Smuggled Russian royal jewels to go under the hammer

A sapphire-and-diamond brooch and matching ear clips which once belonged to Russia’s Romanov imperial dynasty will be put up for sale by Sotheby’s auction house.

The jewels, which belonged to grand duchess Maria Pavlovna the Elder (1854-1920), the aunt of the last tsar, Nicholas II, were smuggled out of Russia for safekeeping during the 1917 revolution in which the tsar, his wife and their children were massacred.

They are expected to fetch $300,000 to $500,000 when they go on sale in Geneva on Wednesday.

Dating from around 1900, the brooch contains an oval sapphire from Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, weighing 26.80 carats.

The ear clips have step-cut sapphires weighing 6.69 and 9.36 carats respectively.

Maria Pavlovna had a legendary passion for jewels.

“During the revolution, she entrusted her jewellery to a trustworthy man: the British diplomat Albert Henry Stopford,” Sotheby’s head of sale Olivier Wagner told AFP.

“After an incredible journey through all the countries of Scandinavia, he arrived in London by boat, where he deposited the jewels in a bank safe, including the famous set of sapphires and diamonds.

“The grand duchess was one of the the last Romanovs to leave the country, in 1919,” he added.

Maria Pavlovna fled Russia in the face of advancing Bolshevik forces. She died in September 1920 in a French spa town.

The jewels were passed to her daughter, princess Elena of Greece and Denmark, and then down through the family until they were first auctioned by Sotheby’s Geneva in 2009, when they were bought by a European aristocratic family for almost $500,000.

“Today, the estimate is between $300,000 and $500,000 — a very conservative estimate given that the sapphires market has also grown a lot in the last 10 years,” said Wagner, who is expecting a “very good result”.

Dressed in workman’s clothes, Stopford collected the jewels from Vladimir Palace in Saint Petersburg. He dismantled them, folding the pieces into old newspaper for protection.

The aristocrat and antiques dealer set out for London on September 26, 1917 carrying 244 pieces of Maria Pavlovna’s jewels in a bag, including the sapphire brooch and earrings, and the Vladimir Tiara now owned by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II.

Besides the grand duchess’s jewels, Sotheby’s is also offering two identical square-cut diamond earrings, estimated at $4.4 million to $5.4 million — the biggest-ticket item in Wednesday’s sales.

apo/rjm/dl