JCK 2019 September/October Issue by JCK Magazine

THE INDUSTRY AUTHORITY

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019

JCKONLINE.COM

A N N I V E R SA RY SPECIAL JCK090119_00_Cover_v2.indd 1

9/23/19 1:30 PM

Charles & Colvard moissanite gemstones are available through our distribution partners.

For a complete list of authorized distributors, please visit: www.charlesandcolvard.com/trade-partners/authorized-distributors

Millennials Are Redeﬁning Engagement Ring Priorities Two-thirds of young Americans think an engagement ring should cost less than $2,500.*

Do you have what they want? We do.

It took 20 years of innovation to produce Forever One , the world’s premiere brand of lab created moissanite. And through the convergence of science and art, we are redefining luxury with these gemstones. ™

*Source: TD Ameritrade Young Americans & Marriage Survey, May 2019

From all of us at Charles & Colvard â&#x20AC;&#x201C;

Congratulations on 150 years!

THE INDUSTRY AUTHORITY SERVING THE JEWELRY INDUSTRY FOR

150 YEARS

With original, authoritative, and compelling journalism, JCK magazine offers readers expanded coverage of the most important issues and style trends affecting their businesses.

JCKONLINE.COM

¨ FEATURE OF THE YEAR

Phenomena Gems ™

IRIDESCENCE™ NEOPOLITAN OPAL™

Le Vian celebrates the unique features of gems with gemological phenomena. Peacock Aquaprase™ displays a beautiful mix of multi-colored matrix which ﬂoats in the semi-transparent to translucent body of the stone. Neopolitan Opal™ reveals ﬂashes of color called play-of-color or iridescence.

LEVIAN.COM • 877-2LEVIAN

MATRIX AND TRANSLUCENCY PEACOCK AQUAPRASE™

N O O N E C O LO R S YO U R W O R LD LI K E LE V I A N ª

GOT TO GOLD! Fashion is fickle, gold is forever.

Like fashion, your gold customer is changing. We get that. Royal Chain creates gold jewelry for every customer who walks through your door. Discover it on: ROYALCHAIN.COM 800 622 0960

Booth #1625

Items featured, left to right: 87000, 124057, 123149, 51765, 123909, 124042, 51996, and 86951

Wishing JCK a Spectacular 150th Anniversary JCK has been at the forefront of industry news, consumer trends, and jeweler education for 150 years — and we couldn’t be more excited to express our warmest congratulations for their reaching this impressive milestone. From all of us at Stuller, happy anniversary, JCK — and here’s to many more!

Stuller.com 800 877 7777

S H Y C R E A T I O N . C O M

2 1 3 . 6 2 3 . 8 9 0 0

J A

N E W

Y O R K

J I S

M I A M I

S A N

D I E G O

T O TA L C L A R I T Y THE REALITY OF MODERN DIAMOND MINING

T O S H E D L I G H T O N T H E R E A L I T Y O F M O D E R N D I A M O N D M I N I N G , T R U C O S T, P A R T O F S & P G L O B A L , W A S C O M M I S S I O N E D B Y T H E D I A M O N D P R O D U C E R S A S S O C I AT I O N ( D P A ) T O C O N D U C T I N D E P E N D E N T R E S E A R C H O N D PA M E M B E R S , W H O TO G E T H E R , C O M P R I S E 7 5% O F W O R L D D I A M O N D P R O D U C T I O N .

T O L E A R N M O R E , G O T O T O TA L- C L A R I T Y. C O M

D PA M E M B E R S C R E AT E

T O TA L C L A R I T Y:

Get the Facts on Modern Diamond Mining

US$16 billion annually

I N N E T S O C I O EC O N O M I C A N D EN V I R O N M EN TA L B EN EFI T S

Our People

SA L A RI ES A N D WAG ES PA I D B Y D PA M E M B E R S C R E AT E S

US$3.9

billion

Our Communities

R O U G H LY

80% OF THE US$16 BILLION ANNUAL NET BENEFIT IS INFUSED IN THE COMMUNITIES SURROUNDING THE MINES

I N B E N E F I T S A N N U A L LY

Our Environment

EVERY YEAR, D PA M EM B ERS PROTECT

3x the amount of land THEY USE FOR MINING, ABOUT 1,000 SQUARE MILES

EMPLOYEES AND CONTR ACTORS

A N N U A L B E N E F I T S A S S O C I AT E D

CARBON EMISSIONS ARE

A R E P A I D O N A V E R A G E N E A R LY

WITH SOCIAL PROGRAMS,

3x greater

5x the living wage IN THEIR COUNTRIES, R E F L E C T I N G A H I G H LY T R A I N E D , SKILLED WORKFORCE

I N C L U D I N G H E A LT H C A R E , E D U C AT I O N , A N D R E C R E AT I O N A C T I V I T I E S , T O TA L

US$292

million

FOR L AB-GROWN DIAMONDS (LGDS) T H A N F O R N AT U R A L D I A M O N D S , R E F L E C T I N G T H E E N E R G Y- I N T E N S I V E P R O C E S S O F L G D S , W H I C H R E P L I C AT E W I T H I N 2 W E E K S A N AT U R A L P R O C E S S T H AT C A N TA K E U P T O

a million years

Expert in diamond jewelry with a deep-rooted tradition since 1890

First U.S. store opens in New York in September! Franchising Opportunities

• The largest diamond jewelry manufacturer in Turkey, Europe and the Middle East with 30K piece/month production capacity • Turkey’s export leader in diamond jewelry since 2008 • International offices in New York, Dusseldorf, Amsterdam and Dubai- 76 retail locations globally • The Authorized Jeweller of Forevermark, the diamond brand of De Beers Group

For franchising opportunities please contact us by 201-8 42-7698 / usa@zendiamond.com / ex por t@zendiamond.com • ISTANBUL • NEW YORK • DUSSELDORF • DUBAI • COLOGNE • ABU DHABI • HAMBURG • KU WAIT • BAGHDAD

w w w. z e n d i a m o n d . c o m

e s ta b l i s h e d 1979

OCTOBER 4-7, 2019 MIAMI BEACH CONVENTION CENTER | MIAMI BEACH, FL Join us for the 2nd largest jewelry event of the year, featuring immediate at-show delivery when you need it mostâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;before the holiday season. Celebrate four decades of the JIS Show brand as you shop the leading vendors, trends and styles.

R e g i s t e r t o d a y a t J I S S H O W. C O M / O C T O B E R or call +1 (800) 840-5312

Now in its 40th year—JIS serves the jewelry industry with the newest trends to bring buyers exactly what they’re looking for, right when they need it most. One of the NEW Features for 2019 is the New Exhibitor Zone—a curated area to bring the vendors who are new to JIS October to one, easy-to-shop location on the show floor.

New Exhibitor Zone vendors Include » 7Cs Diamond & Jewellery Trading LLC

» Nau-T-Girl Jewelry

» Anshi Silver Jewelry Co Ltd

» Orient Silver World

» Balaam Design

» Orient Style

» CPI Luxury Group dba China Pearl » Diamine Jewels » Escudero Jewelry » GabyRay Inc » Italian Silver Group, USA » Jola Designs » La Peregrina » Legend Effects USA LLC » Lizas GmbH & Co. KG » Lotus Handicraft Enterprise » Machu Picchu Jewelry Co. » Meira T. Designs

Learn more about JIS October, the New Exhibitor Zone and view the full exhibitor list at:

JISSHOW.COM/OCTOBER

» Origems Brazil » Ornate Appeal » Pagana Atelier SRL » Platinum Designs » Sarah-A-Jewelry » Shilipi Impex » The Sky Lagoon » Subicres International LLC » Trendy Group International Holdings Ltd » Weisz Group » White Stainless Inc » Willy Johns

JCK EVENTS | Special Advertising Section

JCK Show & Tell

Happy

150th Anniversary, JCK Magazine! GRAB THE CHAMPAGNE—WE’RE CELEBRATING 150 YEARS OF JCK MAGAZINE! THANK YOU FOR THE CONTINUED INSPIRATION, CONNECTIONS, FRIENDSHIPS—AND THE JCK SHOW!—THAT HAVE FORMED FROM THIS INSPIRING PUBLICATION!

Congratulations to our 2019 Recipients! C A N A D I A N J E W E L L E R S A S S O C I AT I O N ( C J A ) DIAMOND EMPOWERMENT FUN (DEF)

JEWELERS' SECURITY ALLIANCE (JSA) JEWELERS VIGILENCE COMMITTEE (JVC)

W O M E N ’ S J E W E L R Y A S S O C I AT I O N ( W J A ) A S G L O B A L L E A D E R S I N T H E J E W E L R Y I N D U S T R Y, J C K S T R O N G LY B E L I E V E S T H AT I T I S A N E S S E N T I A L E L E M E N T A N D PA R T O F O U R C O R P O R AT E R E S P O N S I B I L I T Y T O G I V E B A C K A N D C O N T I N U E T O N U R T U R E A N I N D U S T R Y T H AT H A S G I V E N S O M U C H T O S O M A N Y. T H E J C K I N D U S T R Y F U N D W A S C R E AT E D I N 1 9 9 7 F O R T H E P U R P O S E O F D E P L O Y I N G F U N D S T O P R O J E C T S T H AT W I L L H A V E T H E M O S T S U S TA I N A B L E I M PA C T T O I M P R O V E G R O W T H A N D H E A LT H F O R T H E I N D U S T R Y AT L A R G E . T O D AT E , M O R E T H A N $ 6 M I L L I O N H A S B E E N G I V E N T O W O R T H Y G R A N T R E C I P I E N T S .

I T ’ S T I M E T O S TA R T T H I N K I N G A H E A D — J C K I N D U S T R Y F U N D 2 0 2 0 S U B M I S S I O N S W I L L B E AVA I L A B L E I N FA L L 2 0 1 9. V I S I T J C K O N L I N E . C O M / I N D U S T R Y F U N D F O R T H E L AT E S T U P D AT E S

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 5 - SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2020

recharge & restock at the Jewelry Industry’s Winter Oasis JCK TUCSON COMES AT AN ESSENTIAL TIME OF YEAR FOR BUYERS TO STOCK UP AFTER THE HOLIDAYS. THE BACKDROP OF THE TUCSON DESERT, COMBINED WITH AN ECLECTIC MIX OF VENDORS AND INSPIRING NETWORKING EVENTS, MAKE IT THE PERFECT BUYING TRIP FOR ALL WHO ATTEND! JOIN US AT THE JEWELRY INDUSTRY’S WINTER OASIS ON FEBRUARY 5 – 8, 2020 AT THE JW MARRIOTT TUCSON STARR PASS RESORT & SPA TO RECHARGE AND RESTOCK. AS DEMAND FOR ARTISAN-MADE CREATIONS CONTINUES TO INCREASE, A ROSTER OF TALENTED JEWELRY DESIGNERS PROMISES TO OFFER STUNNING, HANDCRAFTED PIECES AT THE SHOW — CHECK OUT A SNEAK PREVIEW OF THIS YEAR'S DESIGNERS:

M A R C E L R O E LO F S

ALEX SEPKUS

ALEXIS BARBEAU

ALISHAN

Learn More & Register Today : jckonline.com/tucson Contact Nina Mancini

Interested in Exhibiting?

p: 203.840.5469 e: nmancini@reedexpo.com

NEW DATE PATTERN FOR JCK LAS VEGAS & LUXURY 2020

T U E S D AY, J U N E 2 – F R I D AY, J U N E 5 , 2 0 2 0

S U N D AY, M AY 3 1 – F R I D AY, J U N E 5 , 2 0 2 0 INVITATION ONLY MAY 31 – JUNE 1

M O N D AY, J U N E 1 – F R I D AY, J U N E 5 , 2 0 2 0

LEARN MORE AT JCKONLINE.COM/LASVEGAS jckinsider.com

@ j c k e v e n t s # J C K L a s Ve g a s

The jewelry industryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s brand new event is here...are you ready?

w e N

DELIVERY SAN DIEGO

NOVEMBER 2-4, 2019 san diego convention center

san diego, ca

The JIS Show brand is bringing four decades of jewelry show experience, impressive customer service, and show floor transactions to one of the most happening destinations on the West Coast—San Diego. The new trade-only JIS Delivery Show is ideally timed in early November to secure all the inventory you need in preparation for the busy holiday season.

join us in beautiful

San Diego, CA this November Immediate delivery Both at-show delivery and factory-order writing are permitted, meaning you have the option to take merchandise home or have your order delivered at a later date, a unique feature of all JIS Shows.

Unique location From San Diego’s convenient travel options to strong cultural ties and amazing food options, it’s no wonder Forbes named this vibrant city one of 2019’s top travel destinations!

Diverse market Shop domestic and international vendors showcasing the newest trends, designs and products—not found at any other show.

Perfect timing Stay ahead of the busy holiday selling season with the early November date pattern and take home your customers’ most desired pieces for the holidays.

Learn more about the launch of JIS Delivery - San Diego, view the growing exhibitor list and to find out how you can participate, visit JISShow.com/SanDiego now!

NEW NAME, SAME PRESTIGE NEW OPPORTUNITIES TO WIN More chances to win • Marketing support for entrants • High visibility for winners and finalists at JCK Las Vegas and across social platforms • Winner featured on cover of JCK magazine

NOW WITH “EDITORS’ CHOICE” AND “INFLUENCERS’ CHOICE” AWARDS FEATURING AN EXCITING PANEL OF INFLUENCER JUDGES WITH

OVER 790,000 TOTAL FOLLOWERS COMBINED

Hannah Becker @diamondoodles diamondoodles.com

Katerina Perez @katerina_perez katerinaperez.com

Severine Ferrari @engagement101 yourengagement101.com

Benjamin G. Guttery @ThirdCoastGems thirdcoastgems.com

Erica Silverglide @GemologyGeek gemologygeek.com

Danielle Miele @gemgossip gemgossip.com

Becky Stone @DiamondsInTheLibrary diamondsinthelibrary.com

DAT E S Aug 1 – Oct 10, 2019 Entry period

Nov 15, 2019 – Jan 15, 2020 Voting

January 2020 Winner/finalist notification

March 2020 Winners and finalists announced

ENTER BY OCTOBER 10TH AT JCKJEWELRYAWARDS.COM All entries must be received by October 10, 2019.

Table of Contents 36

FROM THE EDITOR

FROM THE PUBLISHER

PROLOGUE

— INDUSTRY — 56

ETERNAL AFFAIRS

A collection of evergreen snippets about style, sales, millennials, and more

WE ARE THE WORLD

How the trade grew from an enclave on Maiden Lane to the multiethnic conglomerate it is today

GOLD STANDARD

Charting the metal’s average annual price from 1869 to the present

JCK…WHY?

Ten of our most head-scratching, craziest, and ugliest covers

— RETAIL — 72

THE SKY IS FALLING

Before e-tail was the enemy, jewelers despised department stores and credit cards.

TIME CAPSULE

Today’s watch industry is nothing like its 19th-century self.

SELL, SELL, SELL!

A by-no-means exhaustive retrospective of the magazine’s print advertisements

ENOUGH SAID

From-the-archives quotes about big brands and legendary retailers

— STYLE — 90

THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

What JCK (and its predecessors) said about fashion, decade by decade

THE LONG LEXICON

Defining fine, fashion, and bridge jewelry through the ages

CALL THEM BY THEIR NAMES

How David Yurman, Jose Hess, and others heralded the dawn of the independent designer JCKONLINE.COM

JCK090119_026_TOC.indd 26

9/4/19 5:21 PM

CONGRATULATIONS TO JCK FOR 150 YEARS!

S U P P O R T I N G N O R T H A M E R I C A N J E W E L R Y R E TA I L E R S F O R O V E R 2 0 Y E A R S .

Table of Contents

— DIAMONDS — 102

THE ICE AGE

The 5 biggest diamond developments in JCK ’s history

105

THE MAN-MADE’S TALE

People have been panicking about lab-grown diamonds for decades.

— BRIDAL — 110

AMERICAN WEDDINGS

When did diamonds become such a big bridal business? We investigate.

116

PUT A RING ON IT

Surveying the reigning engagement ring styles of the past 150 years

— GEMSTONES — 122

PLANET OF COLOR

We travel the world to track the global gemstone trade’s most important discoveries.

124

PEARL WONDER

Chronicling the gem’s evolution, from Kokichi Mikimoto to the climate-change crisis

128

THE ‘S’ WORD

So-called semiprecious stones have moved from supporting players to stars.

— INNOVATION — 132

THE PAPER TRAIL

How certificates have changed the way consumers buy gemstones

134

THE GAME CHANGERS

The 10 retail and tech revolutions that have most improved the jewelry business

138

152

EPILOGUE

POSTSCRIPT JCKONLINE.COM

JCK090119_026_TOC.indd 28

9/4/19 11:19 AM

™

and

™

are Trade Marks of De Beers Group.

Forevermark proudly supports and congratulates JCK on 150 years of industry excellence.

Made in Italy

Discover our latest collections in sterling silver and bronze.

Cover Look

To mark this momentous occasion, we gathered pieces spanning—you guessed it—150 years. Thanks to the designers, galleries, and estate jewelers who let us borrow some of their most precious gems.

No. 1 2 1

1. Daphne earrings in 18k fair-mined white gold with 18.55 cts. t.w. emeralds and 10.14 cts. t.w. white diamonds, price on request, Ana Khouri, 646-998-4840, anakhouri.com / 2. Edwardian platinum and 14k gold cocktail ring with 0.5 ct. diamond, 3.5 cts. t.w. sapphires, and natural freshwater pearls, $3,375, Wilson’s Estate Jewelry, 833-294-5766, wilsonsestatejewelry.com / 3. Mid–20th century Bulgari brooch with 6.5 cts. t.w. diamonds in 18k yellow gold and platinum, $25,000, Macklowe Gallery, 212-644-6400, macklowegallery.com / 4. 1930s platinum ring with 4.4 cts. t.w. emeralds and 1.5 cts. t.w. diamonds, $27,500, Macklowe Gallery / 5. Yara bracelet in 18k yellow gold with multicolored chalcedony and agate, designed in 1984, $22,000, Marina B, 212-510-8169, marinab.com

BECOME A BRAND PARTNER! Visit us at JIS Miami Oct 4-7 www.rebecca.it @rebeccagioielli Contact us: info@testiusa.com 310-319-9600

COVER PHOTOGRAPHY BY KENJI TOMA Paper Artist: JO LYNN ALCORN / Prop Stylist: ERIKO NAGATA (Inside cover) May 2017: Patric Shaw; June 2017: Gavin O’Neill; January–February 2018: Jean-Philippe Malaval

3–4: ANTONIO VIRARDI FOR MACKLOWE GALLERY

#EffyMoments

EffyJewelr y.com FINE

JE WELRY

E S T.

1979

Cover Look

Manufacturers of Fine Diamond Jewelry

Congratulations JCK for 150 years of success and wishing you many more years of unparalleled success!

