Phillips Geneva sale tops CHF 5.5 million as rubies shine

A transformable Van Cleef & Arpels Zip necklace-bracelet led Phillips’ Geneva Jewels Auction: VI, showing how a jewel with a signature maker, a clever mechanism and a strong provenance can climb well beyond simple material value. The 99-lot sale at the Hôtel President in Geneva totaled CHF 5,469,471, or US$7,030,458 and €5,970,475, with 85 lots sold. Phillips said 86 percent sold by lot and 85 percent by value, while more than 3,000 visitors came through the preview and sale.

Lot 399, the Van Cleef & Arpels Zip necklace-bracelet in coral, chrysoprase and diamonds, brought CHF 619,200, or roughly US$795,920 on Phillips’ results page. The piece had been estimated at US$320,000 to 600,000, CHF 260,000 to 480,000, so it cleared the top of estimate and then some. That premium is not just about signature jewelry from a blue-chip house. The Zip is also a design object with built-in rarity: Van Cleef & Arpels says Renée Puissant developed the zipper-inspired idea in the late 1930s, and the original Zip necklace was created in 1950 to be worn two ways, open as a necklace or closed as a bracelet.

Rubies made the sharpest case for gemstone jewelry as an asset class. A Chaumet ruby and diamond pendent necklace, circa 1902, sold for CHF 451,500 against a CHF 32,000 to 48,000 estimate, more than ten times its low estimate. A pair of Van Cleef & Arpels ruby and diamond earrings reached CHF 206,400. Together, those results show how rubies, long prized for their saturated color and symbolic pull, can move from elegant adornment into serious collecting territory when the stones are strong and the maker is desirable.

The strongest lot after the Zip was a 14.69-carat Colombian emerald ring at CHF 245,100, another reminder that size alone is not the point. Buyers paid for vivid color, origin, and the kind of polish that makes a gemstone feel inevitable on the hand. Phillips said 93 percent of signed jewels sold, 80 percent of sold lots finished above their high estimates, and 97 percent of the inaugural Collections & Provenance section sold, with 70 percent of those lots exceeding their high estimates. Benoît Repellin called the results proof of "the global appeal of signed jewels and distinguished provenance" and said the new section was "a meaningful part of Phillips’ 230th anniversary year." The lots will travel on to Singapore, Taipei, New York and London, carrying Geneva’s strongest lesson with them: in fine jewelry, design, authorship and gemstone quality compound over time.