I am a Texas native covering breaking news out of New York City. Previously, I was an editorial assistant at the Forbes London bureau.
Auction house Christie’s jewelry specialist Jean-Marc Lunel described the fact the pair of bracelets managed to stay together as “When Marie Antoinette was imprisoned at the Tuileries Palace in January 1791 as the French Revolution was in full swing, she secretly packed her favorite jewelry in a wooden chest and smuggled it to Austria for safekeeping in hopes she could recover the jewels after the war, according to Christie’s.
However, she was guillotined in October 1793, and the bracelets were later returned to her daughter Marie Thérèse of France, her only surviving child who passed the bracelets down to members of her family, in whose collection they have remained since.