The Hutton–Mdivani Jadeite Necklace is a strand of twenty-seven spherical jadeite beads, ranging in diameter from approximately 15.4 mm to 19.2 mm, assembled by Cartier Paris in the early 1930s and presented to American heiress Barbara Hutton as a wedding gift. Mounted on a ruby-and-diamond clasp of Cartier's own making, the necklace represents the absolute summit of what the jadeite trade calls fei cui — the finest imperial-green, highly translucent Burmese jadeite — and stands as the single most valuable piece of jade jewellery ever sold at public auction. Its April 2014 sale at Sotheby's Hong Kong, where it realised US $27.44 million, set a world record for jadeite that redefined market expectations for the material and confirmed the necklace's status as a cultural and gemmological landmark.

The Beads: Gemmological Character

Each bead in the necklace is fashioned from jadeite — the sodium aluminium pyroxene NaAlSi₂O₆ — rather than the more common nephrite, and each exhibits the combination of properties that the trade reserves for the designation imperial: a saturated, vivid emerald-green hue produced by trace chromium, a fine-grained interlocking texture that yields exceptional translucency, and a surface lustre described in auction literature as approaching vitreous. In gemmological terms, imperial jadeite of this calibre displays a refractive index of approximately 1.66, a specific gravity near 3.34, and a texture so tight that the individual pyroxene crystals are submicroscopic to the naked eye, giving the material its characteristic glowing, almost luminous depth.

The twenty-seven beads graduate slightly from the centre outward, a deliberate construction that creates visual harmony when worn and that required the matching of material from what must have been an extraordinary parcel of rough. Matching jadeite beads at this size and quality is among the most demanding tasks in the gem trade: colour, tone, saturation, translucency, and surface character must align across every sphere. The probability of assembling twenty-seven beads of this uniformity from Burmese rough — even from the richest deposits of the Hpakan–Tawmaw tract in Kachin State — is vanishingly small, which is precisely why the necklace has no peer.

The clasp, set with cabochon rubies and old-cut diamonds in platinum, is characteristic of Cartier's Art Deco vocabulary: geometric, restrained, and designed to complement rather than compete with the jadeite. It was later examined and confirmed by Cartier's own archives as an original house creation.

Provenance: Barbara Hutton and the Mdivani Connection

Barbara Hutton (1912–1979), heiress to the Woolworth retail fortune, was one of the wealthiest women in the United States at the time of her first marriage in 1933 to Alexis Mdivani (1905–1935), a Georgian-born prince whose family had fled the Bolshevik revolution. The necklace was assembled by Cartier for the occasion of that marriage — the first of Hutton's seven — and the union of two of the era's most prominent names in society gave the piece its double-barrelled designation.

Hutton's acquisition of the necklace reflected both the fashion of the moment and a genuine connoisseurship of Asian art and material culture that she maintained throughout her life. The 1920s and 1930s represented the high-water mark of Western fascination with Chinese jadeite collecting: the finest beads and carvings commanded extraordinary sums in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and at the great European auction rooms, and Cartier — along with a handful of other Paris maisons — had developed direct relationships with Burmese and Chinese suppliers that gave them access to material of a quality rarely seen in the open market.

Alexis Mdivani died in an automobile accident in Spain in 1935, barely two years after the marriage. Hutton retained the necklace through subsequent marriages and decades of celebrated, often turbulent, public life. It remained in her possession until her death in 1979, passing thereafter through private hands before eventually entering the international auction market.

Cartier and the Art Deco Jadeite Trade

Cartier's role in the history of the Hutton–Mdivani necklace cannot be overstated. The house had been actively sourcing imperial jadeite since the early twentieth century, recognising in the material a chromatic intensity and translucency that complemented the geometric severity of Art Deco design. Louis Cartier and his brothers had cultivated relationships with Chinese merchants and Burmese suppliers, and the house's Paris workshops became one of the primary points at which the finest Burmese rough was transformed into jewellery destined for European and American clients.

The Art Deco period — roughly 1920 to 1940 — coincided with the last great era of unrestricted access to Hpakan-tract jadeite before the political upheavals of the mid-twentieth century curtailed the trade. Cartier created numerous important jadeite pieces during this period, but the Hutton–Mdivani necklace is universally regarded as the house's supreme achievement in the material. The combination of the beads' quality, the coherence of the matched parcel, and the elegance of the clasp design places it in a category of its own.

Cartier's archive documentation of the necklace — confirming its creation and the identity of its first owner — added immeasurably to its provenance and, consequently, to its auction value. Documented Cartier provenance for a piece of this gemmological stature is among the most powerful combinations in the jewellery market.

