The Ultimate Jewellery Connoisseurs Emerald is up for auction!
04.04.17
The magnificent Stotesbury emerald is going to be auctioned as part of Magnificent Jewels sale by Sotheby’s on April 25 in New York, with a price estimate as grand as the Amazonian jungle jewel at $800,000 - $1.2 m!
The 34.4 carat regal green gem originates from Colombia and is uniquely fashioned into a hexagonal shape, which unveils the emerald’s jardin and desired deep vivid green hue with a touch of blue.
The emerald has had an eccentric history of owners who were all jewellery connoisseurs: the emerald’s tale begins in 1908, Washington DC when Cartier designed a necklace for the mining heiress Evalyn Walsh McLean featuring her 94.8 carat Star of the East pear shaped diamond. The necklace’s pendant featured a pearl of 32 grains, the luscious green emerald and the Star of the East. Two years later, Cartier agree upon an exchange with McLean for the Hope Diamond which resulted in a court battle and by 1912 the emerald was back in the Parisian design house.
The next owner was Eva Stotesbury, the wife of Philadelphia banker, another avid jewellery collector and the namesake of the emerald. Stotesbury went to back to Cartier to create a diamond and emerald suite of which the extraordinary green gem became the centrepiece of the necklace. Stotesbury then sold the emerald and diamond suite to the American jewellery house, Harry Winston redesigned the suite and reset the vivacious emerald into a ring. The ring was later sold to May Bonfils Stanton, a jeweller collector from Colorado. After the sale of Stanton’s estate in 1971, the ring has been in a private collection.
It will be very exciting to see who the next owner of the magnificent vibrant green gem is! We will keep you posted with the result on April 25, along with the outcome of the sale of the La Gloria emerald rough!
The Star of the East in its original necklace setting with the hexagonal emerald
Dipika @ IGR London
