Section
Design stories, stones and metals, and guides to choosing and caring.
Auctions
A collection arriving at auction carries more than an estimate. Pauline Karpidas’s jewellery brings a collector’s choices into public view, where signatures, design and provenance will be valued lot by lot. The combined pre-sale expectation introduces the s...
The Romanov Sapphire and its Cartier bracelet belong to different periods. Their meeting makes the auction lot a study in continuity: how a stone can retain ...
Ancient Nahuange goldsmiths sometimes polished a golden surface back to pink, copper-rich metal. Microscopic research makes that choice visible and unsettles...
The Hope Diamond’s fame contains two histories: the traceable journey of a gemstone and the circulation of a curse. Separating them makes the jewel more inte...
A genuine pearl produced by a different system could unsettle an entire livelihood. In the Gulf, cultured pearls met an economy of seasonal advances, uncerta...
In Prussia in 1813, iron jewellery could advertise that its wearer had surrendered gold for the war effort. The inexpensive material carried an expensive sto...
Marie Antoinette declined the necklace, yet a fraudulent purchase in her name damaged her reputation. The 1785 affair begins with that separation between the...
As German troops entered Denmark on 9 April 1940, the names on Max von Laue’s and James Franck’s Nobel medals made the gold dangerous to keep. George de Heve...
A gemstone can resist scratching and still need careful handling. Emerald makes that distinction especially important because fractures, treatments and clean...
A diamond comparison becomes useful when the buyer’s priorities are clear. Origin, appearance, design and meaning can lead to different choices. Understandin...
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