Dame Joan Collins, actor Christopher Biggins, Socialite Tamara Beckwith, celebrity photographer Joe Alvarez, Nancy Dell’Olio MIC Mark Francis-Vandelli among others attended the VIP preview of the legendary author Jackie Collins’ estate to go on sale in Los Angeles in May. The 1000-lot collection features artworks, antique and jewellery from late novelist’s Beverly Hills home, the contents of which include exquisite Biedermeier desks and original Art Deco pieces and diamonds.

A keen art collector and trawler of markets, she modelled her Beverly Hills home on a painting she has always wanted to own – he fellow-Brit David Hockney’s A Bigger Splash – and furnished it to her own taste, with an eclectic mix of Art Deco pieces: Tiffany lamps, elegant bronze figures of dancers that guests saw at the VIP preview, and the sleek panthers that gave their name to the fictional film studios that appeared in her novels. 

Among the glorious trophies of a life of writing, alongside the pieces by cartier and Harry Winston, the pear-shaped diamond ring and platinum-and-emerald necklace, the paintings of cafe culture by David Richey Johnsen and Francois Chabrier.

The estate is to be auctioned in Los Angeles on 16- 17 May. The full collection can be viewed on Bonhams website.