If diamonds are a girl’s best friend, Christopher Rankin is a fabulous matchmaker. The owner of Christian Caine, a jewelry store in Shepherdstown, W.Va., makes it his mission to restore a sense of romance to the process of buying jewelry. He also leads a team of designers and goldsmiths to craft original Christian Caine creations based on a client’s ideas and budget, as well as gentle advice from his own team of experts when requested.
Rankin and his designers have brought many ideas back from numerous trips to Paris. Paris at night, the wrought iron-adorned buildings of Ile de la Cite, stars and street lamps scintillating on the surface of the Seine. All provide inspiration to the team, which translates into breathtaking jewelry for their clients.
But Rankin is not only a designer and craftsman of fine jewelry, he is also a connoisseur and collector. He is particularly fascinated and motivated by pieces owned by 20th-century icons of beauty and glamour.
The pedigreed pieces of his earliest acquisitions belonged to the likes of President Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Marilyn Monroe. As a designer, Rankin says he is fascinated by the personalities behind the jewelry in the way that each one influences culture from a design perspective.
“We are all familiar with Jackie Kennedy’s influence on women’s fashion. And then there’s the Duke of Windsor, who is credited with the ‘Windsor knot’ – today’s standard when tying men’s ties,” says Rankin. “But their influence on jewelry was just as pronounced. Marilyn Monroe, draped in sparkling jewels, sang ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend’ and the world took notice. Ironically, she owned very few diamonds. Most of her collection is rhinestone like the large pin she wore singing to the troops in Korea.” This pin now belongs to Rankin.
The collection has grown considerably over the years. “We have since added a Golden Age of Hollywood segment to our Signature Collection. Included is jewelry belonging to Bette Davis, Dorothy Lamor, Jayne Mansfield, Ginger Rogers, Mae West, Liberace, Greta Garbo and many others.”
Rankin holds invitation-only exhibitions of these cherished pieces, but also periodically unveils portions at various events held in the Christian Caine showroom.
The precious objets d’art influence and inspire him as he creates his own fine 21st century artifacts. At times Rankin even adds to existing pieces. “We used several bracelets belonging to Marilyn Monroe and added diamond elements to them. It was a blending of her on-camera persona and her private side which was more conservative and classic.” Rankin says that one of Marilyn’s favorite pieces of jewelry was an 18th-century hand-carved cameo, now part of his collection.
Some pieces Rankin will sell, like a Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis pin which brought $65,000. “I would love to have kept the piece – it was spectacular – but it afforded me the opportunity to buy other pieces.” Rankin may be a connoisseur of jewelry, but he also means business.
However, many pieces he personally cherishes. Take the Kennedy charm bracelet: a gilt-metal gentlemen’s Irish charm bracelet that spells out “J. F. KENNEDY.” It came into the possession of Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy’s White House secretary, after it was found in Kennedy’s top desk drawer in the Oval Office shortly after his death. Rankin acquired the piece in 1998. “I wouldn’t sell this piece under any circumstances. It’s history.”
And he won’t sell his Rose Kennedy piece, either: a Madonna pendant surrounded by diamonds, sapphires and black onyx. “That’s my favorite anyway, just as a piece of jewelry. And it was a good pick-up, a little obscure thing that hadn’t been marketed at all.”
“Jewelry to me chronicles somebody’s life better than anything else,” marvels Rankin. “In one little piece of jewelry, you can tell the story of somebody’s life. And if I can financially make it work, I want to keep the items that in their entirety have a great deal of symbolism and history.”
Acquiring a Masterpiece
The method of acquisition varies for Christopher Rankin, from attendance at a well-promoted auction to a more remote, confidential approach. “There is nothing quite like personally being at an auction, but over the years we have added to the collection via phone bids and private bids, too.”
One of the most unique experiences in terms of glamour and anticipation was 15 years ago, when Rankin and some of his staff attended the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis auction at Sotheby’s in New York. He was a young-looking 30-year-old when he attended the auction, but he played hardball with the heavies, and they quickly learned to take him seriously.
“That auction was like the Oscars or the Emmy’s,” says Rankin. It was an evening event. Guests were required to go through metal detectors, and the dress code was black tie. People meandered with flutes of champagne. The streets outside were lined with limo after limo, mixed in with a fleet of media vans.
Rankin recalls this auction as “nerve-racking.”
