Doris Duke’s jewels
sold for $12M
Diamonds, pearls and emerald jewelry owned by tobacco heiress and philanthropist Doris Duke, who died in 1993, produced $12 million at Christie's International Plc in New York, doubling the auctioneer's high estimate.
It was the first major auction of Duke's possessions in a series of sales that will be held at Christie's this week. Along with her jewelry, which was expected to bring $4 million to $6 million, Christie's will sell furniture, antique porcelain and wine. The estimate for the combined sales, made before tonight's results, was $15 million to $20 million.
Buyers paid as much as ten times the estimated prices for the pieces, which included a belle epoque diamond and pearl pendant necklace by Cartier that sold for $2.36 million. Overall, the prices were 30 to 50 percent higher than the pieces would be expected to fetch in a retail setting, said Moty Spector, executive chairman of the Vivid Collection, a retail jeweler.
"The prices are going completely berserk," he said during the sale. "She bought all the brand names and she also had an eye, you can't take that away. The prices for the emeralds were outrageous -- way out of this world."
The Christie's sales benefit the Doris Duke Charitable foundation, which was established in 1996 based on provisions in Duke's will, to support the performing arts, wildlife conservation, medical research and the prevention of child maltreatment.
Her furniture, on sale today through Saturday, is expected to sell for $4.2 million to $6.5 million. Christie's expects her wine, to be sold on tomorrow evening, to bring $850,000 to $1.2 million.
Duke, who at one time was the wealthiest woman in the world, died of a heart attack caused by progressive pulmonary edema at her Beverly Hills home. She was 80. At the time, she was worth about $1.5 billion, said Olga Garay, program director for the arts of the foundation. Since 1997, the foundation has given out $343 million worth of grants.
Duke was the only daughter of James Buchanan Duke and his second wife, Nanaline Holt Inman. Duke founded the American Tobacco Company and the Duke Power Company with his father and brother, and he endowed Trinity College, which then changed its name to Duke University. He died when Doris was 12.
In addition to the California house, she had four other homes -- an apartment on Park Avenue in Manhattan, a "summer cottage" in Newport, Rhode Island, known as Rough Point, and another house in Hawaii, nicknamed Shangri-La. The Hawaii residence is now open to the public for tours.
Her primary residence was Duke Farms, an estate of more than 2,700 acres in Hillsborough, N.J. It's now the largest privately held open space in the state of New Jersey, according to Garay.
It took more than a decade for the foundation to sell Duke's possessions, Garay said, because the nonprofit group had been busy tending to other provisions of the will. First, the organization had to turn three of Duke's five homes into museums, and hire 150 people to run and maintain those properties, and to manage the charitable giving.
"Just creating the foundation took up all of the energies here for the first few years, and next we tackled the estates," Garay said.