Editor’s Note
This season’s auction highlight is a historic blue diamond with royal lineage, poised to become one of the most valuable jewels ever sold.
A museum-quality diamond with royal provenance and an estimated value exceeding 46 million euros: the Golconda Blue has all the ingredients to cause a sensation this auction season.
Christie’s will auction a rare and unparalleled diamond on May 14 in Geneva: an intense blue Golconda diamond weighing 23.24 carats, set in a ring by the exclusive Parisian jeweler JAR. It is the largest diamond of this color category ever offered at auction. Estimated yield? Between 32.5 and 46.5 million euros.
The stone has a notable origin. It was formerly owned by Yeshwant Rao Holkar, the charismatic Maharaja of Indore, and his wife Krishna Bai Holkar, both style icons of the 1920s and 1930s. In 1923, the Maharaja took the diamond to Paris to have it set in a bracelet by Chaumet. Ten years later, the stone was reset, this time in a necklace by Mauboussin, who named Holkar as its official jeweler in 1933. The necklace was worn by the Maharani and is captured in a famous portrait.
In 1947, the diamond was purchased by Harry Winston, nicknamed the king of diamonds. He combined the blue stone with a white diamond of equal size in a brooch, which was sold to the Maharaja of Baroda. Subsequently, Winston repurchased the piece and sold it, adapted, to its current owner.
For the first time in its rich history, the diamond is now being offered to the public.
The most expensive blue diamond to date was the 15.10-carat “The Blue,” which was auctioned at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong in 2022 for 53.5 million euros.
