.jpg)
“Oh, I hope nobody else bids on this! I want this,” the fashion designer Gabriela Hearst declares, caressing the massive David Webb necklace she is wearing as if it is the most casual of trinkets. This behemoth, a diamond “Demon Mask” necklace-brooch, features a carved nephrite mask of pre-Columbian inspiration adorned with a textured gold headdress, bezel-set cabochon amethysts, and a plethora of other spectacular stones. It is just one of the dazzling pieces that Hearst has curated from Sotheby’s upcoming High Jewelry sale, taking place December 9 in the house’s new digs in the Breuer building on Madison Avenue. (You know the place, the boxy stack of rectangles that used to house the Whitney Museum.)
This is the first time Sotheby’s has collaborated with a designer, and Hearst says it was a marriage made in heaven. “It was one of the happiest professional assignments of my life,” she explains. Hearst has loved jewelry since childhood and designs fine and high jewelry herself—in fact, she has created a pair of earrings that are featured in the auction. She calls them Alpha and Omega, and their sale will benefit Amazon Frontlines, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting the rights and lands of Indigenous peoples in the Amazon. The Alpha earring features emeralds and sapphires, while the Omega literally rocks a round ruby. If the estimate—$60,000 to $80,000—might seem daunting, bear in mind that these convert to studs and pendants, so you are getting three looks in one—a bargain!
.jpg)
.jpg)
Hearst was tasked with picking a mere 10 pieces from the approximately 150 lots in the sale and she didn’t dawdle—“I think it took me like eight minutes, it was like there was no hesitation, like zero,” she laughs. If you expect that she would be drawn to conventionally appealing, “pretty” things, you would be wrong. Her selection is charmingly eccentric. Just one example—an art deco diamond wristwatch that has eschewed a conventional glass crystal covering its little face—you will instead be peering through a portrait diamond when you check the time.
Hearst was also seduced by a faintly bohemian pair of Hemmerle earrings, their transgressive nature expressed by combining wooly mammoth ivory disks with diamonds. Two strands of graduated mine cut diamonds that can turn into one extra-long necklace seem almost too good to be true—they were actually put together from several other pieces by Fred Leighton, when that king of antique jewelry reigned just down the street on Madison Avenue.
.jpg)
.jpg)
Another iconic gentleman of jewelry—Joel Arthur Rosenthal, the mastermind behind JAR—is represented with a pair of earclips that Hearst and I both think are meant to evoke bruised hearts, but it turns out are based on physalis fruits, if those ground cherries were pavé-set and incorporated pink and red spinels and orange sapphires, and were suspended from diamond-set chains. A Bulgari ring features a pair of cushion-cut diamonds totaling 6.62 carats and is flanked calibré-cut rubies and emeralds, red and green, the colors of the Italian flag.
%2520.jpg)
Hearst credits her fascination with nature as the reason she is so enamored of pearls: “It’s just a little piece of sand that went into an oyster,” she muses. So of course she selected a strand of natural pearls, circa 1915, exceptional in their own right but wait for it—they close with a clasp that is actually a blue vivid diamond. (Who says a clasp has to be worn in the back of your neck? Swing this baby forward!) And fun fact: back in the day, before the advent of cultured pearls, natural pearls were so coveted that—true story—in 1917, the Cartier building on Fifth Avenue was acquired in a swap for a strand.
Hearst has also fallen in love with a deep and dazzling stone that is un-set, just waiting for its new owner to let his or her imagination transform it into truly wearable art: a remarkable fancy vivid orangy pink, fully 3.27 luscious carats. Describing this holy grail, Hearst shares words that might describe all the wonders in her Sotheby’s curation: “It’s like holding a little piece of magic.”
The public exhibitions, featuring Gabriela Hearst’s curation, open at Sotheby’s new global headquarters at the Breuer Building on December 5.The live auction takes place December 9.
.jpg)
.jpg)
