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Sotheby’s upcoming royal jewelry auction includes a number of prodigious and historical pieces, including several lots that come from the estate of a Swedish princess. Princess Birgitta, a member of the Swedish House of Bernadotte and an older sister of Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf, died in 2024. More than half a dozen listings in the Royal and Noble Jewels Sale, scheduled for November 11 in Geneva, list Birgitta as the most recent owner under the bauble’s provenance. Many of the items Birgitta inherited from her mother, Princess Sibylla of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.
Because the jewels were once linked to Sweden’s royal family, Margareta Thorgren, director of the information and press department for the Royal Court of Sweden, explained the line between private and state property. “Jewelry that can be sold at auction is private property,” she told Swedish magazine Svensk Damtidning. “Nothing that is state property or foundation property can be sold at auction.” Essentially, that means the pieces belonged to Birgitta personally, and were not part of the Swedish crown jewels.
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Princess Sibylla of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, wearing the sapphire necklace, in 1947.
The star lot is a sapphire and diamond necklace with matching earrings, with an estimated starting bid between 300,000 and 500,000 Swiss francs ($362,000 to $604,000). According to the listing, the sapphires themselves once belonged to Dagmar of Denmark, who became Empress Maria Feodorovna of Russia. Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria is the one who gave the necklace to Birgitta’s mother, Princess Sibylla, as a wedding present in 1932. After escaping Russia during the revolution and returning to Denmark in exile, Sotheby’s surmises that “presumably the Bulgarian Tsar purchased these sapphires from her during that time.”
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With Queen Silvia (left), Princess Birgitta (right) is seen in the parure in 1977.
Princess Birgitta later inherited the necklace and wore it to the weddings of her nieces, Crown Princess Victoria in 2010 and Princess Madeleine in 2013. Sotheby’s notes, “Princess Sibylla prominently wore her sapphire and diamond necklace for decades. The necklace can be seen on countless photos of Princess Sibylla, often worn together with one of the numerous historical tiaras that make up the Swedish Royal collection…At some stage two pendants from the front of the necklace were removed to make up the present pair of earrings, the fitted case was adapted to reflect this modification. Additionally the imprint in the fitted case shows that the necklace was lengthened as well.”
At Crown Princess Victoria’s wedding in 2010.
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At Princess Madeleine’s wedding in 2013.
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Other lots from Princess Birgitta’s collection include a padparadscha sapphire brooch, an extremely rare orange-pink sapphire weighing 23.64 carats, set in diamonds and estimated at 40,000 to 60,000 Swiss francs (about $50,000 to $75,000). There are also an emerald and diamond ring with a 7.58-carat Colombian emerald, estimated at 12,000 to 18,000 Swiss francs (about $15,000 to $22,500), and a Belle Epoque seed pearl and diamond necklace estimated at 2,000 to 3,000 Swiss francs (about $2,500 to $3,750). The necklace was first given by King Gustaf V and Queen Victoria of Sweden as a gift to their daughter-in-law Princess Margaret of Connaught in 1912 upon the birth of her fourth son, Prince Bertil. He later gave it to his niece Princess Birgitta as a christening present.
The upcoming auction also features a number of other royal treasures, including the Mellerio Orléans Tiara, a diamond tiara made in Paris in 1862 that vanished for nearly 70 years. Also wearable as a necklace, the diadem was a wedding gift in 1864 to Marie Isabelle d’Orléans, the wife of the Count of Paris, a claimant to the French throne. It disappeared from view after the death of its last known owner’s widow in 1957. It is estimated at 780,000 to 1,100,000 Swiss francs, or about $946,000 to $1.33 million.
Rachel King (she/her) is a news writer at Town & Country. Before joining T&C, she spent nearly a decade as an editor at Fortune. Her work covering travel and lifestyle has appeared in Forbes, Observer, Robb Report, Cruise Critic, and Cool Hunting, among others. Originally from San Francisco, she lives in New York with her wife, their daughter, and a precocious labradoodle. Follow her on Instagram at @rk.passport.