By James de Givenchy for Taffin

[Pierre Tavlitzki]

In sales of jewelry, I am often surprised that the catalogs do not provide more information about jewelers. After all, the jeweler is to jewelry what the artist is to painting.

I have therefore a certain pleasure today to present a creation of James de Givenchy for Taffin, which will be sold at Sotheby's in Hong Kong on October 7 (HK0277 sale, Lot 1776).

It is a pair of rubies mounted as ear pendants in a circle of diamonds alternating pear- and brilliant-shapes. The rubies are weighing respectively 10.0 and 10.9 carats. They are Burmese, unheated, and their color and shape perfectly match. The press release said that rubies of more than 5 carats are scarce. The mount is made of platinum and yellow gold.

For this pair, the estimate is 30 MHK$.

Of the same origin and in the same room, a diamond ring centered by a 7.2 carat ruby mounted on platinum and gold approached 15 MHK$ on October 8, 2007. By comparison, the estimate given above is reasonable.

Taffin de Givenchy is the name of an old French noble family. James, nephew of designer Hubert, is a jeweler in New York.

[Pierre Tavlitzki]

There is much missed. After the sale, the number 1776 has disappeared from the catalog. I suppose it has been withdrawn from the sale.

Even if I was wrong when I copied the lot number (but I do not think this is the case), it is sure that it has not been sold. It was estimated 30 MHK$, and only one other lot exceeded 13 MHK$ in this sale of particularly poor overall result.

This top sold lot was one of four that I announced in my preview of September 7. This cushion shaped diamond of 34 carats was sold 45 MHK$ incuding fees.