No. 5

5 6

JIS Miami Booth #1815 Toll Free: 888-430-4344 email: info@gpanther.com www.gpanther.com

1. Paul Flato Art Deco–era platinum ring with 6.5 cts. t.w. pink sapphires and 2.5 cts. t.w. diamonds, $120,000, Fred Leighton, 646-759-9221, fredleighton.com / 2. Circa 1880 14k yellow gold necklace with watermelon tourmaline, $1,400, Wilson’s Estate Jewelry, 833-294-5766, wilsonsestatejewelry.com / 3. Zebra circle brooch with enamel, rubies, and diamonds in 18k gold and platinum, introduced in 1967, $28,500, David Webb, 212-421-3030, davidwebb.com / 4. Art Nouveau 18k yellow gold necklace with peridot, garnets, citrines, and amethysts, $25,000, Macklowe Gallery, 212-644-6400, macklowegallery.com / 5. Circa 1930 Pansy earrings with 13.75 cts. t.w. peridots, 5.21 cts. t.w. amethysts, 2.38 cts. t.w. diamonds, and 0.52 ct. t.w. emeralds in 18k yellow gold, $48,000, Oscar Heyman, 800-642-1912, oscarheyman.com / 6. Maltese Cross brooch with carved coral, emerald, diamonds, and white enamel in 18k gold and platinum, introduced in 1966, $68,000, David Webb / 7. Circa 1980 Charles Loloma 14k yellow gold cuff with lapis lazuli, coral, and Lone Mountain turquoise, price on request, Mahnaz Collection, 212-717-1169, mahnazcollection.com / 8. Ring with 7.72 ct. Santa Maria Aquamarine and 1.5 cts. t.w. Vanilla Diamonds in 18k Vanilla Gold, $25,000, Le Vian, 877-253-8426, levian.com / 9. Ivy earrings with 9.01 cts. t.w. tsavorite and 0.72 ct. t.w. diamonds in antiqued silver, 18k yellow gold, and platinum, $28,000, Martin Katz, 310-276-7200, martinkatz. com / (not pictured) Victorian rivière with 91 cts. t.w. old-mine diamonds in silver-topped yellow gold, $950,000, Fred Leighton

4: ANTONIO VIRARDI FOR MACKLOWE GALLERY

606 S. OLIVE ST. STE 2018, LOS ANGELES CA 90014 213.622.9866 | 800.742.8864 RAHAMINOV.COM

Cover Look

Color Fused By Fire

No. 0

3 2

nicolebarr.com 877.810.7312

1. Byzantine pendant brooch with black spinel, rubellite, and colored stones in 18k yellow gold, designed circa 1934, $35,000, Verdura, 212-758-3388, verdura.com / 2. 1953 Van Cleef & Arpels 18k yellow gold bracelet with turquoise and 3 cts. t.w. diamonds, $19,500, Macklowe Gallery, 212-644-6400, macklowegallery.com / 3. Retro Flower Bouquet en Tremblant 18k yellow gold ring with 0.25 ct. t.w. diamonds, $1,350, Wilsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Estate Jewelry, 833-294-5766, wilsonsestatejewelry.com / 4. Windsor Leaf ear clips with carved chalcedony, sapphires, and diamonds in 18k gray gold, designed circa 1960, $61,500, Belperron, 212-702-9040, belperron.com / 5. Eva bracelet with 3.95 ct. emerald and 25 cts. t.w. diamonds in 18k fair-mined white and yellow gold, price on request, Ana Khouri, 646-998-4840, anakhouri.com / (not pictured) Victorian cameo with onyx and pearls in 14k yellow gold, price on request, Beneficial Estate Buyers, 800-518-1137, beneficialestatebuyers.com; Renaissance Bouquet 18k gold ring with amethyst and pink tourmaline, 2007 (no longer in production), David Yurman; 18k yellow gold bracelet with sapphires, circa 1960sâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;1970s, $13,950, Provident Jewelry, 561-747-4449, providentjewelry.com

2: ANTONIO VIRARDI FOR MACKLOWE GALLERY

FROM THE

EDITOR

SEVEN MINUTES.

HAT’S HOW LONG it takes to walk from JCK ’s current office at One World Trade Center in lower Manhattan to its original location at 229 Broadway. We’ve traveled 150 years in time only to end up right where we started. For a jewelry magazine, coming full circle has the loveliest ring to it. When I accepted the position of editor-in-chief in the summer of 2010, I had no idea how much history JCK had been witness to—nor did I appreciate the remarkable editorial legacy that I was about to inherit. I had been writing for a couple of rival trade publications since 2000 and was keenly aware of JCK ’s juggernautlike position in the biz. But it had never occurred to me that I might be ready to take the editorial reins. Thankfully, I had two experts on staff to help with the transition: Melissa Bernardo, JCK ’s managing editor, who has not only made my job easier over the past decade, she’s become a trusted adviser and dear friend (all EICs should be blessed with a colleague as talented, devoted, clever, and puntastic as Melissa!); and news director Rob Bates, whose reputation for superb reporting is matched only by his capacity to write clearly, quickly, and profoundly about topics that few people, if any, know better. Since then, we’ve assembled a small team of superstar writers and creatives—including senior editor Emili Vesilind, style writers Brittany Siminitz and Amy Elliott, creative director Peter Yates, photo director Freyda Tavin, jewelry editor Rima Suqi, jewelry director Randi Molofsky, and copy editors Sharon Congdon, Ben Spier, and Lori White—without whom the beautiful publication you now hold in your hands would not be possible. Another thing I didn’t realize is that since 1903, when The Jewelers’ Circular-Weekly began to name its editorial staff, we’ve had only 10 editors-in-chief, including industry luminaries Hedda Schupak and Peggy Jo Donahue and the legendary George Holmes, a former newspaper reporter from Ireland whose two stints at the helm of the publication began in 1974 and totaled 23 years. Earlier this summer, I called Holmes to ask what he recalled most vividly about his days at JCK. “In the late ’70s, you had the beginning of the watch revolution and you had the whole business of diamond and gem investment; inflation was going crazy,” he told me. “I think the average jeweler was very confused.” Then, as now, running a retail jewelry business required owners to master myriad specialties, from crime prevention to gemology to sales. For 150 years, JCK has armed them with the knowledge they needed to thrive. And we intend to keep it that way for the next 150!

Victoria Gomelsky Editor-in-Chief vgomelsky@jckonline.com

JCKONLINE.COM

JCK090119_036_EIC_Letter.indd 36

9/3/19 5:00 PM

FROM THE

PUBLISHER

150 YEARS!

N 2004, I was 15 years into my career as an ad sales exec and publisher in the consumer magazine world. At the time, I was overseeing consumer advertising sales for the entertainment trade Variety, so even though I was on the consumer side, I was employed by one of the nation’s biggest trade magazine publishing houses, Reed Business Information. One Friday in June, there was a big shake-up at RBI, and it trickled down to me: Starting Monday, I would be the publisher of the jewelry trade magazine JCK. I’m embarrassed to admit it now, but I spent that weekend thinking, The first thing we need to do is change the name! I mulled over JWI (for Jewelry and Watch Industry) and others. By the end of the following week, I realized I had been placed at the business helm of one of the most esteemed trade publications in the country, not to mention the highly regarded “industry authority” for the U.S. jewelry industry. Needless to say, JWI was never mentioned again. It has been such an honor to hold this role since then. And what a time it’s been. In addition to the massive disruptions the internet has created for the jewelry industry, we’ve been riding the turbulent waves of a possibly even more disrupted business: publishing. Yet we’ve managed to morph and adapt with content and offerings that reflect changes in the way trade information is disseminated. Through it all, we’ve strived to make everything we do reflect the heritage embedded in those three letters: JCK. The core reason for our success—since our founding and, hopefully, through whatever changes the future brings—has always been the quality of the written words, photographic images, and layout designs we publish. Through these years, I’ve been proud to be part of an incredible advertising sales team. While market forces have reduced our number, we still have the best team in the biz, and I’m thrilled to work with them—Randi Gewertz, Robin L utin, Lars Parker-Myers, Mirek Kraczkowski, Dominika Olejnik, Quentin Chan, Kaushal Shah, Kristen Mirto, Patty Cartwright, and Natalie Chomet—on a daily basis. The editors worked very hard on the issue in your hands, and it shows. We think this special edition will go down as a keeper, and we truly hope future generations in this industry will come across it, leaf through its pages, and realize just what an extraordinary publication—and extraordinary industry— this is. Enjoy!

Mark Smelzer Publisher msmelzer@reedjewelrygroup.com

JCKONLINE.COM

JCK090119_038_PUB_Letter.indd 38

9/3/19 5:03 PM

Happy 150th JCK! Thank you for being an essential part of our success.

213.627.4019 | paradedesign.com

Allen & William Pung

Contributors

ERIKO NAGATA PROP STYLIST

In this issue: She sourced all the season’s most stunning flowers— roses, hydrangeas, serruria, ranunculus, and more—and arranged the blooms to best accessorize the jewelry on our front cover. Where you’ve seen her work: Magazines including Vogue, Vogue Italia, Numéro, and Elle Decor; advertising for Alexander Wang, Coach, Nike, Tiffany & Co., and Chanel USA, among others.

AMY ELLIOTT WRITER

In this issue: She dipped into the melting pot that is the

American jewelry industry in “We Are the World” (page 60), surveyed 150 years of wedding jewelry styles in “Put a Ring on It” (page 116), and waded through decades upon decades of JCK ’s pearl coverage in “Pearl Wonder” (page 124). Where you’ve seen her work: DuJour, Martha Stewart Weddings, Caviar Affair, Lucky, Brides.com, GoodHousekeeping.com.

NESTOR CERVANTES PRODUCTION MANAGER

In this issue: He photographed nearly all the vintage JCK covers

that appear throughout the magazine. Plus, he keeps his eagle eye on the color and accuracy of every single photo in every issue. Where you’ve seen his work: Elliman magazine; publications including Travel & Leisure and Time Out.

EMILI VESILIND SENIOR EDITOR

In this issue: She spent days with her nose buried in the JCK

archives, reading about the hottest jewelry styles from the 1870s to the present for “The Elements of Style” (page 90) and boning up on our coverage of independent jewelry designers David Yurman, Jose Hess, Penny Preville, Enid Kaplan, and Esther Gallant for “Call Them by Their Names” (page 96). Where you’ve seen her work: Vogue Australia, Los Angeles Times, WWD, Vox, Entrepreneur, The Hollywood Reporter.

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Contributors RIMA SUQI JEWELRY EDITOR

In this issue: She sought out a gorgeous array of jewelry to

represent our magazine’s entire history on our cover, which features everything from a Victorian-era onyx cameo to emerald and diamond earrings that debuted mere months ago at Paris Couture Week. Where you’ve seen her work: Financial Times, Departures, The Wall Street Journal, Architectural Digest, Galerie.

JO LYNN ALCORN PAPER ARTIST

In this issue: She created the awesome

WHITNEY SIELAFF

blossoms adorning the 150 on our cover. You’d swear they were real!

WRITER

Where you’ve seen her work:

In this issue: He interviewed multigenerational jewelry

Campaigns, posters, and catalogs for Boucheron, Perrier-Jouët, Dior, Giorgio Armani, Clinique, Macy’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Anthropologie.

retailers to help demystify the often-murky topic of certificates in “The Paper Trail” (page 132). Where you’ve seen his work: National Jeweler magazine, where he worked as reporter, editor, and publisher.

KENJI TOMA PHOTOGRAPHER

Tel: 323.255.6900 Fax: 323.255.6934 3334 Eagle Rock Blvd. • Los Angeles 90065 info@alexvelvetusa.com

renowned for his work with florals and botanicals, brought his inimitable flair to our 150th-anniversary cover. Where you’ve seen his work: Dior, Chanel, Chandon, Estée Lauder, and Shiseido Global; Hole & Corner, Flaunt, Rakesprogress, and So’Chic magazines. His “Estate Secrets” feature, shot for JCK ’s June 2018 issue, received an American Photography award.

SUQI: FIRAS SUQI; ALCORN: LORI CANNAVA

In this issue: The still-life artist,

THE INDUSTRY AUTHORITY

THE INDUSTRY AUTHORITY FOR 150 YEARS!

Editor-in-Chief VICTORIA GOMELSKY Creative Director PETER YATES

Managing Editor MELISSA ROSE BERNARDO

EDITORIAL News Director / ROB BATES rbates@jckonline.com

Publisher MARK SMELZER 917-273-0357 msmelzer@reedjewelrygroup.com

U.S. ADVERTISING SALES CT/DE/LA/MA/NJ/NY/PA Regional Manager / RANDI GEWERTZ 800-887-3905, fax 917-591-8501 rgewertz@reedjewelrygroup.com

Senior Editor & Social Media Director / EMILI VESILIND evesilind@jckonline.com

AK/AL/AR/AZ/CA/CO/HI/IA/ID/IL/IN/KS/KY/ MD/MI/MN/MO/MS/MT/NC/ND/NE/NM/NV/ OH/OK/OR/SD/TN/TX/UT/VA/WA/WI/WV/ WY/CANADA/MEXICO Regional Manager / ROBIN LUTIN 310-474-9610, fax 917-591-8501 rlutin@reedjewelrygroup.com

Photography Director / FREYDA TAVIN Art Director / ALFREDO CEBALLOS Jewelry Director / RANDI MOLOFSKY Jewelry Editor / RIMA SUQI

FL/GA/ME/NH/RI/SC/VT/PUERTO RICO Regional Manager / LARS PARKER-MYERS 203-840-5808, fax 203-840-9808 lparkermyers@reedjewelrygroup.com

Contributing Editor / BRITTANY SIMINITZ bsiminitz@jckonline.com Copy Editor / SHARON CONGDON Editorial Contributors AMANDA BALTAZAR, KAREN DYBIS, AMY ELLIOTT, KATHY HENDERSON, BOB ICKES, ARI KARPEL, VENESSA LAU, KRISTIN LUNA, MICHELE MEYER, RACHEL S. PETERS, MONA QURESHI-HART, STUART ROBERTSON, NANCY SIDEWATER, WHITNEY SIELAFF, DANIEL P. SMITH, MATT VILLANO, MARTHA C. WHITE, KRISTIN YOUNG

C I R C U L AT I O N Director, PubWorX / WENDY EDELSTEIN Subscriptions and Customer Service 800-305-7759 (North America) 515-247-2984 (other regions)

PUBWORX

Photography Contributors JOEL STANS, DIEGO UCHITEL, PATRICIA HEAL, JASON KIM, KENJI TOMA, STEPHEN LEWIS, MIKAEL SCHULZ, BALL & ALBANESE, RYANN FORD, LIAM GOODMAN, KEN GUTMAKER, NICOLE LaMOTTE, MARK LUND, JEAN-PHILIPPE MALAVAL, GAVIN Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;NEILL, CODY PICKENS, REBECCA STUMPF, KENNETH WILLARDT, JAMES WOJCIK

Operations Director CHRIS WENGIEL

PUBLISHED FOR REED EXHIBITIONS BY

Digital Imaging Specialists JAIRO CORLETO THOMAS OLESEN

VP, Content LIZ BUFFA

Operations Account Managers ADAM BASSANO ESTRELLA BIBAS Premedia Specialist VANESSA COPPOLA

VP, Business Development MATT CHERVIN

Marketing Manager / NATALIE CHOMET Account Director / HEATHER BOHL Art Director / ANDY ROSS Production Manager / NESTOR CERVANTES Marketing & Sales Coordinator / KATIE KENNEDY One World Trade Center, Floor 40 New York, NY 10007 For content marketing inquiries, please call 212-286-7330 headline-studio.com headline studio is a division of advance local

/ randy siegel, president

THE INDUSTRY AUTHORITY

Senior Vice President / Reed Jewelry Group (JCK, Luxury, Swiss Watch, JIS & JCK Tucson) YANCY WEINRICH 203-840-5481 / yweinrich@reedexpo.com

I N T E R N AT I O N A L A D V E R T I S I N G BRAZIL/EUROPE/MIDDLE EAST MIREK KRACZKOWSKI Ul. Skierniewicka 14 / 108, 01-230 Warsaw, Poland 48-22-401-70-01, fax 48-22-401-70-16 cell 48-600-344-881 mirek@jckonline.com INDIA KAUSHAL SHAH 1A – 1101, Lodha Bellissimo, Apollo Mills Compound, Off N.M. Joshi Marg, Mahalaxmi, Mumbai – 400011 Maharashtra, India 91-22-2305-9305; cell 91-98-2171-5431 kaushal@kaushals.com

ISRAEL RANDI GEWERTZ 800-887-3905 fax 917-591-8501 rgewertz@reedjewelrygroup.com THAILAND BUSABA THAWEEPHOON Reed Tradex Co. 32nd Floor, Sathorn Nakorn Tower, 100/68-69 N. Sathorn Rd., Silom, Bangrak, Bangkok, 10500, Thailand 66-2-686-7374, fax 66-2-686-7288 cell 66-96-725-1525 busaba.thaw@reedtradex.co.th

CHINA/HONG KONG/INDONESIA/ JAPAN/KOREA/MALAYSIA/ PHILIPPINES/SINGAPORE/ TAIWAN/VIETNAM QUENTIN CHAN Leading Media Ltd., Room B, 16/F 8 Hart Ave., Tsimshatsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong 852-2366-1106, fax 852-2366-1107 cell 852-9438-9577 quentinchan@leadingm.com

Barcelona Collection 888.674.8340 info@graymoorlanedesigns.com www.graymoorlanedesigns.com Graymoor Lane Designs is a division of Artistry, Ltd.

J C K L A S V E G A S , L U X U R Y & S W I S S WAT C H

JCK TUCSON

Event Vice President SARIN BACHMANN 203-840-5651 sbachmann@reedexpo.com

Account Executive NINA MANCINI Bridge, Design Center, Design@Luxury 203-840-5469 nmancini@reedexpo.com

Event Vice President SARIN BACHMANN 203-840-5651 sbachmann@ reedexpo.com

Account Executive BARBARA MURRAY Global Gemstone, First Look 203-840-5820 bmurray@reedexpo.com

Event Director KATE (NELLIS) YOUNGSTROM 203-840-5675 kyoungstrom@ reedexpo.com

Sales Executive DANIEL EYZAGUIRRE Antique & Estate, JSA Security, Lab-Grown Diamonds 203-840-5887 deyzaguirre@reedexpo.com

Group Marketing Director AMANDA GOCHEE 203-840-5375 agochee@reedexpo.com

Portfolio Sales Director JIM FOX 203-840-5958 jfox@reedexpo.com Group Marketing Director AMANDA GOCHEE 203-840-5375 agochee@reedexpo.com Special Events and Conference Director KATE (NELLIS) YOUNGSTROM 203-840-5675 kyoungstrom@reedexpo.com Strategic Accounts Manager JESSICA GOLDKOPF AUDET Luxury 203-840-5955 jgoldkopf@reedexpo.com International Accounts Manager ALEXANDRA WURSTER Passport, Hong Kong, Germany & International Companies 203-840-5332 awurster@reedexpo.com Account Executive LARS PARKER-MYERS Clockwork, Essentials & Technology, Gallery, Bella Italia, Retail Innovation 203-840-5808 lparkermyers@reedexpo.com

Centurion Scottsdale Luxury by JCK • JCK Las Vegas JA NY • SJTA • Prime The Select Shows Centurion South Beach

Call for a catalog 888.674.3250 www.artistrylimited.com

Account Executive ANA CROSBY Bridal, Currents, Diamond Plaza, Plumb Club 203-840-5305 acrosby@reedexpo.com

Retailer Account Manager JCK Las Vegas MONALISA DEPINA 203-840-5556 mdepina@reedexpo.com Retailer Account Manager Luxury ISABEL CAJULIS 203-840-5950 icajulis@reedexpo.com Marketing Manager JCK Las Vegas LINDSAY TYLER 203-840-5340 ltyler@reedexpo.com Marketing Manager Luxury AMANDA MARINI 203-840-5649 amarini@reedexpo.com

Portfolio Sales Director JIM FOX 203-840-5958 jfox@reedexpo.com Sales Manager NINA MANCINI Arizona Ballroom 203-840-5469 nmancini@reedexpo.com Account Executive DANIEL EYZAGUIRRE Tucson Ballroom 203-840-5887 deyzaguirre@reedexpo.com Retailer Account Manager ISABEL CAJULIS 203-840-5950 icajulis@reedexpo.com Marketing Manager AMANDA MARINI 203-840-5649 amarini@reedexpo.com

JIS Miami Booth #1800

Prologue

150 ARTWORK: YULIA BRODSKAYA; WATCH: © TIFFANY & CO.

An 18k gold Tiffany & Co. pocket watch, circa 1869

IN THE (very) BEGINNING A chronicle of the American jewelry and watch trade since 1869, as observed through the crystal-clear lens of its greatest champion

W BY VICTORIA GOMELSKY

HEN JCK WAS founded in July 1869 as the monthly merican Horological Journal, with offices at 229 Broadway in A New York City (now the location of the Woolworth Building), it was the first publication of its kind. An 1873 merger with The Jewelers’ Circular positioned it to acquire or vanquish a host of rival publications to become, in 1935, The Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone. Not until the 1990s did that cumbersome title morph into the cryptic, three-letter moniker used today. That’s the short version. The long version begins, in earnest, with an Englishman

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Prologue WHAT’S IN A NAME?

July 1869: G.B. Miller founds the American Horological Journal.

February 1870: Daniel H. Hopkinson founds The Jewelers’ Circular.

The Jewelers’ Circular eventually absorbs The Watchmaker and Jeweler (founded 1869), The Jeweller (1872), and the American Watchmakers, Jewelers, and Silversmiths Journal (1872).

