Van Cleef & Arpels Mystery-Set Ruby & Diamond Necklace

A setting with no visible metal

Van Cleef & Arpels patented what it calls the Mystery Set in 1933. The idea was to set precious stones so that they cover a surface completely, with no claws, prongs or collets showing between them. The house describes the secret as a network of gold rails: each stone is cut expressly for its place and slid individually onto the rails, most often rubies, but also sapphires, emeralds and diamonds. Once in place, the stones form an unbroken surface that the house describes as having a velvety sheen.

To make that work, the stones are not only cut to exact size but grooved along their sides so they can slide onto the hidden tracks. The house says cutting a single stone can take up to eight hours, and that one clip requires an average of 300 hours from the jeweler and the Mystery Set lapidary. Only a few artisans master the technique.

The first pieces were introduced in Paris in 1933, and the firm patented the method in France, the United States and a number of other countries. Through the 1930s further patents extended it to other shapes and more complex volumes, and the first Mystery Set pieces were shown to the general public at the 1937 International Exhibition of Art and Technology in Modern Life in Paris. Early examples were flat or only slightly curved; later refinements allowed undulating, sculpted surfaces.

The house on the Place Vendôme

Van Cleef & Arpels grew out of a family partnership between Alfred Van Cleef, a Dutch diamond cutter, and his father-in-law, Salomon Arpels. Published histories differ on the founding year, giving either 1895 or 1896. Both agree that the first boutique opened in 1906 at 22 Place Vendôme in Paris, across from the Hôtel Ritz, with Alfred joined by his brothers-in-law Charles and Julien Arpels. A third brother, Louis, joined in 1913.

The firm won the grand prize at the 1925 International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts with a bracelet of ruby and diamond roses. Alfred's daughter, Renée Puissant, took over artistic direction in 1926 and worked with the draftsman René Sim Lacaze for the next 20 years, the period in which the Mystery Set was born. In 1940 the house opened its flagship at 744 Fifth Avenue in New York, where it remains.

In 1999, four years after this necklace was made, the Swiss luxury group Richemont acquired the firm. The house still uses the technique: in 2022 it built an entire high jewelry collection, Legend of Diamonds, around 25 Mystery Set jewels.

The 1995 necklace

This necklace was made in 1995. It is built as a series of graduated scroll motifs, each scroll inlaid with calibré-cut rubies in the Mystery Set, laid over a ground of pavé-set diamonds. The diamonds are estimated to weigh between 60.00 and 70.00 carats in total and are described as F-G color and VVS-VS clarity. The rubies are described as medium red with strong saturation and only slight inclusions.

It is signed Van Cleef & Arpels and numbered M37944, and it carries French assay and workshop marks. Its internal circumference is 15½ inches.

Those marks are what identify the piece. A Mystery Set surface is meant to look seamless, so the signature, the serial number and the hallmarks, along with the scroll pattern and the ruby-on-diamond color scheme, are how this example is told apart from other Mystery Set necklaces. The published descriptions do not name the source of the rubies or the lapidary who cut them.

Into the Wolf collection

The necklace was acquired from a dealer on March 1, 2006, and entered the collection of Erving and Joy Wolf as number 9327. Erving Wolf, born in Kimball, Nebraska, in 1926 and raised in Cheyenne, Wyoming, served as a Navy officer on Guam during World War II and practiced law in Cheyenne before turning to oil and gas. In 1951, the year he married Joyce Mandel, he founded the Wolf Land Company, later the Inexco Oil Company, which discovered Wyoming's Hilight oil field and Madden gas field.

The Wolfs assembled a collection spanning 18th- and 19th-century American paintings, drawings, sculpture and furniture, as well as Chinese porcelains. In 1980 they endowed the Erving and Joyce Wolf Gallery for special exhibitions of American art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Erving Wolf died at his home in Palm Beach on February 6, 2018.

Jewelry was collected the same way. Published accounts of the collection describe a preference for signed pieces from important houses and for mid-20th-century designs, and say that size alone did not interest the couple: the stones had to be beautiful and the proportions right. The centerpiece of the jewelry was a group of nine Van Cleef & Arpels Mystery Set jewels from different periods, in sapphires and rubies, described before the sale as one of the largest offerings of the house's Mystery Set work ever to come to auction.

