wedding photograph, 1937, of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. The Duchess is wearing the Cartier diamond bracelet with nine gem-set Latin crosses.
© Getty Images
LONDON, July 25, 2010 – Sotheby’s will offer 20 pieces of jewellery once owned by the Duchess of Windsor at a sale in London on 30 November 2010 which is expected to fetch around 3 million pounds.
King Edward V111 renounced his claim to the British throne in 1936 to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson.
After the abdication, the couple were given the titles of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and left Britain, living abroad for the rest of their lives.
The sale will take place 23 years after the celebrated auction of the “Jewels of the Duchess of Windsor”— still the most valuable single-owner jewellery collection ever sold.
In April 1987, soon after the Duchess’s death in 1986, the collection sold for 31 million pounds, more than seven times the pre-sale estimate.
The 20 pieces to be sold in November, ranging from a Cartier panther bracelet to diamond-encrusted cufflinks, are only a fraction of the original “Jewels of the Duchess of Windsor” collection.
“The offering comprises not only incomparable examples of the genius of Cartier in collaboration with the Windsors, but also pieces whose inscriptions tell the story of perhaps the greatest love story of the 20th century, the romance that led Edward VIII to abdicate the throne of Great Britain,” said David Bennett, Chairman of Sotheby’s Jewellery in Europe and the Middle East.