November 1873: The American Horological Journal and The Jewelers’ Circular merge, and in 1875, The Jewelers’ Circular is renamed The Jewelers’ Circular and Horological Review.

1885: The Jewelers’ Weekly is founded.

1887: The Jewelers’ Review is founded.

“The Circular is more than a publication—it is an institution.…

Circa 1870 turquoise and diamond tiara, from the collection of Principessa Caracciolo di Castagneto; sold at Sotheby’s for $35,474

“It is read by practically every jeweler in the business and it is recognized as the mouthpiece of the industry.”

named Daniel H. Hopkinson—for even though G.B. M iller founded the American Horological Journal, we owe our g reatest debt to Hopkinson, founder of The Jewelers’ Circular. A proprietor “who championed right at all times, and vigorously denounced all frauds and shams,” he set out “to make the journal a leader in thought as well as instructive to those in the trade or about to enter it,” according to the editors of the magazine’s Feb. 5, 1919, golden anniversary edition. (Hopkinson didn’t live to celebrate the milestone; he died July 25, 1884, at the age of 44.) Since Hopkinson’s day, JCK—and its numerous forebears, all outlined above and on the following page—has covered

the news of the American jewelry and watch trade with such devotion that it’s difficult to distinguish the publication’s history from that of the industry it covered. For all practical purposes, they are one and the same. It is in that spirit that we’ve approached this special sesquicentennial issue—as a book-style tribute to a magazine and trade that have sustained each other for 150 years and counting. In these pages, you’ll find seven chapters, each devoted to a different category—Industry, Retail, Style, Diamonds, Bridal, Gemstones, and Innovation—and within each chapter, two or more articles covering topics that have occupied and

TIARA: COURTESY OF SOTHEBY’S

—The Jewelers’ Circular-Weekly, Feb. 4, 1914

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Prologue THE NAME GAME

1887: The Keystone Weekly is founded. 1891: The Jewelers’ Circular becomes The Jewelers’ Circular-Weekly.

1900 & 1902: The Jewelers’ Circular Publishing Co. purchases The Jewelers’ Weekly and The Jewelers’ Review, respectively.

1917: The Keystone Weekly goes monthly and changes name to The Keystone.

January 1935: The first combined issue of The Jewelers’ CircularKeystone appears.

April 1955: First issue without The in the name is published.

January 1990: The title—and logo—is shortened to JCK.

Circa 1870 peacock feather brooch with circular and cushion diamonds and claw-set oval sapphire; sold at Sotheby’s for $5,070

preoccupied our readers for the better part of 15 decades. Throughout the issue, we’ve included quotes from JCKs past, many of them surprisingly relevant today (see “Eternal Affairs” on page 56 for some choice examples). We hope that, in reading them, you’ll feel a greater connection to generations of jewelers who came before, all of whom grappled, like you, with the nuances of selling a product that remains fundamentally different from other consumer goods. (We dare you to find a better convergence of beauty, value, and meaning.)

Yet it’s not the universal and timeless appeal of jewelry that concerns us; enough has been said on that front. Rather, we’re consumed by the business of jewelry, which is why, since 1869, members of the trade have looked to the pages of “the industry authority” for answers to their most pressing questions about how to sell. And in turn, we’ve looked to them for questions. A marriage of convenience? Sure. But undeniably, too, a marriage of love, built on a mutual passion for an industry like no other. Happy 150th, JCK ! You’ve never looked better!

BROOCHES: COURTESY OF SOTHEBY’S (2)

Circa 1870 gold and silver brooch with sapphire, diamonds, and interchangeable diamond section; sold at Sotheby’s for $56,250

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H AP PY AN N I VE RSA RY J C K !

Thank you for providing the most iconic platforms for our industry to learn, promote and grow together. 877.OMI.GEMS | omiprive.com | prive@omigems.com

CHAPTER 1

INDUSTRY

SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2019

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ETERNAL AFFAIRS A collection of evergreen snippets from our archives BY VICTORIA GOMELSKY

Bridge of Sighs ring with purple spinel and diamonds; price on request; alessio-boschi.com

ORE INTERESTING—AND surprising—than a catalog of all the changes to affect jewelry retail since 1869 is a catalog of things that haven’t changed. And there are plenty. On heavy rotation in our issues over the last century and a half, you’ll find all of the following: reporting about crime in all its iterations, from classic smash-and-grabs to scams perpetrated by swindlers and dishonest employees; sales, marketing, and merchandising stories on how to “enliven business” and “clinch the sale”; trend and fashion coverage chronicling the changing tastes of an increasingly affluent population; and diamond news galore, including discoveries, market updates, supply forecasts, design novelties, promotions, and, yes, selling strategies. But most enlightening of all? The trade’s chronic hand-wringing over imitation gems, artificial stones, and fakes. “Dealers in diamonds are frequently asked by their customers if the process of making artificial diamonds has yet met with such success as to depreciate the genuine ones in value,” we wrote in April 1880. Were it not for the old-timey syntax and the attribution—this quote as well as those you’ll find on these pages—could easily describe today’s jewelry business. My, my, how times don’t change!

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THE JEWELRY TRADE It is possible for an object to be artistic without being art in the strict sense, just as it is possible for a thing to be r ealistic without being real. No doubt a good deal of jewelry is not even artistic; some of it is; a little of it reaches a plane that might incline one to classify it among examples of fine art. —“Can Jewelry Be Classed as a Fine Art?” The Jewelers’ C ircular-Weekly, Feb. 4, 1914

SALES

BRIDAL

Never domineer. No one likes to be dominated, not even the weakest of characters. Sometimes it closes tough sales but it always makes lasting enemies. There’s no repeat business for the domineering salesman.

Today’s bride is not so traditional as her grandmother in selecting her wedding date. She is likely to make it in the dead of winter or the height of summer. So don’t concentrate all your bridal promotion on June, but make it an all year-’round affair for most satisfactory results.

—“Unusual Bridal Service Builds Good-Will and Sales,” The Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone, March 1952

—“Plan Your Bridal Window for Every Season,” Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone, May 1956

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industry

JUNE 1961

ETERNAL AFFAIRS

Victoria Serpent cuff with green and pink tourmaline and diamonds in 18k gold and black rhodium silver; $10,500; sorellinanewyork.com

TRENDS

Oxidized silver bangle bracelets are once more in demand.

Tiny gold and silver moons are the fashionable talismans in Paris at present.… Necklets of small crescents are supposed to avert the evil eye and bring good luck—an old Roman superstition.

—“Novelties in Jewelry,” The Jewelers’ Review, September 1893

—“Trade Gossip,” The Jewelers’ Circular and Horological Review, October 1880 Luna necklace in 18k gold and oxidized silver with diamond pavé and ruby center; $5,800; andreafohrman.com

TRENDS The baguette has become important in the construction of fine jewelry because of its purity of line and proportion and its adaptability of many uses. —“Paris Forecasts Tremendous Jewelry Season,” The Jewelers’ Circular, October 1930

Baguette Cascade 14k gold earrings in multicolored tourmaline, London blue topaz, and garnet, amethyst, and iolite; $3,630–$10,475; janetaylor.com

Chubby bezeled Oculus open cuff with Muzo emerald, opal, and diamonds in 18k fair-mined gold; $6,950; danabronfman.com

COLORED STONES The bulk of the colored stone business in the average jewelry store is in the less expensive stones. These are usually set in birthstone or other types of rings and in moderately priced jewelry. The high priced, precious colored gems are most often sold in the diamond department. —“How to Sell Colored Stones, Rings and Jewelry,” The Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone, December 1952

COMPETITION

CRIME

SALES

TRADE PUBLICATIONS

With this sort of mass competition, how can the independent jewelry retailer survive?

A very common trick of diamond thieves is to…study the rings lying in the show window, and have one made exactly to pattern described. The gold is good, but the jewel is paste. They then come in twilight into the store and seek to exchange their imitation for the genuine.

The longer I am in the business, the more convinced I become that the successful selling of diamonds is mainly a state of mind.

The retailer desires to know what is new in style, and original in idea, and we shall make special efforts to keep him well informed.

—“The Psychology of Diamond Selling,” Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone, October 1963

—“What a Trade Journal Should Aim to Be,” The Jewelers’ Weekly, November 1885

—“Can the Independent Jeweler Survive?” Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone, April 1967

BRIDAL Today’s singles are not the losers of yesteryear. —“49 Million Singles: A Spending Market,” Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone, February 1975 SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2019

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—“Tricks of Diamond Thieves,” The Jewelers’ Circular and Horological Review, May 22, 1895

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industry ETERNAL AFFAIRS

The Pink Golconda Diamond, a ring by JAR with a 10.46 ct. oval brilliant-cut light pink diamond and single-cut diamonds; sold at Christie’s for $1,695,000 Chrona earrings with 41.55 cts. t.w. round brilliant-cut natural zircons and 2.42 cts. t.w. square- and round brilliant-cut diamonds in 18k gold; price on request; vramjewelry.com

DIAMONDS The word Golconda has always been a magical one in the diamond world, and surrounding it there seems to be as much or more of mystery and legend than of real and authentic history, but there is enough of the latter to make it interesting. —“Golconda and the Golconda Mines,” The Jewelers’ Circular-Weekly, Feb. 4, 1914

COLORED STONES

—“The Zircon: ‘Gem of Mystery,’ ” The Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone, June 1936

PEARLS The oysters that inhabit New York Harbor and Ago Bay, Japan are quite different. But the poor things have one thing in common: an increasingly hostile environment. —“Editorial: The Casualties of Ago Bay,” Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone, May 1973

—“Gem Mining USA: The Rush to Riches,” Jewelers’ CircularKeystone, July 1977

MILLENNIALS (BY ANY OTHER NAME) Teen-agers set the pace for a new store operation; they are just about to enter the stage of acquirement. The older set have passed this stage or are “set” in their buying habits and it is d ifficult to wean them from their original sources of supply. —“Teen-Agers Mean Business!” The Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone, December 1950

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2.86 ct. hexagon Montana sapphire and diamond ring in 14k white gold; $5,600; point nopointstudio.com

BANKING

THE JEWELRY TRADE

When a banker is approached for credit, the three words that immediately come to his mind and for which he wishes an answer is WHY? WHEN? HOW? WHY is loan required? WHEN will it be repaid? HOW, or from what source?

It has oft-time been declared by our envious friends in Europe that the American people adorn themselves with more jewelry than any other civilized nation upon the face of the earth.

—“Get Your Business on a Bankable Basis,” The Jewelers’ Circular, October 1930

—“Speech of Col. John L. Shepherd to the New York Jewelers’ Board of Trade,” The Jewelers’ Circular and Horological Review, Feb. 6, 1895

GOLCONDA: COURTESY OF CHRISTIE’S

COLORED STONES The zircon, for some inexplicable reason, appears to have remained almost unknown in the United States until very recent years.

America is going to be increasingly counted on to supply future gems. And while she’s no mining giant, she’s no pygmy either. There are enough quantities of good gem material to support commercial production for several important jewelry-store gems.

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833 Market Street, 10th Floor • San Francisco, CA 94103 • Tel: (415) 543-1580 • 800-864-0767 • Fax: (415) 398-3699 www.herco.com • Email: info@herco.com

WE ARE THE WORLD

Walk the floor of any jewelry trade show and it’s clear: Our industry is sustained by important contributions from key countries and ethnic groups, from the diamond cutters of Mumbai to the manufacturers of Hong Kong. How did we get so global? It didn’t happen overnight.

BY AMY ELLIOTT ILLUSTRATION BY MAXWELL BURNSTEIN

HE AMERICAN JEWELRY trade has always relied on an international supply chain to connect its operatives with gemstone sources from around the globe. But when the country’s first diamantaires, most of them European Jews who began arriving in the United States in the 1840s, set up offices on New York City’s Maiden Lane and, later, on the Bowery before landing at their current location on 47th Street, the industry was overwhelmingly local. “You didn’t know much about what was going on in the rest of the world, other than having the European connections to import diamonds and gems,” says diamond industry analyst Ben Janowski, founder of Janos Consultants. The industry mindset began to change in the 1970s, however, for a few reasons, including the introduction of India as a new center for diamond cutting and Hong Kong as a new hub for jewelry manufacturing (more on this later). It was also during this decade that the United States dropped its import tariffs on diamonds, “which opened the door for Belgian, Indian, and Israeli dealers to start selling directly to U.S. manufacturers and retailers,” Janowski says. By the mid-1980s, the American jewelry industry was

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a global landscape with touchpoints across several continents. It even prompted a JCK article in June 1985 advising “American businessmen” on how best to communicate with their “overseas counterparts,” including priceless tips such as “Don’t use colloquial turns of phrase like this is a whole new ballgame or let’s talk turkey.” International trade shows were promoted and covered frequently in our pages at that time, providing jewelers with a more organized, and scheduled, way to find what they needed and from whom, whether buyers were in the market for Swiss watches, piles of gold chains from Italy, or parcels of pink sapphires from a supplier in Bangkok. Today the pipeline is even shorter, and the players’ backgrounds are more diverse—and more interconnected— than ever. How did this happen? The definitive answer could fill a Ph.D. dissertation. But after combing 150 years’ worth of our archives and other media for insights, interviewing respected industry analysts, and seeking perspectives from a number of jewelry businesses whose ownership spans

multiple generations, we’ve identified five sociohistorical forces that had the greatest influence on the globalization of the American jewelry industry.

TRAVEL IMPROVEMENTS Early issues of our magazine consistently made note of “trans-Atlantic voyagers”—the jewelers and importers headed to Europe via steamer ship to buy loose stones from Sri Lankan and Thai suppliers in Paris, or to various Italian cities for finished gold jewelry. After World War II, travel by plane was a more common occurrence, thus making buying trips easier and faster. For example, in the 1950s and 1960s, a trip to the Sri Lankan capital of Colombo required roughly four days’ travel time from New York City; today, the same trip takes less than a day. And vice versa: “People from all over the world walk into our offices peddling stones, and it makes business fun and interesting,” says Tom Heyman of Manhattan-based heritage jewelry brand Oscar Heyman. (See “Once Upon a Time in America,” page 63.)

MASS PRODUCTION The traditional diamond pipeline began to transform in the early 1970s. For decades, diamonds had entered the American marketplace through a clearcut channel: Select De Beers sightholders claimed their allotted parcels of rough from what was then known as “The Syndicate” and cut the stones before selling the goods to New York City–based dealers, who in turn sold them to wholesalers and, finally, retailers. The creation of America’s interstate highway system was the unlikely catalyst for a shift in the supply chain: It led to the expansion of shopping centers, which in turn prompted the rapid-fire growth of large mall jewelry

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industry

NOVEMBER 1974

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4 9 7

trees in a factory in Guangzhou in China’s Guangdong province 2. Maiden Lane, the lower Manhattan street where the jewelry industry once converged, in the late 1800s 3. Diamond cutting in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, in 1975 4. Indian diamond cutters in Surat 5. 47th Street, the heart of New York’s Diamond District 6. Rough diamonds from the Argyle diamond mine 7. The retail hub 575 Fifth Avenue in the Diamond District 8. An aerial view of Hong Kong in 1970 9. Workers setting stones into silver in Guangzhou’s Panyu district

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chains targeting consumers at the middle to the low end of the market. In 1972, an article in Newsweek connected this phenomenon with the decline of the old-guard jewelry businesses that relied on family and community connections. “As people get old and die, we are not able to replace them,” a member of the Diamond Trade Association told the magazine. “In general, their sons who go to college do not want this kind of business. The flood of immigrants has dried up, and the old families are disappearing.” And the wave of the future, said reporter Jane Friedman, “is represented by the impersonal image of the Zale Corp.” And this turned out to be true, at least until the 1990s. When the mall retail format reigned supreme, chains like Zales began to meet customer demand for small diamonds (for engagement rings) and aggressively priced finished

jewelry (such as tennis bracelets) e asily—and cheaply—through a network of suppliers in India, Hong Kong, and mainland China. But the consequences of mass-producing jewelry and global sourcing were far-reaching. Mass merchandising “brought vigorous price competition into what was once a high-profit, slow-turnover business dominated by specialty retail jewelers,” says Russell Shor, senior industry analyst at GIA. “This forced the contraction of the supply chain and eliminated most of the large [domestic] wholesaling companies and secondary diamond sellers which had dominated the mid-pipeline until then.”

VOLATILE GOLD PRICES Elder statespeople recall wistfully when gold cost $35 per ounce, a period that lasted roughly from the 1930s to the early 1970s, when the stability of the

U.S. economy began to waver. Metal prices continued to rise well into the 1980s, in step with that decade’s reputation for being a time of freewheeling wealth and excess. The price increases have persisted in recent decades (see “Gold Standard,” page 66). “It’s ripped through the business,” Janowski says. “Mountings are the single most important component of jewelry-making, and when gold prices pushed the metal out of popular price ranges, it ripped out the core ability of retailers to produce a product that people could afford.” In response, the industry saw an opportunity to mitigate its losses: “In the early 1980s, some U.S. jewelry manufacturers began outsourcing to China,” Shor says. “Before the country’s economic reforms, however, doing business there was difficult. It was difficult to import diamonds and precious

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THE INTERNET

Like China, India became a low-cost outsourcing destination for American jewelry companies. But the country’s most enduring, and palpable, contribution to our industry is diamond cutting. In June 1985, JCK ran an in-depth, on-the-scene article about India’s diamond-cutting centers that opened with this: “The Indian diamond trade likes to say it did for diamonds what Henry Ford did for cars: It made them affordable to the American middle class.” When Australia’s Argyle diamond mine opened in 1985, India was able to corner the market on “low- quality smalls”—stones that wouldn’t be cost-efficient to cut in places like Belgium and Israel. There, such work was entrusted to master craftsmen who commanded a much higher salary than the teenagers who flocked to Surat, India’s diamond manufacturing hub, to learn a trade and earn a living—“like prospectors to the Klondike gold fields,” according to our article. Argyle was a game changer. The stones that streamed from the mine— small ones, with marginal color grades (including some browns that came to be christened champagnes and cognacs)— offered unprecedented growth opportunities for the already-thriving Indian diamond trade. The Argyle rough was sent to India for processing, creating more jobs, which meant building more

So much of our work now happens online that you may have forgotten how disruptive the internet was when usage became more mainstream around the turn of the millennium. Not only did the World Wide Web change the way consumers shop for jewelry, but it also made business-to-business transactions more expedient. These days the geographical distance between all points of contact has all but evaporated: A gem supplier can place orders directly with a mine in Brazil via WhatsApp. An American public relations firm can alert domestic and international media to breaking news on behalf of a Japanese client. A gallery can commission a custom piece from a Germany-based artist within hours of receiving an inquiry. Social networks also connect the industry on a global scale and have become vital platforms for moving product, whether you deal in gemstones, sell estate jewelry, or want to tell your followers where to find you at JCK Las Vegas or VicenzaOro. They also serve as vehicles for forming and nurturing friendships, sharing resources, and seeking colleague-to-colleague advice. As the pipeline between jewelry players has narrowed, the jewelry field itself has grown larger and more diverse. The boundaries are blurrier, but the possibilities are endless.

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WE ARE THE WORLD

RIO TINTO’S ARGYLE MINE

ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA

industry

stones. All that changed when China liberalized its currency and importing procedures, and its economy improved.”

sophisticated factories and making room for new wholesale businesses. Meanwhile, established Indian diamond industry leaders—who now had the funds, street cred, and connections to explore the higher-end sectors of the marketplace—began to sell downstream (i.e., directly to retailers). “Since the new millennium, probably in excess of 80% of stones are passing through Indian hands,” says Janowski. Veteran retailer Esther Fortunoff, who has always sourced stones and jewelry from around the world, credits the Indian cutters for having the greatest influence on the industry’s globalization. “Suddenly the industry had access to thousands and thousands of carats of diamonds that could be made into jewelry—a lot of it affordable,” she says.

T H E U . S . J E W E L R Y T R A D E WA S B U I LT B Y A N AMALGAM OF IMMIGRANT GROUPS WHOSE L E G A C I E S S P A N M U LT I P L E G E N E R AT I O N S

BY AMY ELLIOTT

S WE CELEBR ATE JCK ’s 150th anniversary, we’re also looking back on the origins of the American jewelry trade. The discussion is impossible to have without acknowledging the unique roles that Jewish, Armenian, and Indian immigrants played in the industry’s development. Many of these individuals’ forebears fled persecution, political unrest, and wartime upheaval in their homelands. Others were motivated by the irresistible promise of new business prospects and the siren song of American culture, with its opportunities for growth and prosperity no matter how humble one’s beginnings. One important thing these three groups have in common? Their ancestry is inextricably linked to jewelry, whether they were diamond merchants, bench workers skilled in the craftsmanship of an ancient trade, or gem-setters building on a heritage that could be traced all the way back to the networks of the Silk Road.

