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The Scoop With Christie’s Henry Bailey: On the Hidden Gem in the London Jewels Auction
Christie’s just held its Magnificent Jewels sale in Geneva earlier this month, and another sale this week in Hong Kong, where a jadeite necklace sold for about $25 million.
Welcome to the Scoop: a weekly email series in which I quiz fashion insiders on the stories of the week. This will be a way for the Vogue Business community to synthesize and reflect on the latest headlines and get a little inside scoop every Friday.
This week’s guest is Henry Bailey, who is head of jewelry at Christie’s London. Christie’s just held its Magnificent Jewels sale in Geneva earlier this month, and another sale this week in Hong Kong, where a jadeite necklace sold for about $25 million.
Jewelry is one of the slices of luxury that is growing despite the macroeconomic challenges that are affecting everyone else. And the auction world seems even less affected. I guess when times are tough, it makes sense to spend one’s money on investments rather than more impulse-driven purchases. Henry and I chatted about all that in light of the London Jewels auction that kicked off this week.
Our London jewels sale started on Tuesday, and is open for bidding until next Friday, June 5. These are very exciting sales, because they offer a selection of very rare gems and top collectible signed jewels, but there’s also jewels at more accessible levels, say, under £20,000. So the audience for these sales is quite wide.
But the scoop, if you will, for this particular sale is lot number 192, which is a 19th century pink topaz and diamond brooch. We don’t know its exact provenance, but it’s very possible that the pink topaz was mined in Russia. This one is a family jewel, it was in someone’s ownership for a long time until they decided to sell it to us. We have appraised it at £45-55,000, but we’re pretty confident it will see a lot of interest.
What makes this pink topaz scoop-worthy?
If you look at auctions generally, you’ll struggle to find any pink topaz of this size, as well as this saturation of pink. Normally, examples of topaz in this size are in royal collections. One of the most famous pink topazes in the UK is on permanent exhibition at the V&A Gallery as part of the Londonderry Jewels. It’s about 150 carats, and it was given by Tsar Alexander I of Russia to Lady Londonderry. Ours is 50 carats, which is still very large; the Londonderry one is just humongous.
The pink topaz brooch from Christie’s London.
I don’t know anything about auctions or really about jewelry. Could you educate me? How many pieces are in this sale? How often do you do sales? How does it all work?
So there are 197 pieces in the sale. We have a jewels sale twice a year — one in June and another in November. Often, when it comes to selling jewelry, people ask which sale is better; June or November? But there is no better or worse really. We sell in those months because we often exhibit our selection of jewels in Geneva in May and earlier in November. So it’s a good way of giving our jewels more exposure.
And I suppose a lot of curation goes into each sale?
Very much so. Since we only have two auctions a year, we need to be fairly selective about the pieces that go into them. We typically have 200 lots in each sale, which sounds a lot, but it’s actually not. We make sure those 200 lots include antique jewels, some more unusual pieces, and then obviously natural pearls and colored gemstones — like sapphires, rubies, emeralds, but also topaz, paraiba tourmalines, spinels, and aquamarines.
There also needs to be certificated diamonds; white diamonds and colored diamonds. In this sale, we’ve got a selection of pink diamonds and also a very impressive 66-carat orange brown briolette-cut diamond.
But then another tranche, if you like, is signed jewelry. By that I mean pieces by Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Boucheron, Bvlgari… there is a universal appetite for these huge brand names across the world. And we sell both contemporary jewels by these brands as well as their heritage pieces.
We have been writing so much about personal style. The algorithm and quiet luxury killed it, but it now looks like people are trying to reclaim theirs. In that vein, have you noticed a desire for more characterful pieces?
We’ve seen a heightened interest in these pieces over the last few years, but it’s hard to pinpoint that to any one reason. What I certainly have noticed change in the world of auctions is that everything turned digital in the post-Covid era.
Firstly, there’s so much information about fine jewelry available, so there is much more awareness. Secondly, and most importantly, our sales are now mostly digital. Even when it comes to live sales, a lot of the bidding takes place online. Everybody’s behavior online has become far more transactional since Covid. And now our audience has exponentially grown, too. Thirty, 40 years ago we were printing catalogs and sending them in the post to collectors who were largely experts in fine jewels. Whereas today, we put our auction online and the interest is coming from all over the world.
So there are no gavels and paddles anymore?
These are still very much part of the process. In Geneva, Hong Kong and New York we have what we call Magnificent sales, which see a small number of exceptional pieces go ‘under the hammer’. But a lot of the bidding for those sales is also done online. The pieces in these sales are generally $250,000 and upwards, so when it makes sense, we use the theater of the auction as a strategy to make it feel more special.
But honestly, there is quite a bit of drama and excitement in watching the numbers tweak online and go up. Buying online can also feel less intimidating, as they are able to bid easily from their phone.
I was speaking to luxury sourcer Gab Waller last week and she was saying the same thing: most of her sales happen on Instagram because it’s more convenient.
It’s the same here. People just want to Whatsapp me and ask, ‘Can I have extra photos of the topaz?’ A lot of the interaction with our buyers before a sale is over Whatsapp. And they often ask for iPhone photos of an item, not just the official ones, because they want a realistic representation of the piece. The personal touch is highly valued.
You can catch up with last week’s Scoop with Gab Waller here.
