Sharjah24 – AFP: One of two tiaras belonging to Joséphine Bonaparte, the wife of Napoléon Bonaparte, are on display at Sotheby's auction house in central London ahead of bidding next week when the pair are expected to fetch at least £300,000.
Kristian Spofforth, Sotheby's jewellery expert said, "You have the tiara, the hair piece and the earrings. They are glyptics or intaglios of the finest quality that we believe to have been owned by Empress Josephine, made by a jeweller in about 1805. The style of them is very evocative of the neoclassical era"
The Sotheby's jewellery expert added, "You never know you might see some some socialite daughter coming up at her wedding sometime soon wearing one of these, but generally we would expect someone to put these in their private collection or hopefully donate them to a museum where they will be on display to the public again."
Commenting on this, Kristian Spofforth, pointed out, "So the estimate on this one is 2-300,000 pounds and on the cameo tiara is 100 to 200,000 pounds. It's incredibly difficult to know what they will go for in the end because they are such rare examples. In our research, we've tried to find similar examples that have come up either at auction, or even in private collections, and there just aren't any."
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