April 2023

The Wolf collection was dispersed in a series of live and online sales in New York beginning April 19, 2023, announced in January with an expected total of about $50 million. The couple's son and only heir, Mathew Wolf, told an interviewer that it was time for somebody else to get the same enjoyment from the pieces that he had.

The jewelry sale took place on April 20, 2023. The Mystery Set ruby necklace was offered as lot 200 with an estimate of $300,000 to $500,000 and sold for $673,100. Contemporary coverage reported that the jewelry sale sold out, every lot finding a buyer, for a total of $8 million.

A later survey of the most expensive Van Cleef & Arpels necklaces sold at auction ranked this one fourth by price. The three ahead of it were a diamond tie necklace, an emerald pendant necklace and a diamond necklace and brooch.

The numbers

Carat weight

Diamonds estimated at 60.00 to 70.00 carats; ruby weight not published

Color and clarity

Diamonds F-G color, VVS-VS clarity; rubies medium red, strong saturation, slightly included

Origin mine

Not disclosed in published sources

Cutter

Not disclosed; Mystery Set stones are cut individually by the house's specialist lapidaries

Setting

Mystery Set calibré-cut rubies on a pavé-set diamond ground

Serial number

M37944

Timeline

1. 1906

   Van Cleef & Arpels opens its first boutique at 22 Place Vendôme, Paris.

2. 1925

   A ruby and diamond rose bracelet wins the grand prize at the Paris decorative arts exposition.

3. 1933

   Van Cleef & Arpels introduces and patents the Mystery Set.

4. 1937

   Mystery Set pieces are shown to the public for the first time at the Paris International Exhibition.

5. 1940

   The house opens its New York flagship at 744 Fifth Avenue.

6. 1951

   Erving Wolf marries Joyce Mandel and founds the Wolf Land Company.

7. 1980

   The Wolfs endow the Erving and Joyce Wolf Gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

8. 1995

   Van Cleef & Arpels makes this ruby and diamond scroll necklace, numbered M37944.

9. 1999

   Richemont acquires Van Cleef & Arpels.

10. Mar 1, 2006

    The necklace enters the Wolf Family Collection as number 9327.

11. Feb 6, 2018

    Erving Wolf dies at his home in Palm Beach.

12. Jan 2023

    The Wolf Family Collection sale is announced, with an expected total near $50 million.

13. Apr 20, 2023

    Offered as lot 200 at auction in New York, the necklace sells for $673,100.

The world in 1995

• Mar 26, 1995

  The Schengen Agreement, easing border crossings, takes effect in several European countries.

• Apr 19, 1995

  The Oklahoma City bombing kills 168 people at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

• Jun 24, 1995

  South Africa wins the Rugby World Cup on home soil, its first tournament after the end of apartheid.

• Oct 3, 1995

  O. J. Simpson is found not guilty in his criminal murder trial.

• Nov 4, 1995

  Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated at a peace rally in Tel Aviv.

• Dec 14, 1995

  The Dayton Agreement is signed in Paris, ending the Bosnian War.

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, Van Cleef & Arpels Mystery-Set Ruby & Diamond Necklace is number 35 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 (29 here) is editorial: how much an object defines its field, not price alone.

Did you know

• Each Mystery Set stone is grooved along its sides so it can slide onto hidden gold rails, which is why no metal shows on the surface.
• Van Cleef & Arpels says cutting a single Mystery Set stone can take up to eight hours, and a single clip averages 300 hours of work.
• The Wolf Family Collection held nine Mystery Set jewels, one of the largest groups of the technique ever offered at auction.
• Erving Wolf's oil company also found the Key Lake uranium mine in Saskatchewan, which once produced 15 percent of the world's uranium.
• In 2022 Van Cleef & Arpels set all 25 jewels of its Legend of Diamonds collection with the Mystery Set, 67 diamonds cut from a single rough stone.
• The Wolfs married in the 1950s after knowing each other for only two weeks.