Editor’s Note
This article previews the upcoming auction of a piece from the legendary collection of Rachel “Bunny” Mellon, whose taste continues to define an era of understated elegance.
There will be one up for sale this November in Geneva.
Rachel Lambert “Bunny” Mellon, the horticulturalist, philanthropist, art collector, and jewelry patron, is a name often heard these days. She designed the White House Rose Garden with her friend First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, inspired the designer Jean Schlumberger, and has become the patron saint of a nostalgic idea of quiet and discreet wealth.
Every single piece of the 2014 sale of her collections sold—and successfully—at Sotheby’s in what was called “the Super Bowl of grande dame auctions.” Included in that historic event was a blue diamond pendant, singled out in a New York Times piece about the event for its rare shade and size and the price it was expected to achieve, which in the end, it exceeded.
That exceptional blue stone, known as the Mellon Blue, is back up for grabs. It will be offered at a live auction at Christie’s Geneva on November 11 with an estimate of $20-30 million.
Its intense color and extraordinary purity would be news on their own, but the provenance, Mellon’s current relevance and deserved recognition, and its pear shape—the preferred silhouette of the moment—make the Mellon Blue a stone for its time.
Bunny Mellon famously said “nothing should be noticed,” but this stone, no matter how simply set, is rather difficult to ignore.