DIAMONDS AND BEYOND The Jewish diamond merchants who established New York City’s jewelry district in the 1800s came largely from the diamond centers of Holland and Belgium, plus Germany and, later, parts of Eastern Europe. A persecuted group since the 15th century, Jews were “ousted from merchant guilds, and excluded from traditional brands of handicrafts,” notes Barak D. Richman in the spring 2006 edition of Law & Social Inquiry. “They thus were forced into becoming suppliers of finished goods and extenders of credit.” Under such conditions, the diamond trade was an ideal profession. Gems are portable assets, something you can hide in your pockets if your surroundings suddenly become inhospitable or life-threatening, as was the case during the pogroms of the 19th and 20th century when Jews throughout the Russian Empire were intimidated, persecuted, and killed.

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WE ARE THE WORLD

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The religious violence, as well as the anti-Semitism that fueled it, reached a fever pitch around World War I and, most egregiously, in the years leading up to the Holocaust. Both events prompted waves of Jewish immigration to America. Many émigrés brought desirable skill sets pertaining not only to the diamond industry but also to the fabrication of fine jewelry, including the specialized tools required to make it. That the Jewish jewelry community thrived in the United States speaks to the fact that “people find comfort in their own communities, and people want to support each other,” says Tom Heyman, third-generation partner at the century-old jewelry firm Oscar Heyman, founded by Latvian Jewish émigrés to New York City in 1912. Like the Heymans, countless families belonging to the Jewish diaspora arrived on American shores and joined the jewelry trade over the past century and a half, building networks based on a tradition of trust in which deals were sealed with handshakes. These customs still shape the business today. “Jewish knowledge of the jewelry industry dates back centuries, and those businessmen and women who are being innovative, and growing with the times, have continued to be a force,” says Ronnie VanderLinden, president of the Diamond Manufacturers & Importers Association of America (DMIA).

FROM SILK (ROAD) TO JEWELS The first major wave of Armenian immigrants arrived in this country in the years immediately before and after the Armenian Genocide of 1915. The majority of those who escaped the massacres fled the Ottoman Empire (i.e., Turkey) and dispersed throughout the Middle East (Syria, Iran, and Lebanon) and Russia before coming to America. And it is no accident that many found work in the jewelry centers of New York and Los Angeles. “Armenians are to jewelry what the Swiss are to watches,” says Pierre Akkelian, founder of the Armenian Jewellers Association and cofounder of the Armenian Jewellers Foundation. “Jewelry is in our DNA going all the way back to Mesopotamia, the cradle of Western civilization.”

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2 3

1. Brothers Oscar

and Nathan Heyman circa 1905–06 2. Mother Anita Gumuchian (c.) and daughters Myriam (l.) and Patricia 3. Arman Sarkisyan at the bench with his father, Hamlet, in the background

“The Armenian kingdom was right in the middle of the Silk Road, which contributed to major growth of all kinds of trades, especially jewelry,” says L.A.-based jewelry designer Arman Sarkisyan, who, prompted by the collapse of the Soviet Union, moved to the United States from Armenia in 1990. Some of the most successful Armenian-American jewelry families came here in the 1970s and ’80s. The Tacorians, who went on to found Tacori, came from communist Romania. The Karaguezians (of Kirk Kara) and the Ghanimians (of Simon G) were based in Lebanon, where they’d held prominent positions as jewelers in Beirut, then known as “the Paris of the Middle East.” The 1975–90 civil war pitting Lebanese Christians versus Lebanese Muslims forced many Armenian families to seek refuge—and a fresh start—in the well-established Armenian community in greater Los Angeles, including the enclaves of Pasadena and Glendale. Myriam Gumuchian, a Belgian-born Armenian based in New York City, can trace her roots to Istanbul, where her family worked as diamond specialists. As owner of Gumuchian, celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, she believes the Armenians’ greatest contribution

to the American jewelry business is its tradition of superb craftsmanship. “Their skills and expertise have been passed down from generation to generation,” she says. “Most Armenians by nature are very proud people, and they have a passion for making beautifully executed pieces. They are very good tradesmen and, thanks to that, have become successful businesspeople.”

MAKING THE CUT India’s long-standing role in the creation of precious jewels dates all the way back to the 16th-century founding of the Mughal Empire. “Gold is such an integral part of India, and the artisans who made jewelry for royal families and private clients have always been essential to our stake in the jewelry industry,” says Parag Shah, president of the New York City–based third-generation diamond wholesaler Gem International and DMIA vice president and treasurer. But India’s most significant role in America’s jewelry industry wouldn’t become clear until the 1960s and ’70s, when its Mumbai-adjacent diamond centers began to thrive and prosper. Diamond cutters who got in the game early on were in a great position to take their wholesale businesses to the

next level, and many did so by establishing offices in New York and L.A. in the decades that followed. Having operatives stateside made it easy for early Indian diamantaires such as Eurogems Fine Jewelry, Gembel, Paras Diamond Co., and Sangam Diamond Corp. to transact with their U.S. clients, and their arrival in the States paved the way for others down the road. The second wave of Indian immigration came in the wake of the Great Recession in 2008, when the need for low-cost gems and finished jewelry was at an all-time high. “Indian banks were lending money to Indian manufacturers, and that allowed them to buy rough diamonds very inexpensively,” Shah says. “They were able to make huge sums of money, and it allowed them to set up offices in the U.S. And there was money available to invest in more modern factories and more modern machinery to improve the quality of the product.” In addition to their embrace of technology, Indian companies benefited from a built-in succession plan. Says Shah: “Sons and daughters come into the business automatically, so there’s a steady pool of talent.” As well as the start of a new chapter in an immigrant tale as old as America. JCKONLINE.COM

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industry

NOVEMBER 1981

GOLD STANDARD

GOLD STANDARD I N J C K ’ S F I R S T 1 0 0 Y E A R S , T H E M E T A L’ S P R I C E D I D N ’ T MOVE MUCH. BUT OVER THE PAST 50, IT ’S BEEN ON SOMETHING OF A ROLLER- COASTER RIDE.

BY ROB BATES

OR MOST OF the 20th century, the price of gold bullion was set at $35 per ounce. In 1968, the London Gold Pool created a two-tiered system that let gold respond to supply and demand, and the metal has been on a wild ride ever since. In January 1980, geopolitical angst and rising oil prices pushed the price to a then-record $873 an ounce, more than double what it had been just two months prior. That now-legendary spike didn’t last long. By the end of 1981, the price had settled back at $400. In 2001, gold began a remarkable 12-year bull run, crossing the $1,000 t hreshold in 2009, and introducing jewelers to a whole new profit center—trade-ins. “When it reached $1,300,” one retailer told JCK in 2010, “it was like a bus pulled up.” In August 2011, gold hit $1,910, which turned out to be its peak. Two years later, the metal posted its first annual loss in 13 years. Five years later, it was trading below $1,100. But gold is nothing if not resilient. At press time, the king of metals had staged yet another comeback, soaring toward $1,550, and perhaps setting the stage for another gold rush.

2012 $1,669

USD/oz

Willow Chandelier earrings in 24k gold; $2,550; gurhan.com

2018 $1,268.50

AVERAGE PRICE OF GOLD

$1,700 $1,600 $1,500 $1,400 $1,300

1869 1870 1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879–1933 1934–1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018

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DATA COURTESY OF ROY JASTRAM, DATASTREAM, WORLD GOLD COUNCIL

2001 $271 1973 $97.30

$20.70 1879–1933

1869 $27.50

$1,100 $1,000 $980 $940 $900 $860 $820 $780 $740 $700 $660 $620 $580 $540 $500 $460 $420 $380 $340 $300 $260 $220 $180 $140 $100 $60 $20

1980 $614.50

$1,200

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J_bj

C O L L E C T I O N

Patent Pending

CELEBRATING JCK 150 YEARS AS THE INDUSTRY AUTHORITY

550 South Hill Street, Suite #950 Los Angeles, CA 90013 Phone: 213.327.0863 Fax: 213.327.0865 www.amdeninc.com

INDUSTRY JCK…WHY?

APRIL 1951

DECEMBER 1961

OCTOBER 1966

JCK… WHY?

AUGUST 1967

From a fascist post-WWII flatware parade and a possibly possessed doll to kooky cartoons and questionable cover lines (“Can women outsell men in jewelry stores?”), here are 10 of our most head-scratching, craziest, and—let’s face it—ugliest covers

SEPTEMBER 1975

SEPTEMBER 1984

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SEPTEMBER 1982

SEPTEMBER 1991

DECEMBER 1992

SEPTEMBER 2005 JCKONLINE.COM

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The Essence of Timeless Design 18 Karat - Platinum - Fine Gems

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CHAPTER 2

RETAIL

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MARCH 1958

THE SKY IS FALLING

HEN THE AMERICAN Horological Journal and The In 1976, one particularly peeved jeweler sent J ewelers’ Circular, the two earliest predecessors to JCK, debuted Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone a copy of the letter in 1869 and 1870, respectively, consumers could buy jewelry he wrote to his credit card company, p rotesting from one place and one place only: jewelry stores. Then came that its monthly bill contained an ad for a department stores—retail behemoths with big footprints, big watch. “I am a jeweler and very proud of it,” he budgets, and a big selection of just about everything. told Gulf Oil. “Since my livelihood depends on “The department store extends its arms out into every selling watches, enclosed you will find (in three industry like a mighty octopus,” wrote The Jewelers’ Weekly in pieces) my Gulf credit card.” its May 15, 1895, edition. (The magazine was acquired by They also fretted about street vendors, who the Jewelers’ Circular Publishing Co. in 1900.) were then proliferating in major cities, offering Griped one jeweler in the following issue: “The honest a wide variety of items, including jewelry. “The sky and conscientious jeweler cannot compete with the department store…unless is their only overhead,” a jewelry store owner grumbled in 1976. he condescends to buy the worst rubbish he possibly can, and then by glaring, By the 1980s, jewelers again felt that they had protected their niche. “[The] misleading, and deceptive advertisements, with misrepresentation and lying behind jewelry offered in many guild stores isn’t carried by the mass merchandisers,” the counter, make the public believe he is really selling a gold dollar for 49 cents.” wrote Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone in June 1983. “They do not compete directly By the 1900s, the competition wasn’t just department stores, but discounters for the same customers.” who offered deals and percent-off pricing. But then came a new challenge: TV shopping networks, which in their early “There is probably no question…which years were heavy sellers of jewelry. A 1999 ought to be of more interest to the retail JCK survey found that some 60% of jeweler than the ‘price cutting’ problem,” consumers ages 35 to 44 bought jewelry said a letter to the editor dated Nov. 15, on a shopping network. And while the 1908. “[It] seriously affects the very exischannels soon shifted their focus to other tence of the honest jewelers.” items, their model of all-day interactive The answer, The Jewelers’ Circular-Weekly commerce set the stage for a more serious decided, was not to tout prices at all. “We enemy, one that jewelers are still grappling do not believe in any retail jeweler who with today: the internet. is doing a legitimate business advertising In 1999, with e-tailing still in its prices, other than to give a range of prices,” infancy, JCK talked to a small group the magazine declared on March 18, 1914. of pioneers that were selling valuable In the 1930s, jewelers were faced with diamonds and jewelry online and finding L O N G B E F O R E J E W E L E R S D E S P I S E D E - TA I L E R S , another question: As the Depression surprising, if limited, success. “Despite T H E Y R E A L LY H AT E D D E PA RT M E N T S TO R E S . A N D loomed, how much credit should they offer? all the hype over the Internet, for now C ATA L O G S H OW RO O M S . A N D E V E N C R E D I T C A R D S ! “Jewelers who may at present be doing Web-based diamond selling is more of business on a cash basis [should] hesitate a sideline than a full-fledged business,” BY ROB BATES and consider well before jumping into said the article. “Most of the companies ILLUSTRATION BY MAXWELL BURNSTEIN the credit business,” wrote J.P. Kennedy, running Web sites are connected vice president of the Bank of Italy, in an to another, r elated business, be it a October 1930 article. “The great economic problem in this country today is, traditional retail store, ‘upstairs’ operation, or insurance replacement business.” ‘How far can we go in mortgaging the future for the wants of the moment?’ ” Five years later, jewelers felt the competition more keenly. In 2004, one After World War II, America’s suburbs grew, and so did shopping centers that jeweler said she would boycott companies that did business with online retailers, catered to the nation’s burgeoning middle class. complaining they were operating on a 2% to 4% margin. “I don’t know about “Should we open a branch in that new shopping center?” asked a cover story you, but I couldn’t stay in business with a 2–4% profit,” she told JCK. “We are up in March 1958’s Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone. “That’s a question a lot of downtown against people who don’t own the diamonds, who don’t charge sales tax, who are jewelers are asking these days.” The piece said suburban jewelers tended to offer probably sitting in their pajamas. We don’t think that’s fair.” “same variety but lower quality” and the clientele was “more casual and relaxed.” Two years later, e-tail had outgrown its pajamas phase and had become Jewelers’ views of department stores also seemed to relax. According to the more professional—with Blue Nile in particular emerging as a jewelry bête magazine, those stationed in shopping centers looked at them less as competitors noire. “I know retailers who have told me flat out, I’m still struggling with how and more as beacons. “[They] draw traffic to a one-stop shopping center, and to deal with [it],” analyst Ben Janowski said in a 2007 article. jewelers reap the benefit,” wrote the magazine. Yet some retailers told JCK they had developed a suite of strategies to combat A 1966 survey found jewelers feeling more secure—at least by jeweler the new foe, including improved service, a better in-store experience, and standards: “The anguished cries jewelers were making a couple of years ago stocking of proprietary items. As it turns out, these were almost the exact same about unfair competition from discount stores and the like should finally be put methods 1970s jewelers told us they were using to battle catalog showrooms. to rest,” wrote the magazine. “The department store is the only major contender The bottom line: As much as jewelers pine for the good ol’ days, they have for sales, and then mostly in lower-end lines.” always faced threats—and have generally triumphed over them. The sense of calm didn’t last. In January 1973, JCK ’s retail panel expressed In 1973, Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone editor Donald McNeil took stock of growing trepidation about catalog showrooms—the “jewelers’ latest bogeyman.” jewelers’ gripes about catalog showrooms—a format that would be dead within Also on their minds was an unlikely competitor: credit card companies, which decades—and predicted that jewelers would “survive their current ordeal.” That were including offers for watches or jewelry with their monthly bills. is, he wrote, until the 1980s, when they would face “another end of the world.”

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TIME CAPSULE 3

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BY VICTORIA GOMELSKY

CK ’S EARLIEST FORERUNNER, a magazine called the American Horological Journal, is not what most people would consider an easy read. Founded in July 1869, the monthly publication featured 13 articles in its debut issue, spread across 28 pictureless pages, including a 5,700-word treatise on “Astronomy in Its Relations to Horology” and a news item on “the approaching total eclipse of the sun, on the 7th of August next.” In its hyper-detailed focus on watch- and c lockmaking, the text-only pamphlet was a reflection of its time. The advent of factories, machines, and industrialized production—much of it fueled by the expansion of the railroads—had spurred demand for timekeeping among the masses. As a result, watchmakers began springing up in cities and towns across America. “There was a huge boom in the industry,” says Jordan P. Ficklin, executive director of the A merican Watchmakers-Clockmakers Institute in Harrison,

Ohio. “They needed a way to share information and c ommunicate with their customers.” Emphasis was given to articles on how the Yanks’ industrialized pocket watch industry was outperforming Switzerland’s hoary cottage trade. “Everywhere and among all nationalities, the American watch is known and prized,” said an editorial in the August 1870 edition of The Watchmaker and Jeweler, one of the trade journals later absorbed by what eventually became JCK. “While on the other hand the business, so far as the better class of time-keepers is concerned, has almost ceased in Switzerland, and the watchmakers there are now chiefly engaged in producing hand-made imitations, which they are seeking to impose upon buyers.” Even when The Jewelers’ Circular, a jewelry trade publication founded in February 1870, acquired the American Horological Journal in 1873, the newly combined magazine religiously tracked news and developments in the American

4: WALTHAM PUBLIC LIBRARY

1. A 60 mm pocket watch—the largest Hamilton typically made—dating to 1906; 2. the Hamilton factory in Lancaster, Pa.; 3. a 1929 Jewelers’ Circular ad touting the selfwinding wristwatch; 4. the Waltham Watch Factory in Waltham, Mass.; 5. Vacheron Constantin Ref. 6073 wristwatch, the inspiration behind the brand’s contemporary Fiftysix collection; 6. the Seiko Quartz Astron, circa 1969, and a Seiko ad spread from a 1974 JCK; 7. Omega vintage models, circa 1968, and a 1905 ad from our pages; 8. the first Patek Philippe wristwatch with a perpetual calendar, circa 1925

Intent on marketing and selling its products directly to consumers, today’s watch industry is nothing like its former 19th-century self

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OCTOBER 1951

TIME CAPSULE

watch market for its target audience: store owners. “We see early on in the American watchmaking industry a desire to work with retail jewelers,” Ficklin says. “The different companies were producing parts that could be interchanged within one watch and producing watch movements of a standard size. Customers could pick the quality of the movement, the dial they liked, and the case they liked, and the jeweler would put them together right there.” This represented a sea change for retailers, who now had the ability to service customers quickly and efficiently. “Prior to 1850, when someone brought in a broken watch, the watchmaker or jeweler had to make something from scratch,” Ficklin says. “Now they could order the parts they needed, so it made repair easier as well.” The American industry happily continued like this well into the 20th century, until soldiers returning SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2019

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from the battlefields of World War I brought back a preference for wristwatches, once considered “effeminate,” says horological historian David Christianson. “When these hardened soldiers came back, wristwatches became the vogue and pocket watches went out of style,” he says. Indeed, a 1931 feature about watch straps in The Jewelers’ Circular reminded readers that “a substantial source of profits can be found by the alert jeweler in the forceful merchandising of watch attachments.” The explosion in demand for wristwatches, however, had an unintended consequence: “The American watch companies—Elgin, Hamilton, Waltham, Illinois—had a terrible time adjusting their production and machinery to making them,” Christianson says. It was the beginning of the end for the American industry and the start of Switzerland’s ascent, as companies such as Longines and Patek Philippe

began to best the Americans in their own backyard. Even as the two nations jockeyed for market share, with the Swiss emerging as victors in the years following World War II, American retailers remained the prize. “The Swiss companies would flood the jewelers and watchmakers with technical guides on how to properly service their watches,” says Christianson, who witnessed it all firsthand as a watchmaker at his family’s jewelry store in Kendallville, Ind. “If you go to these old watchmakers like me and look in their files, you’ll see file drawers full of technical information about Swiss watches.” Concurrently, the Swiss partnered with well-regarded American distributors—men like Norman Morris, Herman Plotnik, and Ben Kaiser, who distributed Omega, Vacheron Constantin, and Baume & Mercier, respectively—to ensure their timepieces appeared in retail showcases around the country.

