Bonhams Sandy Lerner Cat Collection: Jewels and Estimates

Some collections are assembled for the market; this one was assembled for a home. On September 30, Bonhams in New York offers the first live chapter of The Sandy Lerner Cat Collection, 66 lots of art, objects and jewels that share a single, graceful subject: the cat.

What is the Sandy Lerner Cat Collection?

Sandy Lerner is best known as a co-founder of Cisco Systems and the founder of the cosmetics brand Urban Decay. Less widely known is that she spent decades gathering what Bonhams describes as one of the “most significant private collections of cat-related decorative arts, books, and collectibles ever assembled.” In 2017 she published Caticons: 4,000 Years of Art Imitating Cats, a book built around that pursuit.

Bonhams is dispersing the holdings, alongside furnishings from her Ayrshire Farm estate in Upperville, Virginia, across four sales in New York and Massachusetts. Lerner framed the decision in personal terms: “These are objects I have personally chosen. They each had a place in my home,” she said, as reported by National Jeweler.

Which jewels are in the Bonhams cat sale, and what are the estimates?

Jewelry is a small but polished thread through the 66 live lots. According to the auction house’s published estimates, reported by JCK and National Jeweler, the pieces to know are:

• Carved lavender jadeite and diamond necklace: two carved cats facing one another, set with black and white diamonds, with a detachable pendant. Estimate $14,000 to $18,000, the leading jewel of the sale.
• Tiffany & Co. gold cat mask pendant-brooch: 18-karat gold with textured fur and polished features. Estimate $8,000 to $12,000.
• French gold and diamond cat brooch: 18-karat gold with green and black enamel eyes. Estimate $5,000 to $7,000.
• Tiffany & Co. gold cat brooch: 18-karat gold with green enamel eyes. Estimate $3,000 to $5,000.
• White gold cat earrings: 18-karat white gold with sapphire eyes, cultured pearls and diamonds. Estimate $2,000 to $3,000.

Around the jewels sit objects a jewelry collector will recognise as close cousins. A Fabergé hardstone model of a recumbent cat, St. Petersburg, circa 1900, carries an estimate of $12,000 to $15,000, and a Qing dynasty white jade snuff bottle carved as a crouching cat is estimated at $30,000 to $40,000, according to the Bonhams announcement. Works on paper and canvas by Léonard Tsuguharu Foujita, Henri Matisse and Andy Warhol complete the picture.

Why does a single-owner sale matter to jewelry collectors?

Single-owner sales carry a particular charge in the salesroom. A known name, a coherent point of view and a clear story of acquisition tend to draw bidders who would never search a general catalogue for a gold cat brooch. The estimates here are modest by high jewelry standards, which is precisely the appeal: this is an entry point to named provenance, the quality that auction specialists often say adds a premium when a piece returns to market years later.

In our view, the jadeite necklace is the most interesting jewel on paper. Lavender jadeite occupies a softer, more poetic register than the intense “imperial” green that commands the headline prices in Hong Kong, as our report on the jadeite necklace leading Poly Auction Hong Kong showed this week. Carved figurative jadeite, paired with diamonds and made convertible, is a rarer proposition in a Western salesroom.

A cat brooch is never only a brooch. It is a small portrait of the person who chose to wear it.

A short history of the cat in jewelry

The cat has been a jeweler’s subject for as long as there have been jewelers. In ancient Egypt, amulets of the cat goddess Bastet were carved in faience, carnelian and gold, worn as emblems of protection and domestic grace. The motif never quite left the jeweler’s bench: Victorian goldsmiths produced cat-head brooches and stickpins with glass or gemstone eyes, often as sentimental gifts, and the animal became a favourite of the naturalistic jewelry that flourished in the late nineteenth century.

Fabergé brought the subject into the realm of the objet de vertu. Around the turn of the twentieth century, the St. Petersburg workshops carved animals from Russian hardstones, often with cabochon or rose-cut eyes, for an imperial and aristocratic clientele that collected them by the dozen. The recumbent cat in this sale belongs to that lineage.

In the twentieth century, the great houses gave the great cats their most famous jewelled forms, while American houses such as Tiffany & Co. cultivated a lighter, witty animal bestiary in textured gold, a tradition traced in our story on Jean Schlumberger’s Bird on a Rock. The gold cat masks and brooches in the Lerner sale sit squarely in that playful, sculptural American idiom, where engraving and texture do the work that diamonds do elsewhere.

For the collector

• Where to bid: the live sale is held at Bonhams New York; bidding details and lot pages are on the Bonhams sale page. Part II continues online through October 1, and Ayrshire Farm sales follow in October.
• Remember the premium: auction estimates exclude the buyer’s premium and any applicable taxes, so the final cost of a winning bid is higher than the hammer price. Check Bonhams’ current terms before bidding.
• What drives value: a maker’s signature (Tiffany & Co., Fabergé), the quality of the carving and enamel, the material itself (jadeite, not nephrite or dyed stone), and now a documented single-owner provenance.
• What to check: request the condition report, confirm maker’s marks and hallmarks, and for the jadeite necklace ask whether a gemological report addresses treatment, since untreated (“Type A”) jadeite is valued well above treated material.
• A note on value: results for comparable animal jewels vary widely, and past prices do not predict future value. Bid for the pleasure of the piece first.

For a very different register of the market this autumn, see our look at an 8.03-carat blue diamond at Elmwood’s. Results from the Lerner sale will be published by Bonhams after the auction closes; we will note the jewel results when they are available.

Frequently asked questions

When is the Bonhams Sandy Lerner Cat Collection auction?

Part I is a live sale at Bonhams New York on September 30, 2026. Part II is an online sale that closes on October 1, 2026.

What is the most valuable jewel in the sale?

The leading jewel is a carved lavender jadeite and diamond necklace depicting two cats, estimated at $14,000 to $18,000.

Are there Tiffany & Co. pieces in the auction?

Yes. A Tiffany & Co. 18-karat gold cat mask pendant-brooch is estimated at $8,000 to $12,000, and a gold cat brooch with green enamel eyes at $3,000 to $5,000.

Who is Sandy Lerner?

Sandy Lerner is a co-founder of Cisco Systems and the founder of Urban Decay cosmetics, and the author of Caticons: 4,000 Years of Art Imitating Cats (2017).

Sources: National Jeweler · JCK · Antique Trader · Journal of Antiques & Collectibles · Bonhams