Jewellery, Watches and Objects of Vertu

From the Collection of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor: A 19th century gold mounted bloodstone desk seal, formerly the property of Prince Albert, the flared facetted bloodstone handle above a banded gold mount, the lobed base inset with a bloodstone matrix engraved with the arms of Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, encircled by the Garter and with coronet surmount, length 8.9cm. £5000-7000

Provenance:
From: The Collection of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, sold at auction at Sotheby’s New York, scheduled for 11th-19th September 1997, (auction took place in February 1998), Sale Number 7000, lot 1264, sold for $31,000 (inclusive).

With the death of the Duke of Windsor in 1972, the Duchess remained at their Parisian home, 4 route du Champ d’Entraînment, a Louis XVI-style villa on the fringes of the Bois de Boulogne, until her own death in 1986. The villa had been leased to the Windsors by the City of Paris in 1952 and the contents assembled by the Duke and Duchess, with the help of Stephane Boudin of Maison Jansen, the Parisian decorators. After the Duchess’ death, the villa was returned to the City of Paris, and the contents to the Pasteur Institute, the principal beneficiary of the Duchess’ estate. Later that year, Mohamed al-Fayed, the Egyptian-born financier, signed a fifty year lease on the villa and purchased the contents from the Pasteur Institute.

Over the next few years, Mr Fayed extensively restored and refurbished what he called the Villa Windsor and had the entire contents of the house, which had been neglected during the Duchess’ last years, researched and a permanent record of the collection made. In July 1997, Mr Fayed announced that an auction of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s possessions from the villa would take place in New York later that year.

Events took a tragic turn with the deaths of Al-Fayed’s son Dodi and Diana, Princess of Wales on 31st August 1997 and the Sotheby’s auction - scheduled to take place in Manhattan over a series of days between 11th-19th September, was postponed as a mark of respect, eventually selling the following February, with more than 40,000 items for sale, including the ‘abdication desk’ at which King Edward VIII signed his abdication in 1936, before becoming the Duke of Windsor. The proceeds of the auction went to the Dodi Fayed International Charitable Foundation and causes associated with the late Princess of Wales.