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retail

TIME CAPSULE

“Ben Kaiser was the nicest man in the world,” recalls former Tourneau executive Andrew Block, who now runs his own New Jersey–based watch consultancy. “His company was called the David G. Steven Agency—that was Baume & Mercier. And that’s how relationships became the backbone of the industry.” Then came the quartz crisis of the 1970s. The onslaught of cheap Japanese-made battery-powered watches decimated half of Switzerland’s mechanical watch industry. The companies that survived emerged from the crisis in tatters, ripe targets for acquisition by publicly owned groups that saw an opportunity in positioning mechanical timepieces as luxury goods. In 1988, South African businessman Johann Rupert founded the Geneva-based Richemont group—then known as Vendôme—an early architect of today’s consumer-driven marketplace. Under his stewardship, the company began to acquire some of the greatest brands in Swiss watchmaking—Cartier, Montblanc, Baume &

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Mercier, and Vacheron Constantin—wresting power from distributors and retailers in the process. “In the mid-’90s, brands started to expand their product offerings and command more space in retail stores,” Block recalls. “Under threat of losing the brand, you had to give them more space.” By Block’s reckoning, the Swiss began to grow beyond their niches—men’s brands ventured into the women’s category, for example—demanding more showcase real estate and visibility from their retail partners, not to mention more sales. “If you couldn’t buy all that inventory, what would happen?” he says. “Brands started to get frustrated that you as a retailer weren’t representing the brand as it was properly supposed to be shown.” The tension between Swiss watchmakers and their American wholesale partners has come to a boiling point in recent years, as brands have tightened their distribution. Some, such as Audemars Piguet and Richard Mille, have abandoned multibrand retail

altogether in favor of going direct to consumers—via their own boutiques and e-commerce channels. In parallel, many Swiss brands have also restricted access to spare parts in an effort to consolidate service under their own roofs. Rolex was among the holdouts, but according to Christianson, the mega-brand canceled scores of spare parts accounts earlier this year, including his own, meaning he can still repair Rolex watches but must source parts on the open market. “One of the more difficult parts to find is a pallet fork for any of the Rolexes,” he says. “If you had a parts account, you’d be paying maybe $30 for it. Now if you can find it, you’re going to pay $230 and so will the customer.” Meanwhile, the smartwatch incursion, led by the category-leading Apple Watch, is threatening watch sales in the less-than-$1,000 segment. For retailers who’ve built their businesses on sales of timepieces, the news isn’t easy to read. But what else is new?

9: COURTESY OF CHRISTIE’S; 10: REPRINTED WITH PERMISSION FROM THE NATIONAL WATCH & CLOCK MUSEUM

9. Rolex Tropical Paul Newman Daytona, Ref. 6241, circa 1968; sold for $162,500 at Christie’s; 10. an 1869 pocket watch in 18k gold hunting case by the United States Watch Co.; 11–12. a 1963 Accutron–Bulova ad and 1930 Zenith ad from our pages; 13. issued primarily to pilots, a 1940s Hamilton pocket watch

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1870s

1880s

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1900s

SELL, SELL, SELL!

1920s 1910s

1930s SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2019

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1970s

SELL, SELL, SELL!

retail

1940s

1950s

1960s

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retail SELL, SELL, SELL!

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retail SELL, SELL, SELL!

2000s 1980s

1990s

2010s 82

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(213) 687-3985 | info@normansilverman.com | www.normansilverman.com |

@normansilverman

h e

r e c i o u s

o l l e c T i o n

Thank You For 150 Years oF Leadership and service To our indusTrY. Since 1962

jack@jackabraham.com

â&#x20AC;˘

jackabraham.com

RETAIL ENOUGH SAID

ENOUGH SAID

MAY 1958

We combed through years of articles for quotes about big brands and legendary retailers

TOUSSAINT: ARCHIVES CARTIER/© CARTIER; NAIL BANGLE: NILS HERRMANN, CARTIER COLLECTION/© CARTIER

BY KATHY HENDERSON

S THE PUBLICATION of record for the jewelry industry since 1869, JCK has chronicled the history and milestones of America’s most celebrated retailers, including brands still thriving in 2019. We poked through the archives to see how we covered five famous stores that have been in business over the past 150 years. Magnitude high jewelry necklace in 18k rose gold with 68.85 ct. cabochon-cut rutilated quartz, fancy brown-pink and orangey-pink diamonds, morganite beads, coral, onyx, and diamonds, price on request, cartier.com; Cartier’s signature nail bangle; legendary Cartier creative director Jeanne Toussaint in her Rue de la Paix office, 1950s; Shreve, Crump & Low on Tremont and West streets, 1903; the Boston retailer’s Newbury Street exterior, present day SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2019

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CARTIER

SHREVE, CRUMP & LOW

Cartier was founded in Paris in 1847 by jeweler Louis-François Cartier, who handed the business over to his three sons in 1899. The brand quickly became a favorite among the crowned heads of Europe, and Pierre Cartier opened a subsidiary in New York City in 1909. The savvy retailer famously acquired the Fifth Avenue mansion that still houses the flagship store by offering the wife of railroad magnate Morton Plant a double-stranded pearl necklace valued then at more than $1 million. The Cartier family retained ownership of the firm until 1964; it is now part of the Richemont group.

The second-oldest jewelry retailer in America (after Bixler’s in Allentown, Pa., which was founded in 1785) traces its roots to watchmaker and silversmith John McFarlane, who opened a workshop in 1796 across from Paul Revere’s silversmith shop in Boston. In the two centuries that followed, Shreve, Crump & Low created commemorative trophies (including the Davis Cup and the Cy Young Award) while serving as jeweler of choice to the elite families of New England. After a period of foreign ownership, Boston native David Walker purchased the business in 2005 and moved it to a townhouse in the Back Bay.

Who are Cartier’s customers? “Sophisticates who appreciate beauty,” [according to president Joseph Liebman]. On one recent afternoon, the Duchess of Windsor, Ingrid Bergman, Sammy Davis Jr., and Juan Trippe all said “hi” to each other in the store. Tony Randall came in not long ago to borrow a diamond necklace that he wore on the Johnny Carson TV show. Cartier’s is working on its image and is careful not to snoot the man-on-the-street who drops in to make a $25 purchase. —Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone, July 1968 Beyond traditional brooches, rings, pendants, earrings, and necklaces, Cartier’s identification with the Art Deco style was further enhanced when in 1923 it created its Department S, which made everyday objects such as lipstick cases, cigarette cases, powder compacts, and pens. The first director was Jeanne Toussaint, a trusted colleague of Cartier, a friend of Coco Chanel, and well-known among haute couturiers. Known as la Panthère in French, the famed Cartier Panther design was a tribute to Toussaint and her influence in the company. —JCK, February 1997

Charles H. Crump of Shreve, Crump & Low Co., is one of the opponents of the project for restoring the street railway tracks on Tremont Street, which were ordered taken up under an act of the Legislature when the subway was finished. He states that the firm removed from Washington Street for, among other reasons, the purpose of accommodating more fully their patrons that come to the store in carriages, and the return of the car tracks to the street tends toward just such congestion as Washington Street suffers from at the present time. —The Jewelers’ Circular, May 10, 1899 Fifty years ago, there were 115 jewelers in Boston. Today there are 535. Take, for example, the houses of Shreve, Crump & Low, Inc. [and six others]. They do not suffer at all in comparison with the great department stores and other business buildings by which they are surrounded. On the contrary, it may be said, and truly, that the jewelry stores (the word is inadequate to express their beauty) form one of the most attractive features of business thoroughfares. —The Jewelers’ Circular-Weekly, Feb. 5, 1919

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RETAIL

BEN BRIDGE

TIFFANY & CO.

Geary’s Beverly Hills opened in 1930 as a small neighbor hood shop on Beverly Drive offering home goods and hardware. By the ’50s, its focus had shifted toward high-end dinnerware, gifts, and items for entertaining Hollywood-style. The store became a leader in the wedding registry business and added fine jewelry and watches in 1997. When Thomas Blumenthal, grandson of a previous owner, reacquired the brand in 2003, he dropped the apostrophe from the name and opened an outpost on Rodeo Drive featuring partnerships with Rolex and Patek Philippe.

Five generations of the Bridge family still work in the company developed by Ben Bridge, son-in-law of the watchmaker who opened a jewelry store in downtown Seattle in 1912. The retailer, which now has 100 locations in 11 states and Canada (including 30 Pandora concept stores), was purchased by Berkshire Hathaway in 2000 but continues to be managed by Ben’s great-granddaughter Lisa.

Tiffany & Co. began as a stationery and fancy goods store, opening in 1837 across from City Hall in lower Manhattan, funded with a $1,000 loan from Charles L. Tiffany’s father. The firm began manufacturing jewelry in 1848 and introduced its signature blue packaging in 1878. Tiffany & Co. made its way uptown over the course of its first century, settling in its current location on Fifth Avenue in 1940. (A showcase on the first floor displays the 128 ct. Tiffany diamond, which Lady Gaga wore to accept an Academy Award in 2019.) The company went public in 1987 and currently has 300 retail stores worldwide.

Through the westernmost window [of Ben Bridge’s downtown store], passers-by can see Mohamed Shirzadian, Bridge’s diamond setter and jeweler, hard at work. Many of Bridge’s ads feature Shirzadian’s work—and his athletic prowess, which brought him a bronze medal in 185-lb. wrestling in the 1968 Olympics. —Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone, March 1973

The quick decision, firmness, and versatility of [Charles Tiffany’s] character are well illustrated by his conduct at the breaking out of the Civil War. While others were vacillating and shrinking from their duty, he had foreseen a prolonged struggle and promptly made arrangements to devote his capital and the facilities of his house to support the government. The elegant showrooms where the arts that wait on peace and plenty had formerly held exclusive sway were transformed into a depot for military supplies. If a jeweled sword or memorial was desired as a recognition of heroic deeds, Tiffany & Co. were generally called upon to make it. —The Jewelers’ Weekly, Dec. 1, 1886

Table settings are a ’round-the-calendar promotional device at Geary’s. Not theatrical productions, but simple, pleasing arrangements of functional tableware that might easily be imitated by any busy housewife. Because California homes have one foot in the garden, Geary’s added a gourmet corner to its balcony level: a room concentrated on tools that lend themselves to informal living. This is a man’s haven—for as Geary’s has discovered, every man is a master chef in his own backyard. —The Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone, December 1952 “I’ve never bought a watch from a website,” [collector Billy] Ruvelson said. He told us his relationship with Gearys, from whom he buys most of his watches, superseded any savings he could find online and that “you don’t get the full experience buying from an online retailer”—by which he meant perks like trips to Geneva to visit the Patek Philippe manufacture. —JCKonline.com, Aug. 14, 2017 A sparkler from Gearys’ 2004–05 collections; actress Elizabeth Taylor promoting House of Taylor Jewelry at Gearys in 2007; the store’s original 1930 incarnation, H.L. Geary; a Ben Bridge ad from Oct. 5, 1936, in The Seattle Star ; the Ben Bridge clock at Pike and 4th in Seattle; a Tiffany & Co. jewel from the 1960s; Tiffany’s 57th Street Manhattan flagship, 1940

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Ben Bridge Jewelers, the Seattle-based chain, marks its 75th anniversary this year. Employees are called—and considered— “business associates.” [The store] seeks applicants with a good attitude. A good candidate must like himself, care about others, and have a sparkle in his eye, someone who can make customers feel good about themselves and about the product they’re buying. —Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone, November 1987

[Tiffany chairman Walter] Hoving has made his reputation—and remade Tiffany’s—on the premise that taste is not an individual preference. He flatly states: “The customer is not always right. He’s almost always wrong!” Hoving recalls the West Coast owner of a topless bar who wanted Tiffany’s to make pasties for his girls—40 waitresses and 5 dancers, 45 in all. “Doubled, of course,” Hoving remarks after a pause. (Tiffany’s never made the pasties.) —Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone, August 1973

BEN BRIDGE CLOCK: JOE MABEL; TIFFANY: COURTESY OF THE TIFFANY & CO. ARCHIVES (2)

ENOUGH SAID

GEARYS

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LASTING QUALITY

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CHAPTER 3

STYLE

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

style

Micromosaic Scarab bracelet with glass mosaic, brass, enamel, and sterling silver; $2,850; eriebasin.com

1870

Victorian Aesthetic Movement sterling silver two-sided book chain collar necklace; $1,520; rubylane. com/shop/blackpersimmons-lux

Pearl, gem-set, enamel, and diamond brooch/pendant by Georges Fouquet; sold for $156,320 at Sotheby’s

1880

1890

THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE What JCK (and its predecessors) said about fashion, decade by decade

BY EMILI VESILIND

HROUGHOUT JCK ’S 150 years, hundreds of jewelry trends have cycled in and out of style. We didn’t cover them all—there were periods, particularly in the early years, when design was hardly discussed, let alone dissected—but most major jewelry eras were immortalized in our pages. And because there are few more clear-cut ways to digest a period of time than through its trends, fads, and fervors, we’ve distilled some standout jewelry styles from each decade of JCK ’s existence.

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1910

AUGUST 1977

THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

1900

Art Deco emerald, sapphire and diamond belt buckle brooch by Cartier; sold at Christie’s for $1,545,000

Antique Edwardian spinel and old mine– cut diamond ring in 18k gold; $3,850; beladora.com

style

J.E. Caldwell tourmaline, old European diamond, and pearl platinum pendant necklace; $4,300; wilsons estatejewelry.com

1920

1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s The Victorian era, which was already in its second half by the 1870s, was one of jewelry design’s most profoundly creative periods. When the American Horological Journal and The Jewelers’ Circular merged in 1873, the new magazine had plenty of juicy trends and innovations to report on—among them, the craze for detailed and whimsical micromosaics for both men and women; the global hoopla over Etruscan revival jewelry, inspired by widely publicized excavations of the Etruscan ruins of Italy; and the resurgence of silver as a stylish metal (precipitated by the discovery of a silver mine in Virginia City, Nev., in the 1860s).

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The 1880s saw the rise of the Arts and Crafts movement, which brought medieval and age-old folk styles into the fashion spotlight. Concurrently, the nature motifs that would come to define the Art Nouveau era—which would enthrall jewelry lovers in the coming decade—began popping up in Europe. In the April 1882 issue of The Jewelers’ Circular and Horological Review, an unnamed reporter wrote disapprovingly about jewelry featuring flora and fauna, complaining that trendsetters “have inaugurated in England an idiotic craze for what they term ‘the aesthetic in art’ whose followers worship sunflowers and apostrophize the virtues of the lily.” (Flowers and creatures are still in style, but JCK reporters have become decidedly less grumpy.)

The Art Nouveau movement, a backlash against industrialization, had a huge influence on jewelry design in the 1890s. Its flowing, switchback lines and organic and occult motifs were a signature of masterful jewelry designers including René Lalique and Georges Fouquet. Death and the occult were popular culturally; the Ouija board, which debuted in 1890, was often pulled out at social gatherings, and mourning jewelry was still worn. Among the product descriptions featured in The Jewelers’ Circular and Horological Review at the start of the movement was this gem from April 1895: “A perfectly natural-to-life ring is a hoop snake folding the tip of its tail to its mouth, its body remaining meanwhile in a rigid circle.”

Hot jewelry styles in the Edwardian era (1900–15) included bejeweled lorgnettes—spectacles with a handle that were worn on a chain for decoration as much as for practical use—and designs that harkened back to 18th-century jewelry, particularly the sparkling court of Versailles (Cartier reportedly urged its designers to look to 17th- and 18th- century Parisian architecture for inspiration). The icy whiteness of platinum was enormously popular, and a story in the June 1909 issue of The Jewelers’ Circular and Horological Review reported on a trend inspired by expeditioner Robert Peary’s historic journey to the North Pole in April of that year: jewelry that “used white metal symbolizing snow, and rings, pins, and charms incorporating poles in their designs.”

Platinum was still trending in the 1910s (milgraining, then a new technique, was extremely popular), but the U.S. military requisitioned the white metal in the early years of World War I, so other metals filled the jewelry void. Women still wore Art Nouveau’s lilting curves, but by the end of the decade, the bold, graphic lines of Art Deco—a movement born in Paris and defined by stark geometric motifs and densely gem-packed decoration— began appealing to stateside style-setters.

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

style

Van Cleef & Arpels Retro flower brooch with navette-cut citrines in 18k yellow gold; $4,250; beladora.com

David Webb diamond and emerald earrings, from a 1966 pearl and diamond design for Doris Duke

1.5 ct. old European, round, and baguettecut diamond buckle ring in platinum; $22,500; beladora.com

1930

1940

1950

1960

Midcentury 6 cts. t.w. diamond spray earrings in platinum; $7,450; beladora.com

1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s The Roaring ’20s ushered in a glamorous jewelry aesthetic made famous by Jazz Age flappers, the influencers of the day: white gold and platinum styles; long pearl necklaces, real and costume; hair clips and headbands set with rhinestones and diamonds to complement the new short hairstyles; and thick bangles made of Bakelite, metal, and plastic. “When she moved about there was an incessant clicking as innumerable pottery bracelets jingled up and down upon her arms,” wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald in the ultimate ’20s society novel, The Great Gatsby. Meanwhile, Indian maharajas and European nobility enticed designers from Cartier, Tiffany & Co., and Van Cleef & Arpels to craft grand, gem-laden jewels that would go down in history for their remarkable use of color, including carved emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and onyx.

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In 1930, The Jewelers’ Circular and Horological Review editor-in-chief T. Edgar Willson wrote, “Is yellow gold about to come back into popularity?” He was right—though the metal wouldn’t come back into favor until the end of the decade, when Art Deco matured into a style known as Art Moderne, whose focus on streamlined silhouettes was inspired by the M achine Age and helped tee up the yellow gold–heavy R etro style that would dominate the 1940s. Simultaneously, as the Great Depression wore on, jewelers were forced to find substitutes for precious gems. They used paste, rhinestones, nickel silver, zinc, and other non-fine materials to attract women eager to emulate the glittering gems worn by silver-screen stars like Bette Davis and Jean Harlow.

World War II changed the palette yet again. Necessity was the mother of the Retro period’s invention of gold jewelry starring quartz and cabochon-cut gems. Without access to the Asian markets and their bounty of colorful rubies and sapphires and lacking platinum—a strategic metal during World War II—designers looked to South America, especially Brazil, for stones that could be set in yellow gold to create big looks at reasonable prices. And while precious goods were limited, thanks to costume makers like Trifari and Monet, consumers were able to acquire jewelry styles crafted in humble materials, such as fruit and vegetable pieces inspired by film star Carmen Miranda’s famously towering fruit hats. Fashion magazines were now printed in color, so vibrant hues were the order of the day.

Jewelry design entered a period of profound creativity in the 1950s, as designers including Jean Schlumberger at Tiffany & Co. conjured incredible high-jewelry pieces dripping in diamonds—diamond spray styles were ubiquitous—a sign of the era’s renewed prosperity. Meanwhile, high-quality costume creations from Joseff of Hollywood and others had “a fine, precious look,” said style writer Gerry Gewirtz in the February 1956 issue of Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone. “Two all-powerful influences are the Oriental and the Empire,” she wrote. “New Spring jewelry is made so that the pastels are combined in magnificent arrangements, simulating paisley to complement the Oriental style of clothing,” while necklaces “look custom because they rim the neckline of the cardigan so nicely.”

The preppy whimsy of the 1950s gave way to the anything-goes aesthetics of the 1960s as organic and Indian influences took hold of the popular psyche, giving birth to the memorable designs of society jeweler David Webb, a master of complicated color-intense pieces commissioned by the likes of heiress Doris Duke. At the same time, a notable sense of nostalgia seeped into jewelry designs. “Antiques have received a special stimulus the last few years from a continuously growing market of customers who want precious jewelry and something that is different,” Gewirtz wrote in February 1963—an observation that could easily appear in our pages today.

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style

1970

H.Stern multi-gem 18k yellow gold cord drop necklace; $6,200; wilsons estatejewelry.com

1980

Domed earrings in 18k yellow gold with 0.35 ct. t.w. white gold–set diamonds; $2,950; beladora.com

1990

THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

Custom-made personalized nameplate necklace; $270; patricia field.com

Diamond earrings in iron and white gold; price on request; hemmerle.com

2000

2010

Small 14k gold and pavé diamond horseshoe necklace; $485; sydneyevan.com

1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s “The fashion explosion has become the fashion revolution,” Gewirtz wrote in August 1970. “The rules have been thrown out. Today, precious jewelry can be diamonds set in wood—or peridot or platinum. Any material makes it. All combinations work.” And by the mid-’70s, the disco era was popularizing midpriced jewelry, including mesh metal earrings and bib necklaces, hoop earrings, cuff bracelets, and sinewy gold chains. “Even sculpted jewelry looks softer,” Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone associate editor Annalee Gold wrote of the coming jewelry trends in February 1978. “Metal is folded like crushed fabric.”

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“Forget everything you read in this space six months ago! Once again everything goes,” wrote our New York editor Ettagale Lauré in August 1981. The line, in hindsight, was also an apt description of the decadent decade’s jewelry trends, which celebrated design that was oversize, over-the-top, and gilded. Trends in the “greed is good” era included pearl necklaces in styles ranging from neckline-framing prim to waist-length punky, enamel jewelry, and button earrings. Dynasty, Knots Landing, and other popular TV dramas made big diamond necklaces, earrings, and tennis bracelets must-have accessories for affluent consumers. Meanwhile, Madonna’s rubber bracelets and hip-hop’s bold gold styles shaped the jewelry choices of millions of teens and 20-somethings.

