Lot 34
A ruby and diamond ring, circa 1900
Auction: 21 October 2026 from 14:00 BST
Description
The navette-shaped plaque set with circular and oval-cut rubies and old brilliant-cut diamonds, between pierced shoulders of foliate motifs, illegibly struck maker's mark, Russian assay mark, ring size M½
Provenance
Antonina Yefimovna Gracheva (1878-1956) was born in Saint Petersburgh and graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris. In 1904, she married Captain Ivan Yakovlevich Samsonov and they lived in Grodno, Russia. In Grodno she became a well-known designer of clothes and model. Captain Samsonov was tragically killed in a riot in 1917. She later remarried another Tsarist officer.
Towards the end of World War II, her daughter and son-in-law escaped ahead of the return of the Red Army however she remained. In 1944 she was arrested by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, which erroneously believed her to have been married to another officer named Samsonov, the commander of the 2nd Russian Army in 1914. She was sentenced to 16 months in prison. She died in Grodno in 1956.
Hence by decent.
Also see lots 30-33.