Sotheby’s sells Maurice Tempelsman’s Jackie Kennedy gifts and treasures

Sotheby’s closed “A Marvelous Journey: The Collection of Maurice Tempelsman” at its New York rooms on June 24, 2026, with 130 lots spanning fine art, antiquities, rare books, furniture, gold boxes and objects of vertu. The draw was not only rarity but intimacy: the sale folded in deeply personal pieces from Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, turning ordinary luxury objects into heirlooms with a private history collectors can actually feel.

Tempelsman, who Sotheby’s identified as Maurice Tempelsman (1929-2025), was 95 when he died in August 2025. Sotheby’s described him as a businessman, philanthropist and art collector, and framed the auction as a portrait of a life “thoughtfully, intimately, lived.” Born in Belgium and forced to flee as a child to escape the Holocaust, he built a life that later intersected with some of the 20th century’s most closely watched circles. His relationship with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis deepened after Aristotle Onassis died in 1975, and Sotheby’s said Tempelsman moved into Jackie’s Fifth Avenue apartment, stayed with her through the cancer that ended her life, and read C.P. Cavafy’s “Ithaka” at her funeral.

Among the most coveted lots was a Tiffany Schlumberger gold and cultured pearl dress set of cufflinks and shirt studs, accompanied by a handwritten heart-shaped note from Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis that read “I Love You.” Sotheby’s listed the provenance plainly: gifted to Maurice Tempelsman by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. That kind of direct personal inscription does what precious metal alone cannot. It fixes an object to a relationship, and for luxury buyers that can matter as much as craftsmanship.

The Jackie-linked pieces gave the sale its emotional voltage, but the auction also had serious historical weight. National Jeweler highlighted a Cartier Tank watch in the sale that Jackie O. gave Tempelsman, while Sotheby’s also included an Aaron Shikler portrait of Mrs. Onassis from 1968. At the top end, a gold-mounted Dresden “Steinkabinett” box by Christian Gottlieb Stiehl was estimated at $600,000 to $800,000. Sotheby’s said the box last appeared at auction in Paris in 1906 and had been in the Tempelsman collection since the 1960s, the sort of provenance that can lift a decorative object into museum territory.