More of Pauline Karpidas's holdings are heading to Sotheby's. The British collector's flamboyant jewellery, assembled over half a century, will be offered in a 70-lot evening sale at the auction house's Breuer building in New York on 8 December, where it is expected to realise more than $10 million.

The leading lot is a pink diamond set on chalcedony by the Parisian jeweller Joel Arthur Rosenthal, known as JAR. Karpidas brought the 10-carat pear-shaped stone to Rosenthal, who turned it into a wearable sculpture in which a flash of pink hovers above a pale plinth. It carries an estimate of $2.5 million to $3.5 million. Two further JAR rings stand out: one contrasting black basalt with white diamond clusters, estimated at $450,000 to $650,000, and another holding a sapphire in platinum, estimated at $300,000 to $500,000.

Karpidas ran a boutique in Athens before marrying the Greek shipping magnate Constantinos Karpidas, and the couple became avid collectors. Her love of jewellery helped forge a friendship with Andy Warhol, who was commissioned to paint her portrait in 1978; the two bonded over a shared enthusiasm for French jewellers. Sotheby's global head of jewellery, Quig Bruning, said demand was increasingly concentrated on jewels where design leads, and that virtually everything in the collection was design-forward.

The sale spans eras and styles, much like Karpidas's approach to art. An 18th-century reliquary cross that once belonged to Cardinal Francesco Martelli, appointed by Pope Clement IX, is estimated at $80,000 to $120,000. A Cartier leaf-and-branch diamond bracelet is estimated at $200,000 to $300,000, a Belperron aquamarine necklace at $150,000 to $250,000, and a 1930s Chanel bracelet at $80,000 to $120,000.

The jewellery follows a series of major Karpidas sales. Last September her Surrealist-heavy art collection brought in around $100 million at Sotheby's in London, then the highest total for a single-owner auction in the city, led by Rene Magritte's La Statue Volante at $13.7 million. An earlier sale of more than 200 works from her home on the Greek island of Hydra made 35.6 million euros at Sotheby's Paris in 2023, well above its high estimate.