A riding hat worn by either the empress Elizabeth or her daughter, the archduchess Marie Valerie, sold for $186,753 at Dorotheum's auction of imperial artefacts on April 30.
The empress Elizabeth (1854-1898) was the wife of the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I - who set the first world war in motion after the assassination of his nephew Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914.
 The empress Elizabeth was assassinated in Switzerland in 1898 |
Elizabeth did not live to see war ravage Europe. She was murdered by Luigi Lucheni, an Italian anarchist, in Switzerland in 1898.
The wool and silk hat was made by Franz Klenz Vienna in the 1890s. It was valued at $5,555 prior to the Vienna auction - equating to a 3,262% increase on estimate.
A cigar box owned by emperor Franz Joseph I also performed exceptionally well, achieving $47,847 against a $2,777 estimate - an increase of 1,622%.
The lot consisted of two original cigars boxed in a specially designed case featuring the emperor's coat of arms and initials.
It was a gift from Karl Baron Prileszky, the director of the household at the royal court in Vienna, and dates to around 1914.
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