The Attallah cross

Kardashian’s eye-catching cross, with its square-cut amethysts offset by 5.2-carat diamonds, was created in the 1920s by London jeweller Garrard. The company was a firm favourite of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, and the firm most notably designed her engagement ring. Yet the bejewelled pendant never actually belonged to Diana: it was lent to her on several occasions by its namesake Naim Attallah, Diana’s close friend and joint managing director of Asprey & Garrard at the time, who, according to his son, only ever allowed the princess to wear it. In Molesworth’s view, Kardashian is a fitting owner for the piece: “She’s a self-made woman, buying for herself: a great signal for class and gender equality in the commercial collecting world”.

Bold and brilliant, the crucifix represents a shift in Diana’s increasingly empowered style during the 1980s. As Kristian Spofforth, head of jewellery at Sotheby’s London, pointed out before the sale: “To some extent, this unusual pendant is symbolic of the princess’s growing self-assurance in her sartorial and jewellery choices, at that particular moment in her life”. Case in point: the time she wore the giant cross to the Birthright charity ball in October 1987, pairing it with what is thought to be her own pearl necklace and a dramatic, Elizabethan-style dress in a complementary purple.

The “cursed” black Orlov diamond

Black crystalline diamonds are remarkable in themselves, which is why the Black Orlov Diamond, a cushion-shaped, 67.49-carat stone with a distinct gun-metal hue and a bone-chilling accompanying legend, is perhaps the rarest of its kind. As the story goes, the original, rough 195-carat diamond was stolen from an idol of the Hindu god Brahma, located in a 19th-Century shrine in India. Cursed thereafter, the diamond is said to have caused the death of its thief, and the suicides of three of its owners: a Russian princess named Nadia Vygin-Orlov, one of her relatives, and JW Paris, the diamond dealer who imported it to the United States.

Recent scholarship has cast doubt on this early history, however, with experts deeming it unlikely that the diamond originated in India at all, and doubting the existence of Nadia Vygin-Orlov. What is known, though, is that the diamond was eventually re-cut to form three individual gems with hopes of breaking the curse, and that subsequent possessors of the Black Orlov – now mounted as a pendant with a diamond laurel wreath surround – appear to have escaped unscathed.

La Peregrina pearl

A breathtaking pear-shaped pearl found off the coast of Panama in 1576, La Peregrina boasts a backstory as significant as its form. “It’s simply one of – if not the most – perfect pearls in the world, and carries great history as well as romance,” explains the V&A’s Helen Molesworth. Weighing 202.24 grains (50.56 carats), the pearl was initially bought by Philip II of Spain for his bride Queen Mary I of England, and was passed down among Spanish royalty before falling into the hands of Napoleon’s older brother, Joseph-Napoléon Bonaparte.

Much later, in 1969, it was bought by Richard Burton for Elizabeth Taylor and remounted on a necklace designed by Cartier. “It’s a great love story, but also a fun one,” Molesworth says of this chapter in the pearl’s provenance. “Taylor recounted in her autobiography how once, while sitting on the sofa with Burton, she realised the pearl had come loose from its chain. She looked down to catch her puppy chewing something on the carpet – the pearl was between his teeth. Fortunately, she managed to recover it relatively unscathed.” La Peregrina was sold by Christie’s New York in 2011 for $11,842,500, rendering it the most expensive natural pearl ever auctioned at the time.

The “cursed” Hope diamond

Another spellbinding diamond with a sinister past, the “cursed” Hope diamond is the jewel in the crown of the Smithsonian Museum’s National Gem Collection. “It’s a very rare deep-blue diamond, named after one of its owners,” Arabella Hiscox, jewellery specialist at Christie’s London, tells BBC Culture of the 45.52-carat gem – the biggest known diamond of its kind. “When exposed to ultraviolet light, it glows blood red, which only adds to its mystery.”

Recounting the fabled origins of the Hope in his 1996 book, The Unexplained, Karl Shuker writes of it being “impiously plucked [from] the brow of an Indian temple idol” by a Hindu priest, who was then said to have sparked the curse and suffered accordingly. In 1668, the diamond was bought by Louis XIV of France, only to be stolen during the French Revolution amid whisperings that Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette had fallen victim to its curse. Pierre Cartier was responsible for setting the Hope in the striking white-diamond necklace it now embellishes, which he sold to the ill-fated mining heiress Evalyn Walsh McLean in 1912. “Two of McLean’s children are said to have died whilst she was wearing it,” explains Hiscox. In 1958, the Hope’s then-owner, the jeweller Harry Winston, donated it to the Smithsonian in what Hiscox deems “a very clever tax write-off” – and, now encased, its curse appears to have been dispelled.

Wallis Simpson’s Cartier Panther bracelet

The renowned love affair between Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII, who abdicated the British throne in 1936 to be with the US socialite, can in many ways be traced through the awe-inspiring collection of bespoke Cartier jewellery that the duo commissioned for one another throughout their lives – much of which was sold by Sotheby’s in a 2010 sale.

The star of the auction was Simpson’s 1952 onyx-and-diamond-embellished panther bracelet, replete with searing emerald eyes, a gift from Edward during the couple’s exile in Paris. “This piece has almost every quality that renders a piece of jewellery iconic,” Magali Teisseire, head of jewellery at Sotheby’s Paris, tells BBC Culture. “It’s very important within the history of Cartier. It was designed by [the pioneering female jewellery designer] Jeanne Toussaint, nicknamed ‘La Panthère’ by Louis Cartier, who conceived their original panther designs. So you have the quality, the storied design, and of course the romantic provenance.” Madonna, who was making the Simpson biopic WE at the time, is said to have tried on the bracelet ahead of the auction, but the buyer, who paid a staggering £4.5million for the feline finery, was ultimately never disclosed.