Minimalism in fashion, a tonic for the excesses of the previous decade, softened the demand for fine jewelry. Think of Kate Moss in those Calvin Klein ads, styled without jewelry, her hair slicked back. But as body piercing entered the mainstream (belly button rings were huge) and grunge bands made flannel the height of fashion, punky and tribal silver looks were in demand as were fabric chokers and, in a brief resurgence, flower power–esque plastic jewelry— fueled by famous neo-hippies such as Drew Barrymore and psychedelic ’90s band Deee-Lite. Pop culture’s role in the jewelry market could no longer be denied. By 1999, every woman in America wanted a yellow gold nameplate necklace, as popularized by Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw character in HBO’s influential Sex and the City.

Yellow gold tumbled back into the style spotlight in the 2000s, when celebrities including Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton donned dainty gold necklaces and earrings by designers including Jennifer Meyer. Perpetually hounded by paparazzi working for a crop of new online media outlets, the Hollywood style set wore jewelry that was suddenly identifiable—and shoppable—by the masses. Also in fashion: colored stone beaded bracelets, thick leather cuffs, layered white-metal looks, and jewelry with a spiritual bent, from string bracelets to amulets strung on leather. In the bridal arena, halo-style engagement rings began their sharp ascent to ubiquity.

Colored stones, once a side hustle for jewelers, moved center stage, with gems once dubbed “semiprecious,” like opal and morganite, graduating to fine-jewelry staple status. Other ’10s trends: slice gemstones and drusy, stacking rings and bracelets, perennially in-demand hoop earrings, and pearls used in nontraditional designs. “The future of jewelry design rests on designers’ willingness to expand the tools available to them, reinterpreting the definition of fine to include everyday materials…crafted according to the highest standards,” wrote JCK editor-in-chief Victoria Gomelsky in a 2015 blog post. Her forecast proved prescient. Design that feels innovative, but embraces diverse materials, is having its day. Here’s hoping that spirit of ingenuity continues well into the next century.

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MARCH 1980

THE LONG LEXICON

Pearl maven Coco Chanel in 1936 Colored paste and enamel Strutting Peacock brooch in sterling silver, circa 1900; $875; info@ vintageluxury.com

DEFINING—AND REDEFINING— FASHION, BRIDGE, AND FINE JEWELRY THROUGH THE AGES

HE JEWELER’S ROLE has certainly changed over the past 150 years, not just in fine-tuning a store’s merchandise mix, but in defining—and redefining—how merchandise is classified and understood by consumers. Here, we examine the oft-changing—and ever-confusing—lexicon for costume/ fashion, bridge, demi-fine, and fine jewelry, and highlight the ways JCK has helped jewelers navigate the shifting boundaries between categories throughout the decades.

Vintage signed Miriam Haskell jadeite necklace with rose quartz, agate, and givre beads; $699 from Little Creations; rubylane. com/shop/colleyo

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COSTUME/FASHION JEWELRY

Signature Marquise Station 5-stack ring with CZ in 14k gold on sterling silver; $270; freidarothman.com

Defined as jewelry made from materials such as base metal, glass, and synthetic gems, costume jewelry was born out of demand for fine jewelry by those who couldn’t afford the real thing (see Guy de Maupassant’s classic 1884 story, “The Necklace,” for a perfect e xample of how women with more style than means adorned themselves—by embracing paste, an artful but worthless glass used in imitation jewelry). In the 1920s, however, designer/ style icon Coco Chanel flipped the script by making layers of faux pearls and costume jewelry chic. Soon, even women obsessed with precious stones were proudly flaunting their fakes. JCK seized on the vogue in a 1930 article

CHANEL: ROGER VIOLLET/GETTY; TRIFARI: JAY B. SIEGEL/CHICANTIQUES.COM; PEACOCK: VINTAGELUXURY.COM

BY LAUREN PARKER

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style

Baby Scarab pin with Lucite, labradorite, synthetic turquoise, and crystal accents in gold- and rhodiumplated brass; $325; alexisbittar.com

titled “Sell Costume Jewelry to Express Women’s Own Individuality.” Costume jewelry surged in the 1950s as designers lavished Lucite and Bakelite with rhinestones. Brands such as Coro, Miriam Haskell, and Trifari cornered the market; vintage pieces stamped with their makers’ marks remain highly collectible today. In 1956, the Austrian crystal maker Swarovski, whose higher-end crystals had begun to replace cheap rhinestones, received the ultimate endorsement when Christian Dior used its iridescent Aurora Borealis crystal in his haute couture collection. Today, fashion jewelry is preferred over costume jewelry to emphasize trends. Apparel designers from Badgley Mischka to Givenchy license their SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2019

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names for affordable fashion jewels that serve as brand entry points (a Marchesa wedding gown can run $10,000; Marchesa earrings cost as little as $35). In doing so, they’ve complicated an already-polarized market, in which fast-fashion chains like Zara and H&M churn out cheap private- label pieces, while designer-fashion heavyweights—such as the perennially in-demand Alexis Bittar—create a niche for pricey, heirloom-style fashion jewels by cultivating celebrity and social media followers.

BRIDGE JEWELRY Despite silver’s millennia-rich roots in various cultures, sterling silver wasn’t celebrated in the United States as

bodily adornment until the second half of the 20th century. Prior to then, jewelers associated it with home items and giftware. In 1895, The Jewelers’ Circular and Horological Review devoted an article to spoon patterns and their provenance, emphasizing the importance of the “silver spoon” to the elite customer. But as formal dinners waned, jewelers began to treat silver as wearable. As we wrote in 1975: “Say ‘sterling’ to a jeweler and he’ll reply ‘flatware’ or— these days—maybe he’ll say ‘jewelry.’ After reading this story, he may want to add ‘design’ to his list of responses.” The term bridge jewelry ultimately joined the lexicon—to denote a bridge between costume and fine, most of it rendered in silver—although when that happened is murky. Experts concur that the term was coined by department stores, which often had bridge jewelry buyers yet sold that jewelry under the sterling silver label or even as designer pieces, depending on brand and styling. Regardless of what it referred to, bridge was always a trade term. “I’m fairly certain that consumers do not refer to, or think of, departments as bridge,” says Michael Barlerin, president of the Silver Promotion Service. Bridge departments are also fluid. “In the late 1980s, I was an assistant buyer for bridge jewelry at Macy’s,” says Karen Giberson, president of the Accessories Council. “When the costs of sterling and gold soared, much sterling was moved to fine departments and many designers who only worked in gold expanded into silver.” David Yurman, of course, took silver to a whole new level. “When we started our business, gold was in the front of the store and silver was in the back,” he says. “We helped change all of that, bridging fine and fashion jewelry.” Today, some bridge jewelry is unbranded, but designer bridge is increasing. “Buyers see our brand in the bridge jewelry price point, but we truly believe we are in a white space in the market, offering intricately designed sterling silver jewelry at an accessible price point,” says Brooklyn, N.Y.–based Freida Rothman, who sells to jewelers, fashion boutiques, and department stores.

DEMI-FINE JEWELRY The relatively new term demi-fine falls between bridge and unequivocally fine. Think lightweight pieces in karat gold and diamonds with hip styling at affordable prices. Aimed at 20- and 30-somethings seeking individuality and customization, the necklaces, rings, earrings, and bracelets can be mixed, matched, stacked, and worn in multiples. Brands like Brooklyn’s Wwake and Los Angeles’ Adina Reyter sell their demi-fine designs to fashion boutiques as well as jewelry stores. “We call this delicate jewelry fashion fine or demi-fine, and the idea is that the wearer becomes the designer by how she mixes and matches it,” says Wwake designer-owner Wing Yau. E-tailer Net-a-Porter expanded its jewelry business into the demi-fine category in late 2016, describing it as “serious jewelry that doesn’t take itself so seriously.” Since then, the number of demi-fine brands on the site has grown by 250%, according to reports. Ground zero for demi-fine jewelry may well be the Brooklyn boutique Catbird, where customers can get a 14k Forever Sweet Nothing bracelet welded on to their wrist for a mere $94.

THE LONG LEXICON

Vintage 1940s Trifari fruit salad brooch with pink glass and rhinestones; $248 from Chic Antiques; rubylane.com/shop/ chicantiques

FINE JEWELRY And what about fine jewelry, classically defined as 14k or 18k gold or platinum set with precious gems? Even that seemingly incontrovertible term has caused debate. In 1984, JCK editor-in-chief George Holmes wrote a story validating gold-filled as fine jewelry (gold-filled features 5% gold by weight defined by karatage; gold-plated refers to a thin layer of gold over brass that quickly wears off ). Titled “Inexpensive Needn’t Mean Cheap,” his editorial suggested a slogan: “14 karat gold-filled: beauty and quality you can afford.” But his campaign failed to take root. The more pertinent question may be: Do labels matter in a world defined by boundary-breaking artists like Yurman? If you ask us, not at all. Whereas jewelry was once categorized on the basis of one simple test—real or fake—decades of cross-pollination have resulted in a fashionable fusion of styles, materials, and price points that give today’s consumers the one thing they truly deserve: choice.

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CALL THEM BY THEIR NAMES

How David Yurman, Jose Hess, and others heralded the dawn of the independent jewelry designer BY EMILI VESILIND

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COURTESY OF THE DESIGNERS

18k gold ring, $1,525, wilsons estatejewelry.com; Gingko leaf pin and gold Art Deco pins with diamonds and colored gemstones, from the archives of Penny Preville; Jose Hess 0.87 ct. t.w. diamond 18k gold Modernist Musical ring, $2,900, wilsons estatejewelry.com

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CALL THEM BY THEIR NAMES

(From far l.) David Yurman Renaissance cable bracelet in sterling silver and gold with tourmalines and smoky quartz, 2004; Enid Kaplan Always Something brooch in sterling silver, 14k gold, niobium, Mylar, and pearl, 1986; Jose Hess 1990s 1.25 cts. t.w. sapphire

style

N THE EARLY 1980s, only a handful of years after e stablishing his first jewelry brand, Flaircraft, Jose Hess made the decision to start stamping his own name on the backs of his designs. The switch had been a long time coming, recalls the German-born designer, whose family fled to Colombia to escape the Nazis. “I had wanted to call my company ‘Jose Hess’ from the beginning, but when I mentioned it to people in the industry, they would say, ‘Who’s going to buy jewelry from someone named Jose? Nobody’s heard of you, and nobody’s going to buy it.’ ” In the late 1970s, when Hess was starting out, “Americans were not well-known for making jewelry,” he says. “So retailers often said their jewelry was made in their shop, or that it came from Italy or Paris. That was the spiel then. There were almost no designers selling by their own name.” But Hess, whose first job in the United States after emigrating from Colombia was in David Webb’s atelier, had no desire to toil at the bench in obscurity his entire career. When he changed his company name from Flaircraft to Jose Hess, he even made little plaques embossed with his logo that he asked jewelers to put in their windows—a radical request at the time. Though he didn’t know it then, the designer—along with contemporaries Penny Preville, David Yurman, Esther Gallant, and Beth Moskowitz—would pioneer a movement that recast the role of jewelry designer, both in and out of the trade, as a career with far-reaching financial, social, and cultural opportunities. That shifting of the sand brought seismic change to the way jewelry was bought and sold. There had been superstar American jewelry designers before, of course. Paul Flato designed dazzling jewels for film stars including Rita Hayworth, Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, and Katharine Hepburn in the 1930s; Duke Fulco di Verdura’s Fifth Avenue atelier in Manhattan was a hot spot for socialites and movie stars in the 1940s; and Webb, a North Carolina native, made his name bejeweling the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in pieces now considered midcentury icons. But for every Flato and Verdura there were hundreds

NOVEMBER 1972

of U.S. manufacturers creating generic engagement and f ashion jewelry that made up the bulk of jewelers’ inventory in the ’60s and ’70s. Additionally, the independent designers lugging their rings, brooches, and lariats into boutiques during the disco era were a different breed. They were, with exceptions, fine artists who chose jewelry as their medium—and crafted their creations for style lovers, not state dinners. Hence, their collections often competed directly with the generically manufactured pieces that filled nearly every jewelry case in the country. Many of Yurman’s first offerings resembled free-form sculptures, while Preville’s designs were cool and casual. “I wanted to make jewelry that I wanted to wear daily in my own life,” she says. “I was a mother and young when I started out, and I wanted to wear what I made.” Preville also remembers countless rejections when presenting her eponymous line to shop owners in the early days: “Retailers were very reluctant to sell a [branded] collection,” she says. “They were wondering why they should support me. They wanted to support themselves! I had brochures and signage, and I think some retailers didn’t understand that at all.” But soon, the tide would turn. By 1976, Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone editors were regularly reporting on designers including Hess, Preville, Moskowitz, Marsha Breslow, Alyce Simon, and Gayle Saunders—names that crept in among the enduring manufacturer labels (Av-Dor and High-O Silver & Gold Co., for example) that had dominated the magazine’s pages for decades. The magazine’s editors were also suddenly penning profiles on small indie brands such as “sculpture to wear” jewelry designers Rachel and Eli Gera and legendary Robert Lee Morris, referring to makers specializing in interesting and artistic designs. “Along with artists, sculptors, poets, and composers, struggling jewelry designers also dot the lofts and garrets of New York,” reported New York editor Ettagale Lauré (who now goes by Ettagale Blauer) in the September 1976 issue of JCK. “Like their fellow artists, they have visions, frontiers they intend to explore and a longing to achieve

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“Designer names will make inroads. But will retail jewelers be a part of it?” —JCK editor Ettagale Lauré

(Clockwise from top) Enid Kaplan Diana necklace/ brooch, in 14k gold, sterling silver, brass, tourmaline, and hematite, 1988; a Jose Hess magazine ad; Penny Preville Angel Wing necklace in 18k white gold, diamonds, and pearls, circa late ‘70s–early ‘80s; David Yurman Starlight necklace—a precursor to the now-signature Cable motif—in gold and diamonds, and a sketch by Yurman, 1980

tiny little office and he had all his jewelry in front of him and said, ‘I’m giving you first opportunity to take what you want.’ I said, ‘Are you insane? You’re the best there is!’ ” Morrow took the jewelry back to Reinhold and “sold every piece for double or triple the mediocre prices he was asking,” she remembers. Hess also had moments of doubt in his brand’s rocky early years—but the designer powered through by bypassing retailers and building his following directly—investing big-time in print advertising. Hess ran full-page ads in trades such as Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone, but also in Town & Country and consumer magazines that targeted affluent shoppers. The investment paid off. Jewelry fans loved the designer’s chic, occasionally trippy-feeling ads and asked their local jeweler where they could buy his pieces. (Then, as today, consumers wielded power.) In the January 1980 issue of JCK, retailer Bob Couch of Couch’s Jewelers in Anniston, Ala., astutely grasped that the decision to carry designer collections would be made by the consumer, not the retailer. “People walk into the store and ask for Peter Lindeman or Jose Hess,” he told Lauré. “I think they saw it in a magazine. They know what they want, and it’s up to you to come up with the goods.” For Hess, breaking into the business as himself, unveiled and out front, “wasn’t easy, and was a very slow process,” he says. But the undeniable brilliance of his—and others’— work ultimately cut a clear path to acceptance and success for the innovative designers who would follow. “Little by little, it became something very powerful.”

COURTESY OF THE DESIGNERS

CALL THEM BY THEIR NAMES

r ecognition.… A few prove proficient enough as artisans to at least survive. They are the ones who studied their crafts first.” But they didn’t just survive. Many went on to build successful and enduring businesses, racking up prestigious industry awards along the way. Their success had a softening effect on retailers, notes Preville, who won the Retail Jewelers of America (RJA) show’s designer of the year award in 1978. In 1980, David Yurman was named designer of the year by the Cultured Pearl Associations of America and Japan, the same year he received his first prominent inclusion in the pages of Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone. If the pages of the magazine are to serve as a guide, women jewelry designers were the pioneers of the late-1970s indie jewelry scene. An article by Annalee Gold in the August 1978 issue called out the “Hot Designers for ’79,” and all four were women: Gallant, Moskowitz, Enid Kaplan, and Just Theo (a designer who went by Theo—no last name). In the magazine’s January 1980 issue, in an article titled “The Dawn of Designer-Name Jewelry?” Lauré questioned the logic of the industry’s masking—even hiding—its design innovators. “Fine jewelry has an anonymity about it that is virtually unique. Why, in fact, is there no nationally known line of fine jewelry with a designer name? There has been, and still is, designer name jewelry—but it’s all costume,” Lauré wrote, name-checking designers such as Kenneth Jay Lane and Christian Dior. “It would seem natural to extend the same process to fine jewelry.” She also chronicled retailers’ reluctance to carry branded lines: “There is little question at this point that designer names will make inroads into the jewelry industry. But the big question is, ‘Will retail jewelers be a part of it?’ The answer seems to be—not if they can help it. Kicking and screaming, some retailers may be pulled into carrying the merchandise.” Several retailers quoted railed against the idea. Said one: “We are not crazy about selling someone else’s name.” Of course, not all retailers resisted. And in a few cases in the late ’70s and early ’80s, it was forward-thinking jewelry sellers who propelled independent designers forward. Yurman, arguably the most successful American jewelry designer then and now, found an early champion in Marie Helene Morrow, CEO of Reinhold Jewelers in Puerto Rico. Morrow, who’s nurtured scores of emerging jewelry designers in her long career, met the then-unknown artist in the early 1980s, when she was walking the aisles of the RJA show in New York City. She carried and promoted the David Yurman brand early and avidly, though at least once she had to talk the designer out of quitting the business altogether. “A few years after we met, David calls me on the phone and says, ‘I’m going out of business. This is too much for me,’ ” she recalls. “I said, ‘I’m hanging up and I’m taking the next plane to see you.’ And that’s what I did. I got to New York, and he was in this

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3OHDVH 9LVLW XV DW -,6 -$1< )DOO

CHAPTER 4

DIAMONDS

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Knysna Chameleon medallion with colored rough and polished diamonds, recut baguettes, and 1.3 ct. radiant-cut diamond; price on request; debeers.com

THE ICE AGE

The diamond industry is so multifaceted that we could fill a whole issue with developments and innovations. For now, we’ll limit ourselves to the 5 biggest throughout JCK ’s history. BY ROB BATES

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1888 De Beers Is Formed

A historic “A Diamond Is Forever” ad (Forevermark brought back the line in 2015)

In 1888, one year after JCK predecessor The Keystone Weekly was founded, there was an even more notable introduction: De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd. founder Cecil Rhodes had spent years in the South African diamond fields gathering all the mines under a single umbrella. He believed that if De Beers maintained tight control over diamond production, the price would never go down, and diamonds would always be considered valuable. “We can produce three, even four times present quantities,” The Jewelers’ Circular and Horological Review quoted Rhodes as saying in 1894, “but what we shall produce is just what the market requires.” Eight years later, the notorious racist and imperialist was dead at age 48. But his cartel model governed the diamond business for more than a century, until a combination of antitrust regulators and new competitors forced De Beers to give up the Rhodes map.

The Arcot II, a 17.21 ct. internally flawless D color diamond (sold at Christie’s in June for $3,375,000)

1938 De Beers Starts Advertising

At first, advertising diamonds was considered a radical idea that would diminish the product. But faced with dwindling sales during the Great Depression, in 1938 De Beers director Harry Oppenheimer, the son of De Beers’ chairman Ernest Oppenheimer, enlisted New York City agency N.W. Ayer & Son to work a little marketing magic. Thus began a nearly six-decade partnership, whose ad and public relations campaigns were so successful the trade is still wondering how to duplicate them. In 1947, copywriter Mary Frances Gerety penned its signature line, “A Diamond Is Forever.” In 2000, Advertising Age named those four potent words “the slogan of the century.”

