Estate Jewelry Weaves a Romantic Tale
Images courtesy of Betteridge Jewelry
Ah, if these baubles could talk. Estate jewelry, also known as vintage jewelry, is the undisputed ornamental darling of today’s fashionistas whether worn with jeans or a couture gown. And these glitterati have been around long enough to have some incredible tales to tell. Just the very names of the eras in which they were created ignite visions of romance and intrigue: Victorian, Edwardian, Art Deco, Belle Époque.
Probably nobody can tell you more about the fanciful embellishment worn in these historic periods than Simon Teakle, estate jewelry expert at Betteridge Jewelry with shops in Vail, Beaver Creek, Edwards, Palm Beach, and Greenwich, Connecticut. A few years ago, Betteridge, a firm founded in 1897, merged with Gotthelf’s My Jeweler, which has been a Vail Village fixture for more than a quarter of a century. Teakle came along as the estate jewelry buyer, bringing several decades of experience including a long career at Christie’s in London.
When he talks karats and platinum in his engagingly unstuffy British accent, dealers and collectors on both sides of the Atlantic listen. Teakle’s hunt for rare and exotic finds takes him all over the globe, where he’s wired into an exclusive network of contacts developed through time. One week he may be in England, and then he’s off to Buenos Aires to meet with a dealer, and on to California to see some pieces being offered by collector. “It’s not like you stick an ad in the paper expecting somebody will show up with her half-million dollar diamond,” he says. “It’s a business built on trust and friendships over 25 years.”
Discretion is also a desirable trait in the high-end antique jewelry trade. Teakle hesitates to talk much about just where the pieces he acquires come from. Often he or the dealer has been sworn to secrecy because of the hefty embarrassment potential for the prominent seller who finds himself in financial distress. It may be a high-profile tycoon whose widget factory has gone bust, or a minor or major royal selling the family jewels to put a new roof on the leaky ancestral chateau; in any case, these folks like to avoid guffaws from the society pages.
Betteridge sold one piece with a clear pedigree last year for over a million dollars: a fabulous emerald and diamond bracelet made by Cartier in 1928 for cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. She donated some of her collection to the Smithsonian, notably a diamond and turquoise necklace and tiara Napoleon I gave to his wife, and a pair of 20-karat diamond earrings that once belonged to Marie Antoinette. The several dozen dazzlers offered in the local Betteridge stores include a 22 karat, diamond encrusted bracelet with an eye-popping 24 karat yellow sapphire in the middle made in England circa 1860 with a $185,000 price tag; an exquisite lacy diamond and ruby cross from 1900 priced at $4,700; and a whimsical $4,800 bow tie pin crafted in alternating bands of diamonds and black onyx with a ruby center from the Art Deco era.
Currently, the collection’s jackpot piece has to be a heart-stopping cuff bracelet created by Louis Cartier from giant, pear-shaped diamonds he acquired in India around 1923. Chunky antique diamonds the size of a thumb are arranged in an art deco, lotus flower design known as “mogul style.” Teakle purchased the piece with the original Cartier records documenting 32.46 karats in a total of 309 diamonds. For a mere $650,000 it can be yours. He scored the sparkler from a Palm Beach dealer who acquired it from the anonymous owner. Especially with such a monumental piece, Teakle admits, “It kills you not to know its story.”
However, in vintage jewelry, the “provenance,” or history, is not as essential to the value as it is in the case of paintings or other collectibles. Some one-of-a-kind pieces, though, have exotic legends that are inextricably intertwined with their actual worth. One of these is the Agra Diamond, a magnificent 32.34-karat pink stone that Teakle says he sold in 1990 for $7.5 million when he was with Christie’s of London.
The gem weaves a gripping tale that began in 1526 when Babur, the first Mogul emperor, defeated the Rajah of Gwailor in a battle for the Indian city of Agra, which then became the emperor’s capital. The Rajah was slain, but Babur’s son spared his family and in gratitude (or as ransom) they gave him the pink diamond and other jewels. Babur wore the huge gem in his turban, as did several successors.
Eventually, the Agra Diamond traveled to Paris, and then to the hands of British diamond merchant Edwin Streeter, ultimately to be purchased at a Paris auction in the early 1900s by American Louis Winans. Winans lived in England and built a spectacular collection of colored diamonds, having inherited a fortune from his engineer father who constructed Russia’s first commercial railway from St. Petersburg to Moscow in the 1850s. In 1927 the collection passed to the Scottish side of the family. Afraid of a German invasion during World War II, they put the gems in a metal box and buried it under an apple tree in the garden; over 50 years later, the treasure arrived at Christie’s.
Always seeking to build the Betteridge estate jewelry collection, Teake says he will make a fair market offer on virtually anything a client brings in. “As one of the top antique jewelry dealers in the country, we want to have good examples of as many periods as we can,” he explains. Designs from the Art Deco period (1920-1935), the Edwardian era (1901-1910) and the Retro period (1940s) are especially popular now, according to Teakle: “The hunt is what makes it so endlessly exciting.”
Joy Overbeck is a regular contributor to Vail-Beaver Creek Magazine. Her work has appeared in Redbook, Health, Parents, Woman’s Day, TV Guide, Colorado Expression, 5280 Magazine, and more. She is also the author of three books.
