Displaying items by tag: Jewelry

The expansive collection of Russia's Hermitage Museum just got a little bit bigger: Helen Drutt English, the pioneering collector and dealer of American modern and contemporary craft, known in the art world as Helen Drutt, has donated to the Hermitage a collection of 74 works, including ceramics, furniture and jewelry, worth approximately $2 million, reports the "Moscow Times."

The gift coincides with the St. Petersburg institution's 250th anniversary, and is intended to help foster the relationship between Russia and the US.

"That coat has been round the world. That's when I actually started to make some money!" Pierre Cardin says, stopping in front of a flared, red design among the first exhibits at his new museum in Paris. 

One of the last survivors of the great post-war French fashion houses, Cardin, at 92, still heads a sprawling business empire.

"Back then I hadn't yet become Pierre Cardin. I hadn't found my voice," he says, in uncharacteristically reflective mood.

The avant-garde designer, known for his geometric shapes, dresses decorated with circular and rectangular motifs and  astronaut's headgear, has always tended to look forward rather than backward. But he is making an exception today.

An 8.62-carat ruby set a record auction price as Sotheby’s (BID) concluded a $95 million sale of jewelry last night in Geneva, including a pearl necklace probably once owned by Napoleon Bonaparte’s first wife.

British billionaire jeweler Laurence Graff bid $8.6 million for the Graff Ruby, which he had previously owned, and he also spent $3.2 million on a 3.16-carat intense-blue diamond ring, the auction house said. The necklace, made of 111 pearls, sold for $3.4 million, more than double the high estimate.

A significant collection of works, never before on the market, by Man Ray will be offered at Sotheby's, Paris on 15 November. This will be the very last opportunity to acquire works by Man Ray coming directly from the studio of the artist, the artist’s estate. Following the first sale of works by Man Ray, coming from the studio of the artist held at Sotheby’s London in 1995, the auction will be the largest and most important sale of works by the ground-breaking artist in nearly 20 years.

As observed by Andrew Strauss, Vice-president of Sotheby’s France and leading authority on Man Ray: “Today’s auction presents a selection of the remaining significant works from the artist’s estate, many of which have never been seen previously.

Scottish officials announced on Monday that an amateur metal-detector scavenger literally struck gold, finding a large Viking treasure hoard dating to the 9th and 10th century, "Art Daily" has reported.

The haul was discovered in Dumfriesshire, southwest Scotland and included over 100 unique artifacts including jewelry such as silver ingots, brooches, armbands, and gold objects of Irish origin. A silver Christian cross and a silver Carolingian pot from Germany was also found.

An art collection amassed by the late movie star Lauren Bacall, including eight sculptures by Henry Moore, will go under the hammer next year in New York, Bonhams auction house said on Friday.

Bacall, the husky voiced actress who was married to and appeared with Humphrey Bogart in films such as "The Big Sleep" and "Key Largo," died in August in New York at the age of 89.

The Bacall Collection, estimated to be worth $3 million, will be sold at Bonhams in March 2015.

A mystery worthy of the one of the great writer’s own books reached its conclusion in Bonhams Jewelery sale in Knightsbridge.

Setting the room buzzing with excitement, bidders in the room, on the telephones, and online competed for Christie’s diamond brooch and three-stone diamond ring, pushing the prices ever higher. The ring, originally estimated at £3,000-5,000, sold for £21,875 (including buyer’s premium), and the brooch, estimated at £6,000-8,000, sold for a whopping £27,500 (including buyer’s premium).

The two pieces were long thought to be lost, having been mentioned as family heirlooms by Christie in her autobiography, but their whereabouts were unknown.

The renowned Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York purchased a collection of 4,000-year-old Egyptian artifacts found a century ago by a British explorer, averting a plan to auction the antiquities that had drawn criticism from historians.

The Treasure of Harageh collection consists of 37 items such as flasks, vases and jewelry inlaid with lapis lazuli, a rare mineral. Discovered by famed British archaeologist Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie, the relics date to roughly 1900 B.C., excavated from a tomb near the city of Fayum. Portions of the excavated antiquities were given in 1914 to donors in St. Louis who helped underwrite the dig.

An elderly Greek man was arrested for illegally obtaining a host of antiquities including more than a thousand coins of historical significance, police said on Monday.

Inside the 72-year-old man's house in Alexandria, a village in northern Greece, police found 1,061 copper coins, a thousand of which date from the Hellenistic period (third to first century BC), the Byzantine period (330-1453) and the Ottoman Empire.

Police said they were seized on Sunday, as well as 30 silver coins of the same periods, 16 copper rings and other jewelery of the Byzantine and post-Byzantine era.

Sotheby’s auction house is making a big push for its latest target -- the new wealthy along the West Coast of the U.S. -- by showing off more than $200 million of art.

Armed with highlights from its upcoming New York sales including canvases by Mark Rothko and Jasper Johns along with Old Master painting and jewelry, Sotheby’s starting this month will woo the rich from San Diego to Seattle with exhibitions, wine tastings and dinners in private homes.