8IC. Gold pocket watch with chain, Joseph Resch Fils workshop, Bucharest, approx. 1940, belonged to Marshal Ion Antonescu, kept in the family.
The photos of the lot are informative and indicative, and cannot provide a highly detailed view of the object from all angles. We recommend a careful physical inspection of the lot before bidding.
8IC. Gold pocket watch with chain, Joseph Resch Fils workshop, Bucharest, approx. 1940, belonged to Marshal Ion Antonescu, kept in the family.
15 rubies, 18k gold, 57 g, d=48 mm
Research information
Andronescu, Åerban C., 2012, "Ioan Petru Culianu", Art-Emis magazine.
PROVENANCE
The lot comes from the family archive of Marshal Ion Antonescu's grand-niece, Rodica Mărculescu, a niece who grew up in his family after she became an orphan at the age of two. She had a special relationship with the Marshal's wife, whom she cared for and helped after 1946. The wife, Rica, left her several belongings that had belonged to her and the Marshal. Those goods have remained in the niece's family to this day. In a memory text about Ioan Petru Culianu, Șerban C. Andronescu tells us, referring to these assets, that: “Philippe had been a fashionable journalist in Paris during Marshal Petain's time when Romania was ruled by Marshal Antonescu, and Artemisa had been friends with Rodica Mărculescu. Becoming an orphan at two years old, Rodica was raised alongside Ion Antonescu; she was like his good sister and, as Mizica said, died in her arms in the apartment on old Mosilor Street 246. Mizica left her a few things of the Antonescu family, Mrs. Maria Antonescu's mink coat, the Marshal's gold watch with a chain, letters and other such things.” Beyond the biography of the person - condemned by the People's Court on May 17, 1946 for war crimes - from whom the few objects kept in the family come, they represent historical testimonies, which can be known and researched. The project of selling them at auction does not in any way aim to cosmeticize the biography and deeds of Marshal Ion Antonescu or sweeten, however slightly, the decisions that led to the Holocaust or military actions on one side or the other of the violent historical period's fronts.
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