Sotheby's leads inaugural Artistic Luxury sale with Fabergé necklace

The lead lot is a workmaster Albert Holmström necklace from St Petersburg, circa 1911, described by Sotheby’s as set with eleven graduated Siberian aquamarines framed by rose-cut diamonds and openwork laurel motifs, finished with platinized mounts and a gold clasp. Its provenance is as striking as its materials. The Imperial Cabinet presented it in May 1911 to Empress Alexandra Feodorovna as a proposed gift for the visit of German Crown Prince Wilhelm and Crown Princess Cecilie to St Petersburg, at a documented cost of 2,650 rubles, but the jewel was never chosen and was returned. That kind of unfinished diplomatic courtship gives the necklace the emotional charge buyers still chase in exceptional gifts: intention, rarity and a story that feels almost too specific to be repeated.

The sale also includes multiple Russian Imperial dress trimmings attributed to Louis David Duval of Geneva, with estimates ranging from $30,000 to $80,000 depending on the lot. The appeal is not only in the price spread but in the objects themselves, which turn ornament into motion. Natural Diamonds traces that language back to Catherine the Great, who ruled from 1762 to 1796, expanded the Imperial jewelry collection by roughly 40 percent and built a court meant to rival Versailles. The trimmings were sewn onto gowns so the sparkle would catch the eye as the wearer moved, a visual strategy that still echoes in today’s appetite for floral clusters, laurel leaves, and jewels that look alive on the body.