A 37-carat square emerald, once owned by the Aga Khan, fetched nearly nine million dollars at a Geneva auction on Tuesday, becoming the most expensive green gemstone in the world.
The Cartier diamond and emerald brooch, which was sold by Christie's and can also be worn as a pendant, has now overtaken a Bulgari piece—given by Richard Burton to Elizabeth Taylor as a wedding gift—to become the most valuable emerald, reports AFP.
In 1960, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan commissioned Cartier to set the emerald in a brooch with 20 marquise-cut diamonds for British socialite Nina Dyer, to whom he was briefly married.
In 1969, Dyer sold the emerald at auction to raise funds for animal charities.
By chance that was at Christie's very first such sale in Switzerland on the shores of Lake Geneva, with the emerald finding its way back to the 110th edition this year.
It was bought by jeweller Van Cleef & Arpels before passing a few years later into the hands of the United States' Harry Winston, nicknamed the "King of Diamonds".
"Emeralds are hot right now, and this one ticks all the boxes," said Christie's EMEA Head of Jewellery Max Fawcett.
"We might see an emerald of this quality come up for sale once every five or six years."
The previous record-holder, also set with diamonds, sold for $6.5 million at an auction of Hollywood icon Elizabeth Taylor's famous jewelry collection in New York.
Bd-pratidin English/ Afia
