Pandolfini Casa d'Aste — Florence's Italian Jewellery Specialist
Pandolfini Casa d'Aste — Florence's Italian Jewellery Specialist
Tuscany-rooted auction house with Renaissance-to-modern jewellery sales
Pandolfini Casa d'Aste is a Florence-based auction house specialising in Italian jewellery, silver, paintings, and decorative arts. Founded in 1924, Pandolfini operates principally within the Italian market and is the most prominent regional auction house outside the Milan-Rome axis. For collectors of Italian jewellery — Renaissance and Baroque ornaments, Florentine goldwork, nineteenth- and twentieth-century signed pieces from Castellani, Buccellati, Bulgari, and Damiani — Pandolfini's regular jewellery sales are a primary venue.
House and structure
Pandolfini operates from premises in Florence, Milan, and Rome, with the Florentine headquarters in the Palazzo Ramirez Montalvo on Borgo degli Albizi serving as the main saleroom. The house conducts several jewellery and watch sales each year, alongside specialist sales for Old Master and modern paintings, antique furniture, and Asian art. Estimates and reserves are denominated in euros, and the buyer's market is principally European with growing presence from the United States and Asia.
Jewellery focus
Pandolfini's jewellery sales tend to feature material with Italian provenance and craftsmanship at the centre. Florentine goldwork — the granulation and engraved-gold tradition revived by Castellani in the nineteenth century — appears regularly. Coral cameos and intaglios, mosaic and pietra dura jewellery from the Tuscan workshops, and Renaissance-revival pieces are recurring categories. Twentieth-century signed jewellery from Bulgari, Buccellati, and the Italian houses is consistently catalogued. Period jewellery from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — diamond and coloured-stone parures, Sicilian gold and coral pieces, Roman micromosaic brooches and necklaces — rounds out a typical sale.
Position in the market
Pandolfini does not compete with Christie's, Sotheby's, or Bonhams on the trophy-jewel circuit. Its strength is in Italian regional material and in mid-market pieces that often clear at more reasonable estimates than the equivalent stones would in Geneva or New York. For collectors building a focused Italian jewellery collection, Pandolfini's catalogues are essential reading. For Skyjems buyers seeking specific Italian-house pieces or particular Tuscan craftsmanship, Pandolfini sales are a reliable hunting ground, with the usual caveats about condition reports and laboratory verification of significant coloured stones.