A Diamond of Old Hollywood

Louis B. Mayer was among the most powerful figures in the history of American cinema — co-founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and, for decades, the highest-paid executive in the United States. He was also a Laykin client. As with so many of the great figures of Hollywood's golden era, the connection between Mayer and Laykin et Cie was one of long standing: the studio heads who built the film industry and the jewelers on Sunset Boulevard who served them were part of the same world.

Laykin et Cie counted among its clients the principal architects of Hollywood's studio system. Louis B. Mayer, Darryl F. Zanuck of 20th Century Fox, Jack Warner of Warner Brothers, Walt Disney — these men and their families were Laykin clients, and their estates became, in time, part of the Laykin archive. The acquisition of pieces from their collections was among the most important work of Joel Laykin's estate practice: preserving objects that might otherwise have disappeared into private hands, and returning them to the collector market with their provenance intact.

This diamond — 25.74 carats, cushion cut, acquired from the estate of Mrs. Mayer and recorded in the archive with the characteristically plain notation above — is representative of that work at its finest.