Sotheby’s previews Maurice Tempelsman sale with rare Stiehl box and jewelry
A rare Stiehl Steinkabinett, a Jackie Kennedy Onassis Tank Louis, and only 11 lots make Tempelsman’s sale a compact lesson in collecting.
The most revealing piece in Maurice Tempelsman’s estate is not a diamond necklace or a showpiece ring but a gold and hardstone tabatiere from Dresden, made by Christian Gottlieb Stiehl around 1770. Sotheby’s is putting that rare Steinkabinett at the center of its June 24 sale in New York City, where just 11 lots will trace Tempelsman’s taste across jewelry, gold boxes, antiquities and objects of vertu.
That breadth is what makes the sale worth reading like a collector’s field guide. Tempelsman’s holdings were never only about glamour. They moved from a Cartier Tank Louis wristwatch engraved and gifted by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis around 1985 to an Egyptian gold snake armlet from the Roman period, then out to a Schlumberger for Tiffany & Co. hematite acorn dress set, paintings by Montague Dawson and Robert Frederick Blum, a Paul Klee, and Aaron Shickler’s Mrs. Onassis on Couch, Book in Lap. Sotheby’s is previewing the collection as part of its Luxury Week programming, and the mix tells buyers exactly where the real value often sits: in maker, material, date, and documented ownership, not in celebrity alone.
The Steinkabinett is the lot to study. National Jeweler says it last appeared at auction in Paris in 1906, was illustrated in 1935, entered Tempelsman’s collection in the 1960s, and had not been seen publicly since. Sotheby’s compares it with another Stiehl Steinkabinett sold in 2020, a piece estimated at £700,000 to £1,000,000 and described as complete with a secret compartment and explanatory booklet. That comparison matters because it shows how small luxury objects can command serious attention when they combine rarity, survival, and scholarship. Collectors should look for those same cues in the catalog: clear maker attribution, original materials, evidence of completeness, and a traceable history.
Tempelsman himself gives the sale its human frame. He died in Manhattan on August 23, 2025, at 95, three days before his 96th birthday. Born in Antwerp and brought to the United States in 1940, he helped build Lazare Kaplan into a public company known for promoting the Ideal Cut, and he spent decades working with African leaders while also serving as a prominent Democratic Party fundraiser. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said he was a Life Trustee from 2009 to 2025. In the auction room, that biography will matter, but the real lesson is more practical: prestige tells you who owned a piece, while craftsmanship, condition and provenance tell you whether it belongs in a serious collection.
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