The Koh-i-Noor diamond

One of the largest cut diamonds in the world, the 105.6-carat Koh-i-Noor diamond is also one of the most controversial among the British Crown Jewels. Originally believed to have been mined in medieval South India, the diamond’s written provenance only dates back as far as 1628, when it adorned the gem-encrusted throne of the Mughal ruler Shah Jahan. In 1739, the throne was plundered by the Persian ruler Nader Shan during his invasion of Delhi, and the diamond carried off to what is now Afghanistan. According to Smithsonian Magazine, the stone then “passed between the hands of various rulers in one blood-soaked episode after another,” before emerging in India once again, landing in the lap of Sikh ruler Ranjit Singh in 1813.

Britain’s East India Company, by then in the midst of colonising much of the Asian subcontinent, caught wind of the diamond around this time and, enchanted by its mythological status, determined to claim it. They did so in 1849, forcing the 10-year-old heir to the Punjabi throne to relinquish both diamond and sovereignty, and presenting the Koh-i-Noor to Queen Victoria. The stone appeared in the Great Exhibition of 1851, where it was mocked for its lack of brilliance, and was subsequently re-cut and polished, amid rumours that it bore a curse. The Koh-i-Noor currently bedecks the crown of the late Queen Mother, but the governments of India, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan have all demanded the return of this singular symbol of colonial conquest.

Marie Antoinette’s pinky ring

“In terms of people you want to have owned your jewellery, Marie Antoinette is high on the list,” says Christie’s Arabella Hiscox. And the proof is in the pudding, or the cake if you will: a 10-piece array of jewels once belonging to the French queen, and later purchased by the Bourbon-Parma family, sold for millions at a record-breaking Sotheby’s auction in 2018.

A beautiful natural pearl pendant was the highest-selling piece from the storied collection, which had been hand-wrapped and placed in a wooden chest by Marie Antoinette and sent to Brussels shortly before her capture. But it is a tiny monogrammed pinky ring that Sotheby’s Magali Teisseire deems the most special. “It features the letters MA in diamonds, and inside is a lock of Marie Antoinette’s hair. It’s an incredibly intimate piece and a ring she wore very often,” she says. “I remember asking the specialist who had valued the pieces how much such rare provenance could garner. The answer is: a lot. The estimate was 8–10,000 Swiss Francs, and we sold it for 50 times that.”

The “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” diamond

Bought by Tiffany & Co founder Charles Lewis Tiffany in the 1870s, and made famous by Audrey Hepburn in the publicity photos for the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany’s, this unique yellow diamond, whilst both visually spectacular and culturally beloved, has a problematic past. The 128.54-carat gem has only been worn by four women to date: the socialite Mary Whitehouse, Hepburn (who sported it set in a Ribbon Rosette necklace by Tiffany jeweller Jean Schlumberger), and Lady Gaga and Beyoncé (who each wore it in an updated context: a 2012 necklace, bearing 100 carats’ worth of white diamonds). But the dazzling diamond’s air of exclusivity has brought with it scrutiny into the stone’s far murkier origins.

The diamond was unearthed in 1877 in South Africa’s Kimberley mine, where black labourers were notoriously forced to endure dreadful work conditions and pitiful wages under British colonial rule. In a 2021 column for the Washington Post, writer Karen Attiah argues that that while the term “blood diamond” usually refers to “resources used by dangerous militias and warlords to finance their operations”, the label should be extended to include diamonds such as this one, in acknowledgement of the “thousands of African lives that were lost and communities destroyed in the colonial quest to control the continent’s resources”.

Queen Victoria’s sapphire and diamond coronet

One of the most symbolic treasures among the V&A’s illustrious jewellery collection is what Helen Molesworth describes as a “beautiful but bijou sapphire and diamond coronet”, designed for Queen Victoria by Prince Albert in 1840, the year they were married. It was made by Joseph Kitching of Kitching and Abud jewellers in London, and remained one of Victoria’s most prized possessions throughout her life. “She famously wore the tiara as a closed circlet around her bun as a young woman, and again, in mourning, on her widow’s cap: clearly a way for her to keep her beloved Albert close,” Molesworth explains.

Sapphires are a particularly emblematic gem for the Royal Family, Molesworth notes, something that began with Albert’s designs for Victoria, and extended to Diana’s engagement ring. “They symbolise the blue of royalty, as well as faith and trust, so are ideal for marriage.” Ultimately, the deeply significant piece does what, according to Molesworth, the very best of jewels do: “contain both a public signal and personal meaning.”

The Napoleon diamond necklace

The historic Napoleon diamond necklace was gifted in 1811 by the French emperor to his second wife, Marie-Louise, upon the birth of their son, Napoleon II, the Emperor of Rome. The stunning silver and gold design was conceived by Etienne Nitôt and Sons of Paris and, according to the Smithsonian, originally featured 234 diamonds: 28 old mine-cut diamonds, nine pendeloques and 10 briolettes, enhanced by multiple smaller gems. “All of the stones were mined in India or Brazil, where the best diamonds came from at this point,” says Hiscox of the necklace’s mesmeric appeal. “They have this extraordinary limpid, water-like quality.”

Upon Napoleon’s downfall, his Hapsburg wife and her many jewels returned to her native Vienna, and following her death, the necklace passed to her sister-in-law Sophie of Austria. The archduchess resolved to shorten it by removing two stones and turning them into earrings, the whereabouts of which are currently unknown. The necklace, meanwhile, remained in the family until 1948, when it was sold first to a French collector, and eventually to the US businesswoman Marjorie Merriweather Post, who gave it to the Smithsonian in 1962. There, it continues to be revered, says Hiscox, as “one of the most spectacular pieces of [its] period”.