Colorful History of $30m Blue

So who will be the next owner of the remarkable 9.51-carat Mellon Blue diamond?

It was part of a vast collection of art and jewelry that belonged to the American heiress and philanthropist Rachel Lambert (Bunny) Mellon.

In 2014, shortly after her death at the age of 103, it was sold at auction to Hong Kong billionaire property developer Joseph Lau.

He paid $32.6m - at the time a record price for a blue diamond - and named it the Zoe Diamond, after his 13-year-old daughter. He also had it recut from 9.75-cts to 9.51-cts to increase the clarity from VVS1 to IF.

And now it's to be offered for sale again, at Christie's Geneva in November.

This time it's not expected to break any records. The auction house's estimate is $20m to $30m, which is less than Lau paid 11 years ago.

And the record it set back then has since been eclipsed by the Oppenheimer Blue (14.62 carats, VVS1) which sold for $57,541,779 in May 2016 and the Cullinan Blue (15.10 carats, IF), sold in April 2022 for $57,471,960.

The Mellon Blue/Zoe Diamond is, nonetheless, one of the world's most remarkable stones. There's an air of mystery to the diamond. It's unclear where the diamond was recovered, or exactly when it became part of Bunny Mellon's legendary jewelry collection.

She had the good fortune to be born rich and to marry rich (twice). Her grandfather Jordan Wheat Lambert invented Listerine mouthwash and founded the Warner-Lambert Pharmaceutical Company.

Her father Gerard Barnes Lambert took over as president of the company. He founded the advertising agency Lambert & Feasley, which played a major role in aggressively marketing Listerine, and he revived the fortunes of the Gillette Safety Razor Company with the popular Blue Blade.

In 1932 Bunny married Stacy Barcroft Lloyd Jr, a businessman, horse breeder, dairy cattle farmer, yachtsman, and son of a prominent banker.

They divorced in 1948 and later the same year she married Paul Mellon, philanthropist, art collector, thoroughbred racehorse breeder, and son of the legendary banker and U.S. Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon.

Bunny was a renowned horticulturalist and gardener - best known for redesigning the White House Rose Garden, at the request of Jacqueline Kennedy in 1961. philanthropist, and art collector.

She lived a private life, but became caught up in a political scandal during the during the 2008 US presidential race. She donated money to John Edwards, a Democrat senator, some of which (unbeknown to her) was allegedly use to conceal his mistress and child.

Bunny also lost an estimated $5.57m to financial adviser Kenneth I. Starr, who was jailed for defrauding wealthy clients in a $59m Ponzi scheme.

The Mellon Blue was highlight of a sale at Sotheby's New York, shortly after her death, called Property from the Collection of Mrs. Paul Mellon: Jewels & Objects of Vertu.

The high estimate was $15m. It sold for $32.6m, setting a new world auction record for any blue diamond; and at $3,348,205 per carat, a world auction record for price-per-carat for any diamond.

The buyer was Joseph Lau, who started life at the family business manufacturing electric fans and became founder and former chairman of Chinese Estates Holdings, a major property development company in Hong Kong.

He already had a history of buying record-breaking diamonds for his daughters. He paid $9.5m for a 7.03-carat blue diamond in 2009, which he named the Star of Josephine after his one-year-old daughter.

He bought her the 12.03-carat Fancy Vivid Blue known as the Blue Moon for $48.4m in 2015 and renamed it Blue Moon of Josephine.

A day before buying the Blue Moon, he also bought a 16.08-carat pink diamond for $28.5m, renaming it Sweet Josephine.

Lau renamed the Mellon Blue after another daughter Zoe, and also bought her a a 10.1-carat Burmese ruby and diamond brooch which he called the Zoe Red.

In 2014 Lau was convicted of corruption in a land deal in Macau and sentenced to five years in jail, but with the absence of an extradition deal, he remains at liberty in Hong Kong.

Despite his vast wealth ($13.6bn according to Forbes), Lau has been selling assets of late, including art, wine (earlier this year he sold a collection at Christie's Hong Kong for $9.3m), property, and Chinese imperial porcelain, mainly to offset significant financial losses in the stock market.

The Mellon Blue is offered for sales at the Magnificent Jewels auction in Geneva on 11 November.

Have a fabulous weekend.