The 2014 Sotheby's Sale

The necklace was offered at Sotheby's Hong Kong on 7 April 2014 in a sale dedicated to magnificent jewels. Pre-sale estimates were deliberately withheld — a common practice for objects of singular importance where the range of plausible outcomes is too wide for a conventional estimate to be meaningful. The hammer fell at a price that, with buyer's premium, amounted to HK $214,160,000, equivalent to approximately US $27.44 million at the prevailing exchange rate.

This figure shattered the previous world auction record for jadeite jewellery and placed the necklace among the most valuable jewels — of any gemstone — ever sold at auction. The result was widely reported in both the gemmological press and the mainstream financial media, and it served as a powerful signal to the international market that imperial jadeite of documented quality and provenance had entered a new price tier.

The buyer was not publicly identified at the time of sale, which is standard practice for major jewel purchases at Hong Kong auction. The result confirmed what specialists had long argued: that the finest jadeite, when combined with irreproachable provenance and historical significance, is capable of competing with — and surpassing — the most celebrated coloured diamonds and rubies on the global auction stage.

Significance in the Jadeite Market

The Hutton–Mdivani sale had measurable consequences for the broader jadeite market. In the years following 2014, prices for top-quality imperial jadeite beads — even those far below the standard of the Hutton–Mdivani material — rose substantially, as collectors and dealers recalibrated their understanding of what the finest examples could achieve. Hong Kong remains the primary market for imperial jadeite, and the 2014 result reinforced the city's position as the global centre for the evaluation and sale of the material.

The necklace also focused renewed attention on the question of jadeite treatment. Imperial jadeite of genuine Type A status — untreated, neither polymer-impregnated (Type B) nor dyed (Type C) — commands a premium that is orders of magnitude above treated material. The Hutton–Mdivani beads, tested by Sotheby's appointed gemmological laboratory prior to sale, were confirmed as natural, untreated jadeite. This confirmation was central to the auction narrative and underscores the critical importance of laboratory testing for any significant jadeite transaction.

For the trade, the necklace functions as a benchmark — a fixed point against which all other imperial jadeite bead necklaces are measured. When dealers and auction specialists describe a parcel of green jadeite beads as approaching Hutton–Mdivani quality, they are invoking the highest standard the material has ever publicly achieved.

The Beads as Gemmological Specimens

Beyond their commercial significance, the beads merit consideration as gemmological specimens of the first order. Jadeite forms in high-pressure, relatively low-temperature metamorphic environments — the subduction-zone conditions of the Hpakan tract in Myanmar's Kachin State being the world's pre-eminent source of gem-quality material. The chromium responsible for the imperial green colour substitutes for aluminium in the pyroxene crystal structure, and the concentration and distribution of that chromium determines whether a given piece achieves the even, saturated green that the trade prizes or the uneven, patchy colour that characterises lesser material.

The uniformity of colour across twenty-seven large beads implies either extraordinary luck in the selection of rough or — more likely — access to a single exceptional boulder or closely related group of boulders from which the rough could be matched. The Hpakan deposits have produced nothing comparable in the decades since the necklace was assembled, a fact that reflects both the geological rarity of the material and the progressive depletion of the most accessible high-quality zones of the deposit.

Cultural and Historical Context

Jadeite has been prized in Chinese culture for centuries, but the specific form of imperial green jadeite that defines the Hutton–Mdivani beads became the dominant aesthetic ideal only in the Qing dynasty (1644–1912), when Burmese jadeite began to reach Chinese imperial workshops in significant quantities. The Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908) was among the most celebrated collectors of imperial jadeite, and her patronage established a standard of connoisseurship that persists in Chinese collecting culture to the present day.

The necklace thus occupies a position at the intersection of two collecting traditions: the Chinese imperial ideal of fei cui at its finest, and the Western Art Deco sensibility that Cartier embodied. That a piece assembled in Paris for an American heiress should ultimately sell in Hong Kong for a record price is a fitting expression of the material's journey across cultures and centuries.

Barbara Hutton herself, whatever the complexities of her personal history, possessed a genuine eye for quality in jewellery and Asian decorative arts. Her collection, dispersed over decades, included numerous pieces of distinction, but the jadeite necklace that bears her name is the one by which she is most lastingly remembered in the world of gems and jewellery — a legacy that the 2014 auction result has, if anything, made more permanent.

Further Reading

• GIA Gems & Gemology — Jadeite Jade Bead Necklace (Spring 2014)
• GIA Research: Jadeite
• Lotus Gemology: Jadeite Jade