This fabulous diamond necklace with an almost 49 carat diamond pendant went on sale yesterday at Sotheby's Magnificient Jewelry Auction in New York to raise money for charity. The estimated price at auction is between $700,000 to $1 million.

Alexandre Reza, the Russian-born Parisian jeweler designed this for the stylish Florence J. Gould (1895-1983) who married the son of the industrialist J. Gould. She had a legendary jewelry collection to rival that of Elizabeth Taylor's. She bequeathed much of her estate to the Florence J Gould Foundation.

It was the baguette diamonds which form the flexible collar that caught my attention because it occurred to me that beaders could use beadwoven bugle beads to create a necklace along similar lines at a tiny fraction of the cost! A drop shaped crystal bead could be used to substitute for the diamond pendant.