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An artisanal miner pans for diamonds in Koidu, Sierra Leone, in 2012

1950s–1970s The Industry Gets

1980s The Rise

2000s The End of the Cartel

After World War II, the diamond market’s nomenclature was a mess, with companies describing stones with vague, often misleading terms like AAA and top white. GIA executive director Richard T. Liddicoat yearned to bring order to the chaos. In 1953, he developed the GIA grading system for color and clarity, starting the color scale at D to avoid misuse. The first GIA diamond reports appeared two years later. Together, the grading scale and lab created “the first universal diamond language,” wrote Jewelers’ Circular- Keystone editor emeritus Donald McNeil in 1981. Three years earlier, the premiere of the Rapaport Diamond Report had expanded that language further. Following a bit of tumult, the trade adopted “the list” as its price benchmark, though the mixed feelings never really went away. A December 1987 JCK article quoted this 47th Street maxim: “I have De Beers telling me how much to pay for my diamonds. I have the GIA telling me how good they are; I have Rapaport telling me how much I can [charge]…. What’s left?”

India is where diamonds were discovered, but for most of the 20th century, it didn’t play a big role in the diamond business. In 1983, Australia’s Argyle mine began producing large amounts of what were then considered “near gems.” Mass-market retail began to boom in the United States, creating a huge demand for price-point jewelry. Yet the labor required to cut the small Argyle stones often cost more than they were worth. Only India, with its large lowwage labor pool, could make it work. As the trade there grew larger, so did the diamonds. The Indian industry “has the ability to take everything,” an Argyle exec told JCK in 1996. Today, 90% of diamonds are manufactured in India, turning once-thriving cutting hubs in Israel, Belgium, and New York City into virtual ghost towns.

The summer of 2000 marked the unofficial end of the old diamond era and the beginning of the current one. On July 12 of that year, De Beers debuted its Supplier of Choice initiative and began to turn the page on over a century of market monopoly. Within a decade, it had sold off its $5 billion stockpile and watched its share of the market—which traditionally hovered around 80%—shrink to the low 30s. In 2012, the miner settled its antitrust issues in the United States, after decades of executives not being allowed to set foot here. Right after the De Beers announcement came a fateful World Diamond Congress, where the industry, under fire over the conflict diamond trade, agreed to the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme. “Participants were hopeful that the industry had made genuine progress in putting this damaging and morally troubling issue behind it,” JCK wrote. It didn’t quite work out that way. But after that summer, it was clear: The diamond industry could no longer do things its own way. It was now part of the wider world.

“Commoditized” DIAMOND CUTTER: SOPHIE ELBAZ/SYGMA/GETTY; SIERRA LEONE: FINBARR O’REILLY/REUTERS/NEWSCOM

THE ICE AGE

A diamond cutter at work in Bombay in 1989

Diamonds

MARCH 1988

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of India

& the Beginning of the Kimberley Process

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™

S TA N D OUT. RI S E A BOV E . Become a credentialed AGS Member. Our nonprofit Society is the only one that grants professional credentials—earned by those who share our vision of consumer protection, education and excellence. So you, as a member, can convey the qualities that are most important to your clients: ethics, integrity and knowledge. Find out how you can join our community of like-minded professionals, who are committed to the betterment of the jewelry industry and share the AGS mission of consumer protection, business ethics, and education. To apply for firm membership today, email membership@ags.org or call 866.805.6500.

CONGRATULATIONS TO JCK ON 150 YEARS AS ONE OF THE INDUSTRY’S MOST TRUSTED SOURCE IN NEWS!

diamonds

APRIL 1970

THE MAN-MADE’S TALE

THE MANMADE’S TALE Lab-grown diamonds have been a topic of concern for the industry for decades. We chart the paranoia.

TOP: MUSEUM OF INNOVATION & SCIENCE

BY ROB BATES

OW LONG HAS the diamond industry been worried about lab-grown diamonds posing a threat to the natural industry? As JCK ’s archives show, a long, long time.

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1880 Dealers in diamonds are frequently asked by their customers if the process of making artificial diamonds has yet met with such success as to depreciate the genuine ones in value. The London Photographic News gives the following description of the process of manufacture and clearly intimates that there is no danger of genuine diamonds depreciating in value at present.… “The diamonds are, however, of the most m inute character, and Mr. Hannay, of Glasgow, who has thus succeeded in making them, frankly owns that the game is not worth the candle.” —The Jewelers’ Circular and Horological Review, April 1880

1922 Diamonds have been produced synthetically, but the stones made in that way have been so small and have cost so much to produce that there would be no economic advantage in making them large enough to market, even if a way to do it were found. None but Nature ever will produce a clear white crystal at a cost to permit its being marketed. —New York City jeweler Julius Wodiska, “A Word About Artificial Diamonds,” The Jewelers’ Circular and Horological Review, July 26, 1922

1922

Modernist pavé hoop earring with 0.18 ct. t.w. lab-grown diamonds in 14k gold; $435 each; larkandberry.com

I have noted in many papers, and even in The Jewelers’ Circular, references to the alleged discovery made during the war for the process of making synthetic diamonds in this country (Germany). We cannot deny the possibility that there may come a time when Nature’s methods of making diamonds will be successfully revealed and imitated in the laboratory, but at best it is only a possibility, and the methods of procedure have brought us no nearer that goal than we have been for 30 years.… We must realize that all announcements of alleged discoveries in process of development are subject to suspicion, because an intelligent scientist, if he did obtain the secret of making diamonds, would first of all keep it to himself until he put out enough stones to make a fortune. For were he to give out the secret before that time, he would simply make his discovery valueless to the commercial world. —Alfred Eppler, Ph.D., letter to the editor, The Jewelers’ Circular and Horological Review, Jan. 4, 1922

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1955

Dr. J.W. Hershey, McPherson College, Kan., is the 1935 claimant of the title of artificial diamond-maker. He apparently uses a method similar to that of [scientist Henri] Moissan and states the product to be the size of a pin-head. “Sharpshooters” in London last spring attempted to pass off as a synthetic diamond a synthetic spinel. For a few days, they caused some excitement in the diamond market. —Sydney H. Ball, “The Diamond Industry in 1935,” The Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone, June 1936

1970 Man has made cuttable, gem-quality diamonds. The dramatic announcement was made May 28 in New York City by the General Electric Company. Reporters were shown diamond crystals—clear white, blue, and deep yellow, ranging from 60 points to 1.10 carats.… The jewelers with whom we’ve discussed those stones have not been alarmed. One importer put it this way. “Who should worry? I hear it’s costing GE $5,000 to make a one-carat stone.” —“First Gem-Quality Synthetic Diamonds ‘Grown’ by General Electric Scientists,” Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone, July 1970

For years, jewelers in their worst nightmares have dreamed that someone would make diamonds in the laboratory and rob them of the mainstay of their business.… There has been a continuous stream of reports, sometimes from Germany, sometimes from France, sometimes from Switzerland, sometimes from Kansas.… [Those reports] faded away in a mist of uncertainty, with nothing ever more heard from them, while the diamond trade has rolled merrily along.… Now at last it has happened. No intelligent person doubted for a moment that the General Electric company had really succeeded in producing the real thing when their announcement was made late in February.… The announcement put the diamond trade in a turmoil for several weeks after the initial publicity. General Electric handled the publicity in a way that was calculated to do a minimum amount of damage to the jewelry trade.… They reiterated, over and over, that their diamonds were industrial and they had no present ambitions to make gem stones. It has also been said repeatedly that the cost of their diamonds is in excess of the cost of natural material of comparable quality. —Fredrick H. Pough, “Synthetic Diamonds: A Threat to the Gem Market?” Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone, April 1955

1973

1990

Dr. [Kurt] Nassau closed his talk [at the American Gem Society Conclave] with a question that has nagged many a thoughtful jeweler like a nightmare: Will it continue to be possible to distinguish synthetic gems from the natural? In reply, he said: “I believe that in the short term, with a sufficiently large effort, one could grow synthetics which would be temporarily indistinguishable from natural gems by present examination techniques. Within a short time, however, new tests would certainly be found to distinguish them, and in the long run the cost to the manufacturer would not be worth the effort.” Those are comforting words. —Donald McNeil, “Can Lab-Made Stones Escape Detection?” Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone, May 1973

1996 Synthetic diamond jewelry is as predictable as an increase in rough diamond prices. We can predict it will happen, we just don’t know when.… General Electric, Sumitomo, and De Beers consistently affirm their policies of refraining from selling synthetic diamonds for jewelry use. However, crystal growers in Russia face a different reality: economic survival.… But will consumers embrace synthetic diamond jewelry? A clear answer emerges from the aftermath of a [Dateline] feature story on this subject: a tidal wave of inquiries to Chatham Created Gems, the San Francisco company involved in a joint venture with the Russian crystal growers.… As we go about our business as usual, synthetic diamonds begin a tiny trickle into traditional supply channels. Will you be prepared for the first synthetic diamond that crosses your desk? —Sharon Wakefield, “Synthetic Diamond Jewelry: Are You Prepared?” JCK, March 1996

The new General Electric synthetic diamonds are “beauties,” says a GE researcher who headed the project. More scientifically, they are G and F color and very high clarity, up to flawless. But they are not likely to wind up in diamond dealers’ parcels; they cost more than naturals of comparable quality. Diamond dealers don’t see any immediate problems.… [They] remember the worries of three years ago when the [synthetic gems from Japanese manufacturer Sumitomo] were introduced. “Everyone thought the stones would be all over the trade, but nothing happened,” recalls [dealer Joseph] Schlussel. —Russell Shor, “GE’s New Synthetics are ‘Costly Beauties,’ ” JCK, September 1990

2003 Typically, synthetic diamonds have been grown using high pressure/high temperature presses. However, synthetic diamonds grown by [chemical vapor deposition] techniques, which do not use high pressure, have up until now produced only microscopic polycrystalline industrial quality crystals.… It’s been assumed that growing single crystals large enough to be faceted would not be possible for years to come. Apparently, that time is now. [The] new CVD diamonds, like all other synthetic diamonds, are identifiable. The trade, De Beers, and the consumer, have nothing to fear.

—Gary Roskin, “CVD Synthetic Diamond Is Now Gemmy and C uttable,” JCK, August 2003

2010 Some thoughts on Gemesis’ announcement that it is mass-producing colorless gems: After I posted the story, I received some emails expressing skepticism, reminding me that mass-produced “white” stones have been talked about for some time—in fact, for decades—and are still not seen on the market in any quantity.… This is a different situation. Gemesis CEO and president Stephen Lux had a nice-sized assortment of beautiful stones that he showed me.… Still, some feel the industry shouldn’t panic until we see the “whites” of their, uh, gems. Which raises the question: Should the industry even panic? The trade’s main concern is that man-made stones will find their way into the normal stream of commerce without disclosure.… [GIA] has stressed that man-made diamonds are detectable with the proper machines. But most jewelers don’t have that equipment; only the labs do. —Rob Bates, “Lab Grown Diamonds, in Living Colorless,” JCKonline.com, Nov. 24, 2010

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COLORLESS HPHT SYNTHETIC CRYSTALS (0.5–0.69 CT.) GROWN BY JINAN ZHONGWU NEW MATERIALS CO. LTD. OF SHANDONG, CHINA: COURTESY OF GIA

diamonds THE MAN-MADE’S TALE

1936

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s c i e n t i f i c a l ly b r i l l i a n t. Our mission, to protect the consumer, is behind our research, technology, and integrity—giving you the confidence that your diamonds have been graded to the American Gem Society’s highest standards. Call a Client Service Representative today at 1.877.FOR.0CUT

www.agslab.com • 8917 W. Sahara Avenue, Las Vegas, NV 89117 • support@agslab.com

WE ARE PROUD TO BE A PART OF JCK’S LEGACY. CONGRATULATIONS ON 150 WONDERFUL YEARS.

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CHAPTER 5

BRIDAL

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AMERICAN WEDDINGS

Since the mid-20th century, selling diamond rings to brides has formed the backbone of the jewelry business—and JCK has counseled retailers every step of the way

“T

BY KRISTIN YOUNG ILLUSTRATION BY MAXWELL BURNSTEIN

HE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS were the first to use a ring as part of the marriage ceremony or contract. In Egyptian hieroglyphics, a circle or circular mark is used to denote or represent Eternity. From that fact has been developed the thought or idea that the wedding ring…because it is circular in shape and hence has no beginning or end… symbolizes the lasting quality of the love that has prompted man and woman to seek unity in the bonds of wedlock.” So wrote William Scheibel in the August 1957 issue of Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone. We have lived with this custom for so long, it’s almost shocking to learn that before World War II, the bridal business looked nothing like it does today. Although statistics vary widely, some estimates say only 10% of betrothed women received a diamond engagement ring in 1939. It’s a far cry from today’s bridal-centric retail jewelry market, in which upwards of three-quarters of U.S. couples

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get married with an engagement ring. To say nothing of what they spend: $6,351 on average, according to The Knot’s 2017 Jewelry & Engagement Study. To commemorate JCK ’s 150th year, we stepped back in time to review the bridal category over the decades: how it’s evolved, which products have gone in and out of style, and what things haven’t changed. A bride graced the cover of The Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone in 1936, but the articles inside focused on silverware and gifts rather than diamond engagement and wedding rings. “Whenever possible, the store makes contact through a mutual friend and inquiring whether or not the couple have made plans for their silver,” we wrote. The years that followed were punctuated by the Great Depression and a world war. Weddings declined—as did jewelry extravagances—as consumers struggled to pay for necessities such as food and housing.

PLATINUM ART DECO RING WITH 0.55 CT. DIAMOND CENTER, 0.25 CT. T.W. CHANNEL-SET EMERALDS, AND 0.36 CT. T.W. DIAMOND ACCENTS, $18,500, RAUANTIQUES.COM; DUCHESS ART DECO 14K WHITE GOLD OVAL HALO RING WITH 0.56 CT. T.W. DIAMONDS, $2,350, GABRIELNY.COM; RAFAELIA ART DECO RING WITH OLD EUROPEAN–CUT DIAMOND AND SINGLE-CUT DIAMOND AND SYNTHETIC SAPPHIRE ACCENTS IN PLATINUM, $17,500, BRILLIANTEARTH.COM; 14K WHITE GOLD FLORAL OVAL HALO WITH 0.63 CT. T.W. DIAMONDS, $2,100 (WITHOUT CENTER STONE), IMAGINEBRIDAL.COM; INFLORI PEAR-SHAPE RING IN 18K ROSE GOLD WITH 0.63 CT. T.W. DIAMONDS, $4,090 (WITHOUT CENTER STONE), TACORI.COM

AMERICAN WEDDINGS

BRIDAL

APRIL 1972

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BRIDAL Round 0.5 ct. t.w. diamond semi-set ring in 14k white gold; $2,502 (without center stone); stuller.com

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Immediately following WWII, however, the bridal business bounced back in a big way: 1946 saw a high of 2,307,747 weddings, according to the National Office of Vital Statistics. A 1947 marriage poll in the magazine found that jewelry sales attributable to marriages accounted for 43% of the business; engagement rings accounted for one-third of all band sales (excluding wedding bands); a wedding ring for the groom was bought in at least one of three instances (indicating the double-ring ceremony was gaining traction); the price range for engagement rings was between $100 and $199; and yellow gold was the most popular metal. There’s no denying the role De Beers played in the boom. In 1947, N.W. Ayer & Son copywriter Mary F rances Gerety came up with the phrase A diamond is forever and the bridal category hasn’t been the same since. By the early 1950s, amid the Korean War, marriage was

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AMERICAN WEDDINGS

Reconceived ring with 1.5 ct. sapphire and 0.62 ct. t.w. diamonds in platinum; $9,600; mindimondny.com

on the rise again. “Once again the sound of marching feet of men in uniform echoes in the increasing numbers of couples walking down the middle aisle to the altar,” The Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone wrote in May 1951. For independent jewelers, engagement and wedding rings were an important profit center, but so were silverware, dinnerware, and glassware of which “the coordinated merchandising should be a regular aim of the store,” we stated in June 1952. It didn’t take long for diamond engagement rings to dominate the category. In November of that year, the magazine reported that “diamonds are still a jeweler’s best friend.” Diamonds represented 23% of jewelers’ annual volume and a still higher percentage of profits. And diamond engagement rings produced as much revenue for the average retailer as all other diamond sales combined. Also by this time, 75% of jewelers were targeting yesterday’s brides—those who did not have the resources to buy engagement or wedding rings when they got married, but might now—as an important market. The average diamond engagement ring in the early ’50s at this time was $167. The magazine seized the momentum. “Encourage every engaged girl to have a diamond immediately on betrothal,” wrote advertising expert Dorothy Dignam in the April 1956 issue of Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone, in an article rife with images of diamond rings in emerald, marquise, heart, and brilliant cuts. “Sell the wedding band as a separate ring.… Today’s engaged girls are often teenagers, who think they know it all. Usually, they don’t know what ‘solitaire’ means! Explain things gently, be friendly, but help them make up their minds.” At the outset of the 1960s, a rising middle class with greater discretionary income boosted the prospects for bridal sales. “Is your store ready for the wedding march?” we asked readers in March 1959. By this time, 80% of brides received diamond engagement rings. Not only that, stones were getting progressively bigger. A decade later, however, the energy crisis, inflation, and the rise of antiestablishment thinking all created uncertainty in the bridal arena. In an April 1972 article titled “Is the Bridal Market Crumbling?” editor Ettagale Blauer questioned the future of nuptials: “Marriage contracts read like preliminary skirmishes for divorce actions, weddings take place in meadows, out of airplanes—everywhere, it seems, but at the altar.” That’s what the noisy headlines said, at least. Most girls were still getting married with traditional pomp—and diamonds! A December 1977 editorial cheerfully reminded jewelers that “even hippies like fine things.” The dawn of the 1980s brought with it a societal shift: A July 1980 article advised jewelers to boost engagement JCKONLINE.COM

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BRIDAL

Ring with 0.29 ct. t.w. diamonds in 14k white gold; $1,750 (without center stone); sylviecollection.com

ring sales by going after the remarriage market. (In 1979, one in three marriages was second time around.) Three years later, however, we heralded the return of the traditional bride and wedding. By the end of the decade, 24.8 million marriages had been recorded, more than in any other decade in history. September 1988 marked the first time platinum warranted its own feature story in the magazine. “It’s the most precious metal in the world—and the most difficult to work with,” wrote Cindy Edelstein. (Within a decade, the white metal would rule the high end of the bridal sector. In JCK ’s March 2001 issue, Platinum Guild International touted that at least a quarter of all couples chose platinum for their bands.) The 1990s saw the magazine embrace a progressive mindset. Two decades before gay and lesbian marriage was legalized

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in many states, jewelers recognized an opportunity to appeal to same-sex buyers. “You can’t afford to be blinded about who loves whom in today’s world,” wrote Charlotte Preston in JCK ’s June 1996 issue. Two years later, in September 1998, the magazine heralded yet another game changer: the internet. Although online jewelry sales were relatively small at the time, the category would soon see its sales double year over year. (Blue Nile, the Seattle-based pure-play diamond website, was one of the first to turn a profit in the fourth quarter of 2001.) Around the same time jewelers began to take the World Wide Web seriously, they also noted the emergence of a powerful new demographic known as Generation Y, aka millennials, a group of young people 72 million strong and defined by “the Internet, digital technology, and domestic terrorism,” we wrote in 2001. Once we’d entered the aughts, diamonds came under increasing scrutiny, as conflicts in Africa introduced the term blood diamonds into the jewelry lexicon. But the ongoing controversy didn’t derail bridal jewelry sales. Quite the opposite. By 2002, 81% of all brides received an engagement ring, with 74% of them being newly purchased diamond rings, totaling ring sales of some 1.7 million. The average expenditure was $2,000. When 2010 rolled around, bridal jewelry was unquestionably the backbone of a retailer’s business. JCK queried 100 store owners in January of that year and found that nearly half of all respondents’ sales were bridal in nature. Looking back on JCK ’s coverage of the category, it’s clear that much about the wedding jewelry business has changed in the last half-century—starting with the tactics retailers employ to court couples. The ubiquity of mobile devices means retailers have to capture a couple’s attention on the go, with responsive websites that work well on small screens. Then there’s the undeniable impact of social media, represented by young people’s fixation on Instagram. But the bridal sector—now termed the wedding category, in deference to the increasing importance of the LGBTQ market in the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark 2015 decision to legalize samesex marriage—remains a sales and marketing pillar for jewelers. And even though the trade now has its eyes firmly trained on millennials and Gen Z—two famously hard-to-pin-down demographic groups that will soon represent more than two-thirds of total global diamond jewelry demand, according to De Beers— our retrospective has taught us something essential: Diamond engagement ring sales are forever.

