Harry Winston Diamond Cluster Wreath Necklace

A wreath on the door

The story Harry Winston's firm tells about its best-known design starts with a Christmas decoration. On a snowy December night in 1944, returning to his estate in Scarsdale, New York, Winston stopped to look at the holly wreath on his door. The leaves made the whole shape, and the branches and wire holding them together barely showed beneath them.

He took the idea back to his workshop and asked his jewelers to apply it to settings and mountings. The result was a way of arranging diamonds of different cuts at different angles, packed so tightly that the platinum mount almost disappears when the piece is worn. A jewelry specialist who has handled this necklace described the effect this way: you do not see the structure holding the stones, and the necklace reads as a fluid band of diamonds.

Accounts differ slightly on the details. A 2017 auction note and a 2023 magazine piece both place the moment in December 1944 at Scarsdale; a 2017 interview with the same auction specialist puts it more loosely, in the 1940s at his New York home. The 2023 piece credits the design work to Winston together with his head designer, Nevdon Koumrouyan. The house now sells the design as the Winston Cluster.

The King of Diamonds

Harry Winston was born Harry Weinstein on March 1, 1896, the son of Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire; his father ran a small jewelry business. By one well-known account, at 12 he spotted a two-carat emerald in a pawn shop, bought it for 25 cents and sold it two days later for $800. He started his own business in 1920, the year he changed his name, and opened his first New York store in 1932.

His break came in 1926, when he bought the jewelry collection of Arabella Huntington, widow of the railroad magnate Henry E. Huntington, and reworked its old-fashioned settings into modern designs. Over the following decades his firm handled some of the most famous diamonds in the world, including the Hope Diamond, the Jonker, the Porter Rhodes and the Indore Pears. He gave the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian Institution in 1958, after owning it for a decade.

From the 1950s through the 1970s he was the most prominent jeweler in the world and was widely called the King of Diamonds. He was also a Hollywood fixture: in 1944, the same year as the wreath, he began lending jewels to actresses for the Academy Awards, starting with Jennifer Jones. The 1953 film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes name-checks him in Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend. Winston died on December 8, 1978. The Swatch Group bought Harry Winston, Inc., in 2013 for $1 billion.

The 1961 necklace

This example was made in 1961. It is a tapered band of pear- and marquise-cut diamond cluster links, each centered on a circular-cut diamond, mounted in platinum, 16¼ inches long. It carries the maker's mark for Harry Winston and can be separated and worn as two bracelets. The necklace is illustrated in L. S. Krashes's 1984 book Harry Winston: The Ultimate Jeweler, on page 193.

Before the 2017 sale, ten of its diamonds were graded by the Gemological Institute of America in reports dated August 24 and 25, 2017. Seven round brilliants of about 5.31, 4.92, 3.91, 3.89, 3.75, 3.71 and 2.85 carats came back as D, G, F and I color, with clarity from VVS2, potentially internally flawless, down to SI2. Three pear-shaped diamonds were graded D, G and E color and VS1, SI1 and SI2 clarity.

The catalog first printed the three pear weights as 3.75, 3.71 and 2.85 carats, the same figures as three of the round stones. A saleroom notice corrected them to 3.52, 2.69 and 2.60 carats. The total diamond weight of the necklace was not published, and neither was the source of the stones.

In this design the stones themselves form the outline, and the platinum setting is almost entirely hidden when the necklace is worn. The specialist who handled it said that when you hold it, it moves like a piece of fabric, because of its flexibility and the way the stones are mounted.

Three owners, three sales

The first recorded owner was Caroline Ryan Foulke, granddaughter of the financier Thomas Fortune Ryan. Ryan made his fortune largely by consolidating the New York railway system and was, by the auction note's account, the largest individual owner of diamond fields in the Congo. That stake, and the family's relationship with Winston, are credited with sparking his granddaughter's interest in fine jewels.

Her diamond jewelry was sold at auction in New York on October 22, 1986. The wreath necklace was the final lot, number 406, and sold for $902,000. It was bought by Joanne Toor Cummings, an arts patron and philanthropist who supported Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York Hospital, Memorial Sloan Kettering, American Ballet Theatre and the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

After her death, her collection was sold at auction in New York on April 16, 1996, with proceeds going to hospitals, colleges, arts institutions and theaters. The necklace was again the last lot sold from her collection, lot 360. The price it brought in 1996 is not stated in the sources reviewed for this page.