“I’m sitting in the room and I’m clearly the youngest person there,” remembers Rankin. It’s a who’s who with all the TV cameras lined up. I recognized one of the VP’s from Tiffany and someone from Van Cleef (French jeweler Van Cleef & Arpels) – they were there to buy back the items that they had made for Jackie. So I’m sitting in the room bidding on a charm bracelet that she had had with charms from all over the world. To me, that was like a mini-museum in itself. It was the first big thing that had come up and it was in the first five minutes of the auction.”
The piece went up to $15,000. There were just three bidders left: two telephone bidders and Rankin. When it got to $30,000, one of the telephone bidders dropped out. Now there were two: Rankin and the nameless, faceless telephone bidder. They started taking turns at $2,500 a piece, bidding it up to $75,000. This took about 12 excruciating minutes of back and forth, back and forth. Each of them was taking the longest permissible time to think over a bid. The auctioneer typically only gives bidders about a minute and a half, saying things during the time period like, “At the gentleman in the back: $50,000. At you, at you, Sir. Fair warning.”
The bidding got to the “fair warning” point every time between Rankin and the telephone bidder. Everyone’s attention was focused on Rankin, since the other bidder was invisible. All bodies and cameras in the room were turned toward Rankin.
“I ended up dropping out at $75,000, and that piece was on the cover of USA Today the next morning,” he recounts.
But the highly publicized 1996 event did successfully yield Rankin five pairs of earrings, a single earclip, 11 loose diamonds, three loose ruby beads and a brooch – platinum and yellow gold with round center diamond and a trillion diamond at each end.
Rankin has participated in many more auctions since the heady Sotheby’s affair. Most are more business-like, he says, but there have been some highlights.
After acquiring a charm bracelet from the John F. Kennedy Auction at Guernsey’s Auction House in New York in 1998, he was interviewed by 16 newspapers including the Times and the Daily News, the Today show, CBS, CNN, CNBC and Dutch Radio. According to Rankin, the media had flocked to that auction for many reasons, including the fact that the State Department, thinking that some of the items might be politically sensitive, confiscated a portion of the estate.
“There’s a lot of psychology to an auction,” says Rankin. “You can feel when somebody wants something. For me, theoretically and realistically there is a limit. But if there’s a specific piece that we think would go great with our collection, we’ll try really hard to get it. I had a cap in the Jackie Kennedy auction and shot right by it.”
And shooting right by a cap wouldn’t be hard to do since these are the kinds of auctions that go very quickly. The bidding begins in increments of a thousand dollars initially, then $2,500, then $5,000, then $10,000.
“Sometimes people are really cautious in the beginning; they don’t know how things are going to go – that’s a great time to take advantage of the bidding,” says Rankin. “Usually the opportunity’s early. You try to bid very hard very quickly. If they say $15,000, you say ‘20’ right away. There’s no pausing as if you’re contemplating that the next time you might drop out.”
Although, he cautions, what could happen if you get someone else with the same mindset is that bidders can drive the price up against each other, with the final bid costing the winner much more than anticipated. Rankin says he learned this lesson with a Duke and Duchess of Windsor piece.
One proven exception to the “people are reluctant to bid early on” rule, was a Picasso auction in which Rankin was a telephone bidder. “It went up to $70,000 in about 45 seconds. I was up to $110,000 in under a minute and then we were out.”
And then there was the Marilyn Monroe auction, a two-day event ending with final sales of more than $13.4 million. “Things went on wild swings with no obvious rationale,” says Rankin. “Something might go for $25,000, and then a similar item with similar background would go for $90,000.”
Rankin ended up with the winning bid for several pieces including some bracelets, a black onyx and gold ring, some rhinestone earrings, a gold wire choker and a hand-carved shell cameo.
Since the early days of the fresh-faced kid engaged in big-time bidding, Rankin hasn’t had any trouble getting into VIP-only events, auctions whose guest lists go through close scrutiny. The strict criteria can include celebrity status, personal wealth or history of spending habits. Rankin has found himself in the company of Joan Rivers, Charles Barkley, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Montel Williams, Jimmy Buffet.
“They need to know who you are,” admits Rankin. “It’s the seriousness and the size of the bidder that secures a place in the auction.”
He has made his name known in New York jewelry circles and has amassed a personal mini-museum of fine and famous jewelry. And he’s not finished yet.