It returned a third time on December 6, 2017, as lot 369 in a New York jewelry sale, consigned as the property of a private owner. The estimate was $1.5 million to $2.5 million, bidders needed a special high-value paddle, and it sold for $1,812,500. The specialist who handled the sale had also been present for the 1996 sale and said seeing the same necklace twice in 21 years was special.

From a 1940s idea to a modern icon

The wreath setting went on to appear on pendants, rings and bracelets, but the full necklace remains its most recognizable form. It reached a mass audience in the 2002 film Maid in Manhattan, when Jennifer Lopez's character wore a large Cluster necklace with matching earrings.

By December 2023 Harry Winston had introduced its largest version yet, the XLarge Winston Cluster Wreath necklace: 114 pear, round brilliant and marquise diamonds totaling 122 carats in platinum, offered at more than $7 million. The 1961 necklace sold in 2017 is a smaller, older example of the same idea, with a documented chain of owners going back to 1986.

The numbers

Carat weight

Largest stones about 5.31, 4.92 and 3.91 carats; total weight not published

Color and clarity

Seven graded round diamonds D, G, F and I color, VVS2 (potentially internally flawless) to SI2; three graded pears D, G and E color, VS1, SI1 and SI2

Origin mine

Not disclosed in published sources

Cutter

Not disclosed; made by Harry Winston, Inc.

Metal

Platinum

Length

16¼ inches; converts to two bracelets

Timeline

1. Mar 1, 1896

   Harry Weinstein, later Harry Winston, is born.

2. 1920

   Winston starts his own business and changes his name.

3. 1926

   Winston buys Arabella Huntington's jewelry collection.

4. 1932

   Winston opens his first store in New York City.

5. Dec 1944

   The holly wreath on his Scarsdale door gives Winston the idea for the cluster setting.

6. 1958

   Winston donates the Hope Diamond to the Smithsonian Institution.

7. 1961

   This diamond cluster wreath necklace is made.

8. Dec 8, 1978

   Harry Winston dies.

9. 1984

   The necklace is illustrated in L. S. Krashes's Harry Winston: The Ultimate Jeweler.

10. Oct 22, 1986

    Sold at auction in New York from the Caroline Ryan Foulke collection, lot 406, for $902,000.

11. Apr 16, 1996

    Sold at auction in New York from the estate of Joanne Toor Cummings, lot 360.

12. 2002

    Jennifer Lopez wears a Cluster necklace in Maid in Manhattan.

13. Mar 26, 2013

    The Swatch Group buys Harry Winston, Inc., for $1 billion.

14. Aug 24, 2017

    Gemological reports are issued on ten of the necklace's diamonds.

15. Dec 6, 2017

    Sold at auction in New York, lot 369, for $1,812,500.

16. Dec 2023

    Harry Winston introduces the 122-carat XLarge Winston Cluster Wreath necklace.

The world in 1961

• Jan 20, 1961

  John F. Kennedy is inaugurated as the 35th president of the United States.

• Mar 1, 1961

  Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps.

• Apr 20, 1961

  Fidel Castro announces the defeat of the Bay of Pigs invasion.

• May 25, 1961

  Kennedy asks Congress to commit to landing a man on the Moon before the decade is out.

• Aug 13, 1961

  Construction of the Berlin Wall begins.

• Sep 18, 1961

  UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld dies in a plane crash en route to Katanga, Congo.

• Nov 18, 1961

  Kennedy sends 18,000 military advisers to South Vietnam.

Price record

A realized auction price is what a buyer actually paid on the date shown, including the buyer's premium where the sale reported it. It is the strongest kind of reference price, and it is a record of one sale of one object on one day, not a promise of what the next example will bring.

By reference price, Harry Winston Diamond Cluster Wreath Necklace is number 28 of 100 in the jewelry entries of the FLOAT 100. 44 of those 100 rest on a realized sale; the rest carry an asking price or a guide value, and each page says which. Rank within the FLOAT 100 itself (30 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• The same specialist was present when this necklace came to auction in 1996 and again in 2017.
• The necklace was the last lot sold in both the 1986 and the 1996 collection sales.
• Its first recorded owner was the granddaughter of Thomas Fortune Ryan, who held a large stake in Congo diamond fields.
• The 2017 catalog printed the wrong weights for the three pear diamonds, and a saleroom notice corrected them.
• Winston began lending jewels to Academy Awards nominees in 1944, the same year he conceived the wreath setting.
• At 12, Harry Winston reportedly bought a two-carat emerald for 25 cents and sold it two days later for $800.