FROM TOP: V&A IMAGES/ALAMY; ADVERTISING ARCHIVES; NO CREDIT; FRANCOIS DURAND/GETTY

AMERICAN WEDDINGS

18k white gold ring with diamonds and rubies; $4,169 (without center stone); beverleyk.com

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PUT A RING ON IT

bridal

FEBRUARY 2011

PUT A RING ON IT

The most revealing thing we discovered when we surveyed the reigning engagement ring styles of the past 150 years? How many would be coveted—and considered marketable—today. BY AMY ELLIOTT

VICTORIAN

The discovery of diamonds in South Africa in 1867 floods the market with rose-, old mine–, and old European–cut stones. Snake motifs—popularized by Queen Victoria herself—are de rigueur, as are colored gemstones such as turquoise, opal, sapphire, ruby, garnet, and amethyst. In 1886, Tiffany & Co. introduces its famous Tiffany setting, which features the diamond perched high above the finger with six unobtrusive V-shape prongs securing it in place. The setting effectively makes the gem, not the metalwork, the star of the show. Victorian rose-cut diamond cluster ring in 14k gold; $1,835; foxandbond.com

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EDWARDIAN & ART NOUVEAU

Advances in metal fabrication allow for the use of platinum in jewelry. Because of the metal’s strength, jewelers can produce more intricate, detailed pieces that are also structurally sound. Designs that emphasize light, airy openwork incorporate milgraining and filigree, floral and nature motifs, and bows. In 1902, the Royal Asscher Diamond Co. invents the Asscher cut, but it won’t gain popularity until the 1920s, when Art Deco takes off. Edwardian ring with 2.01 ct. old European– cut round brilliant diamond and 0.12 ct. t.w. single-cut diamond accents in platinum; $16,375; wilsonsestatejewelry.com

1920s

1930s

The Art Deco design movement begins, inspiring engagement rings with sleek motifs and clean, crisp lines. Elements of Egyptian revival emerge in the wake of the opening of Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922. Calibré-cut sapphires, rubies, emeralds, and other colored gemstone accents supply splashes of color to the old European–cut and emerald-cut diamond rings of the day. For the first time, baguettecut diamonds appeal to consumers seeking a modern aesthetic.

The second decade of Art Deco style is marked by engagement ring designs featuring multistone settings in graphic geometric configurations. During the Great Depression, proportions scale down and carat weights decrease. The Chrysler Building’s glittering spire and other architectural inspirations are highly influential. Hollywood stars such as Gloria Swanson, Myrna Loy, and Carole Lombard are photographed wearing jewels in films, becoming the first celebrities to dictate trends to consumers.

Ring with 2.25 ct. old European–cut diamond center and calibré-cut amethysts in platinum; price on request; jewelsbygrace.com

Art Deco ring with a 2 ct. diamond center stone in platinum; $19,950; providentjewelry.com

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bridal PUT A RING ON IT

1940s

1960s

The postwar years are a time of great economic growth that leads to a rise in the upper middle class, which ushers in demand for more glamorous, diamond-centric bridal rings. Emerald-cut diamonds are fashionable, thanks in part to two celebrity engagements: Grace Kelly’s 12 ct. Cartier design from Prince Rainier III of Monaco (1956) and Elizabeth Taylor’s 29.4 ct. ring from Mike Todd (1957). Tapered baguettes officially make their entrance and stick around for a while.

No single style characteristic defines the decade’s engagement rings, but one popular look pairs colored gemstones alongside diamonds, like the opal-and-ruby engagement ring Roman Polanski gives to Sharon Tate. Mia Farrow receives a 9 ct. pear-shape diamond-and-platinum engagement ring by William Ruser from Frank Sinatra. And who could forget the gargantuan 68 ct. pear-shape Cartier diamond Richard Burton gives to Liz Taylor in 1969?

Ring with 0.75 ct. old European–cut diamond in tricolor 14k gold dome mount; $3,200; wilsonsestatejewelry.com

Ring with 3 ct. pear-shape Golconda diamond and tapered baguettes in platinum; $348,500; rauantiques.com

2.06 ct. diamond solitaire ring in 18k white and yellow gold; $73,762; Baume French Gallery on 1stdibs

1970s

Mall jewelry stores fuel demand for smaller marquise, pear, and round diamond solitaires, while the highest end of the market is dominated by glamazon rings from the likes of Harry Winston, Van Cleef & Arpels, and Cartier. Tricia Nixon’s wedding makes the cover of Life magazine; her ring features a sapphire center flanked by two diamond side stones. Estate ring with 0.55 ct. round brilliant diamond in 18k yellow gold; $995; ross-simons.com

2000s

LUCIDA: © TIFFANY & CO.

1950s

During World War II, platinum is requisitioned for military use, so yellow gold becomes the metal of choice for engagement rings in the early and mid-1940s. Transitional-cut diamonds begin to outpace the older diamond cuts. Marcel Tolkowsky emigrates from Belgium to the United States in 1940, and his round brilliant diamond-cutting specifications become the gold standard for American jewelers.

Tiffany & Co. debuts its Lucida diamond, a patented cut that’s a square shape with slightly nipped corners, just in time for millennium proposals. It’s the house’s first engagement ring debut since the Tiffany setting, and its square silhouette triggers increased demand for princess-cut stones at all ends of the market. Lucida diamond engagement ring and diamond band in platinum; price on request; tiffany.com

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1980s

1990s

Brides go for the gold. Princess Diana’s oval blue sapphire rimmed in diamonds from crown jeweler Garrard is an easy look for Main Street and mall jewelers to replicate, which they do. Brides are still enchanted by pear shapes and marquise cuts, but the settings are chunkier and bolder.

Platinum, platinum, platinum. Thanks in part to an aggressive marketing campaign by the bridal designer Scott Kay, the luxurious white metal has a resurgence and rises in value. Three-stone rings—to represent a couple’s past, present, and future—have a moment.

Estate ring with 1.17 ct. cushion-cut sapphire and 1 ct. t.w. round brilliant diamonds in 18k white and yellow gold; $7,195; ross-simons.com

Crown Setting ring with knife-edge shank and bezel-set surprise diamonds in platinum; price on request; scottkay.com

2010s

By 2010, halo engagement rings are the new normal. Small or pavé-set stones encircling a modest central diamond create the appearance of a larger solitaire look for less. This message resonates—and spawns a million iterations. Concurrently, Kate Middleton’s engagement ring, which belonged to the late Princess Diana, sparks a mini trend of blue sapphire centers and accents. French-set halo engagement mounting with diamonds in 18k white gold; $1,990 (without center stone); ritani.com

2019

As millennial and Gen Z consumers set the agenda, diamond provenance and socially responsible mining practices top their priority lists. Lab-created diamond manufacturers position their products to capitalize on the mindset. Vintage-inspired styles (popular since the mid-2000s), actual antique rings, and rustic diamonds are also hot sellers. Barcelona halo engagement ring with oval lab-grown Nexus Diamond and round lab-grown Nexus Diamond accents in 14k rose gold; $1,924; diamondnexus.com

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PROFIL PROF I L E S IN I N J E WE W E L RY

SPB GEMS

Hailing from a family that has been in the jewelry and gemstone business for 17 generations, Bhupendra K. Mookim is no stranger to the industry. The Mookim family has been making its name in jewelry and gemstones for centuries, serving as the ofﬁcial jeweler of India’s Mughal Dynasty and later as the jeweler for the royal family of Jaipur in the 17th century. So yeah, you could say gemstones are in Mookim’s blood. As a personal endeavor, Mookim recently donated a 1,401 carat aquamarine—estimated to have been cut and polished 100 years ago—to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. This gemstone is the most impressive aquamarine the family has possessed in its long history, due to its combination of size and no heat blue-green color. Today, Mookim’s New York–based SPB Gems continues the tradition of offering ﬁne gemstones to its customers.

Q&A

PIECE OF JEWELRY DESIGNED MOST RECENTLY:

A cat’s-eye chrysoberyl ring

NUMBER OF YEARS IN THE BUSINESS:

32 years in New York SPB Gems / SPB Creations NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 6 WHAT DOES SPB GEMS OFFER?

We offer a great collection of gemstones, both precious and semiprecious. WHICH GEMSTONES ARE CURRENTLY THE MOST IN DEMAND? Sapphires and

aquamarines WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE GEMSTONE? Sapphire and

tourmaline

HOW HAS YOUR BUSINESS CHANGED, IF AT ALL, IN RECENT YEARS? We have moved from

semiprecious to precious gemstones and from large wholesale orders to fulfilling smaller, more unique and exquisite requests.

JEWELRY DESIGNER OR INDUSTRY MEMBER WHOSE WORK HAS HAD THE GREATEST INFLUENCE ON YOU: David Yurman IF YOU COULD HAVE DINNER WITH 3 PEOPLE (LIVING OR DEAD), WHO WOULD THEY BE? Elizabeth Taylor,

FAMILY AND PETS: Married for 27 years to my wife Kavita, and we have three children: Deependra, 26; Mohit, 23; and Diya, 17. FAVORITE PASTIME: Driving with

the family and going on nature trips GUILTY PLEASURE: Watching America’s Funniest Home Videos! WHAT IS ON YOUR BUCKET LIST?

Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama

A trip to Antarctica

Lots of exciting things on the way! We’ll be doing trunk shows of fine gemstones in various stores around the country and will debut a new website of gemstones, the B.K. Mookim Collection.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU OFFER SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO BREAK INTO THE BUSINESS? Hard

FIRST (OR BEST) CONCERT YOU EVER ATTENDED: Stevie Wonder

FIRST MAJOR PIECE OF JEWELRY YOU PURCHASED:

IF YOU WEREN’T IN THE JEWELRY BUSINESS, WHAT WOULD YOU BE DOING?

WHAT LIES AHEAD FOR SPB?

A diamond ring for my mom, 30 years ago

work and honesty go a long way, as does keeping the constant zeal to reach your goals.

I’d be in the automobile business.

FIRST APP YOU OPEN ON YOUR PHONE: Email FAVORITE TRAVEL DESTINATION:

Iceland FAVORITE MOVIE:

Cliffhanger, Titanic

1. Cat’s Eye, approximately 40 cts. 2. The 1,401 ct. aquamarine donated to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. (Images not to scale.)

Gemstones from all across the world Congratulations JCK on your 150th year anniversary

BGK Graphics

S.P.B CREATIONS / S.P.B. GEMS

212-719-5170 • 888-SPB-GEMS • email:info@spbgems.com • www.spbgems.com

WWW.IMPERIALPEARL.COM

CHAPTER 6

GEMSTONES

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FEBRUARY 2018

PLANET OF COLOR

OVER THE COURSE OF JCK ’S 150 YEARS, THE GEM TRADE HAS BLOSSOMED INTO A $10 BILLION BUSINESS. W E C H RO N I C L E T H E M O S T I M P O RTA N T D E V E L O P M E N T S IN A WORLD GONE MAD FOR HUE.

Bird on a Rock brooch with kunzite, diamonds, and pink sapphire in 18k gold and platinum; $65,000; Jean Schlumberger for Tiffany & Co.

BY VICTORIA GOMELSKY

NEW YORK CITY

TUCSON

When mineral dealers began gravitating to this Arizona desert city in the 1950s, they couldn’t have known that within decades, it would grow into the world’s biggest gemstone marketplace, its growth prompting the 1981 formation of the Dallas-based American Gem Trade Association (AGTA), which helped provide structure and ethics to what had long been an unruly business. “A lot of jewelers don’t have time or expertise to travel around the world buying gems,” says Doug Hucker, CEO of AGTA. “When Tucson came around, colored gems became accepted. There was a ready marketplace and an organization that made them feel confident about purchasing.”

Around the turn of the last century, two New Yorkers— Tiffany & Co. gemologist George Frederick Kunz and the Gilded Age financier J.P. Morgan—served as a joint marketing machine for precious stones. On a 1908 trip to Madagascar, Kunz, for whom the gem kunzite is named, discovered the pink beryl morganite and named it after his patron, who’d hired him to amass some of the greatest gem collections of all time. The two were such kindred spirits that Kunz dedicated The Curious Lore of Precious Stones, mandatory reading for jewelers, to Morgan, “whose kindly advice and encouragement have done so much for the precious stone art.” PARAIBA, BRAZIL

Jaipur Bougainvillea 18k gold earrings with 55.56 cts. t.w. Muzo trapiche emeralds and lacquer enamel; $80,000; alicecicolini.com

The 1989 discovery of neon-blue tourmaline in the Brazilian state of Paraiba is one of the trade’s cautionary tales. “When I first saw Paraiba in the market, someone said, ‘It’s $180 per carat,’ ” recalls Robert Weldon, library director at GIA. “Most tourmalines were selling for $30 to $40 per carat. I said, ‘Whoa, who do they think they are?’ Famous last words. The deposit has always been very small, but the color has been so large that everybody knew about it—almost like a brand without a product. That’s what’s made prices for Paraiba so incredibly expensive.” How expensive? “Today, Windex-colored blue stones from Brazil can easily hit $50,000 a carat,” says Stuart Robertson, vice president of Gemworld International.

MUZO, COLOMBIA

A collection of cabochons at the 2019 AGTA GemFair Tucson

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Muzo, the largest and most prestigious of this country’s emerald mines, is located about 60 miles northwest of Bogotá. Known for producing emeralds that come in a Platonic shade of green, the source has enchanted gem lovers throughout history—the Mughal emperors in particular. In 2016, Muzo the brand debuted at Baselworld. Dedicated to finding, cutting, and bringing to market Muzo’s legendary stones, the company has teamed with a global coterie of cutting-edge designers in an effort to keep the age-old mine relevant well into the 21st century.

Platinum pendant with 6.19 ct. Paraiba center, 1.58 cts. t.w. Paraiba melee, and 1.7 cts. t.w. diamonds; $72,800; ericacourtney.com JCKONLINE.COM

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KASHMIR, INDIA

ARUSHA, TANZANIA

COVER: JEAN-PHILIPPE MALAVAL; AGTA GEMFAIR: COURTESY OF DANIELLE MIELE/GEMGOSSIP.COM; KUNZITE: CARLTON DAVIS; TANZANITE: © TIFFANY & CO.; JEWEL OF KASHMIR: COURTESY OF SOTHEBY’S; GEUDA SAPPHIRES: SPECIMENS BY JOHN EMMETT, PHOTOS BY WIMON MANOROTKUL/LOTUS GEMOLOGY, BANGKOK

Not only did the 1967 discovery of tanzanite in the Merelani Hills near Arusha introduce a beguiling blue-violet gem into the marketplace, but it also kick-started a gem-mining spree in East Africa that helped supply the industry for years to come. “The major gem sources in Asia—Sri Lanka, Burma, and Thailand—had the history,” says Robertson, “but it’s the African sources that started to produce the type of quantities and variety” the market needed to grow.

The 27.68 ct. Jewel of Kashmir sapphire

Emotion Charmeuse ring with Mozambican rubies; price on request; faberge.com

PLANET OF COLOR

Tanzanite and diamond pendant in 18k gold and platinum; $215,000; Jean Schlumberger for Tiffany & Co.

Stones from the Himalayan territory of Kashmir are considered the crème de la crème of the sapphire world, owing to their velvety, cornflower-blue appearance and their rarity. The mine, discovered in the 1880s, “was depleted in the 1920s, but there are still gems up there,” says Russell Shor, senior industry analyst at GIA. “But because of world events—Kashmir is right at the India-Pakistan frontier— you can’t work it very well.” Their evocative history and scarcity in the marketplace helps explain why secondhand gems such as the Jewel of Kashmir, a 27.68 ct. emerald-cut sapphire and diamond ring, sold for $6.7 million at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in October 2015, setting a world-auction-record price per carat for a sapphire.

GEMSTONES

The most expensive ruby ever: the 25.59 ct., $30.3 million Sunrise Ruby, sold at Sotheby’s in 2015

MOGOK, MYANMAR

Rubies from this storied region are the poster children for the gem trade’s two-decade-old obsession with origin. Today, a determination of origin on a lab report can make or break the sale “because it’s tied to value,” says Weldon. “You’re talking about the place but also about the pedigree and quality characteristics. In the 1990s, Mr. [Richard T.] Liddicoat published an op-ed in Gems & Gemology saying a gemstone should not be encumbered by where it comes from. Unfortunately, the market dictates differently.”

Geuda sapphires before (r.) and after (below) hightemperature heat treatment

MONTEPUEZ, MOZAMBIQUE

Prior to the discovery of rubies in Mozambique in 2009, “the market was very finicky,” Robertson says. “If it wasn’t Burma, it wasn’t ruby.” But with production in Myanmar at a virtual standstill, ruby prices began to climb “well in excess of $50,000 a carat.” The new find changed all that. In 2014, the Montepuez deposit was acquired by the Londonbased mining company Gemfields, helping to reinvigorate what had been a moribund market, not for lack of demand for the mythical gem, but for lack of supply.

Earrings with 9.97 cts. t.w. Madagascar pink sapphires and diamonds in 18k white gold; $120,000; valaniatelier.com

RATNAPURA, SRI LANKA

In the 1970s, dealers in this gem-trading hub pioneered the use of heat treatment to change the color of geuda sapphires from colorless to blue, setting the stage for a new era of gem treatments that expanded the colored stone market exponentially. “Jewelry manufacturers could count on enough diamonds to create lines of jewelry on a commercial basis, but with rubies and sapphires, they were never sure they had commercial quantities,” Shor says. The Sri Lankans’ ingenuity (somewhat) leveled the playing field.

ILAKAKA, MADAGASCAR

In 1998, the Malagasy town of Ilakaka became ground zero for the greatest sapphire rush in recent history, dwarfing the size of older, more famous deposits. The amount of material that hit the market sent sapphire prices tumbling. But even more significant was the find’s long-term effect on the trade’s understanding of origin. “Nobody was focusing on origin until those sapphires hit,” Robertson says.

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FEBRUARY 1971

2. Jardin Mystérieux

1. Kokichi

Mikimoto on Japan’s Pearl Island

PEARL WONDER

necklace with akoya pearls, morganite, spinel, sapphires, tanzanite, and diamonds in 18k white gold; price on request; mikimoto america.com

JCK has documented the evolution of the pearl trade in America since the late 1800s. From Kokichi Mikimoto’s cultured pearl invention in 1893 to the impact of today’s climate-change crisis, we track the industry’s progress.

“T

BY AMY ELLIOTT

he pearl is still the queen of gems. All really fine gems of the water find a more or less ready market in the trade and if of really fine quality command almost fabulous prices.” These words are taken from an 1893 editorial in The Jewelers’ Review titled “The Popularity of Pearls.” The pearls in question? All natural—wild-harvested from the Persian Gulf and purchased in Bahrain, or amassed by high-end importers through European dealers who procured from a variety of sources in “the Orient.” That same year, Kokichi Mikimoto, the inventor of cultured pearls, was on the brink of revolutionizing the pearl industry from the waters of Japan’s Ago Bay. The story Mikimoto set in motion is a tale of science and commerce peppered by ongoing exploration, of new cultivation techniques and breeding grounds, and of tireless efforts to refine and improve these processes in pursuit of an ever more beautiful—and desirable—product. A review of JCK pearl editorials past reveals the magazine has always offered tips for selling pearls to consumers, using tactics that are perennially relevant: Romance the scientific growth process, explain pearl quality factors, emphasize timelessness, and play up their trendiness (which has waned many times over the years, only to rebound stronger than ever). Here, we highlight the developments that helped build today’s $1.3 billion cultured pearl industry.

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3. An ad from the Feb. 1, 1905, issue of The Jewelers’ Circular-Weekly

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gemstones

4. Breakfast at Tiffany’s star Audrey Hepburn 5. Raindrop earrings

PEARL WONDER

with 3 mm–6 mm Japanese akoya pearls and 2.062 cts. t.w. diamonds in 18k white gold; $8,000; yokolondon.com

6. Marilyn Monroe’s Mikimoto pearls

1893 Kokichi Mikimoto (1) succeeds in culturing five semi-spherical pearls using akoya oysters in Japan.

1905 An ad in The Jewelers’ Circular-Weekly boasts that 20 million people admired the “largest, most expensive and artistic necklace in America”—featuring an abundance of pearls and diamonds—at the recent World’s Fair in St. Louis (3).

1917 The Jewelers’ Circular-Weekly reports on “the youngest of the earth’s divisions” when it comes to pearl growing: “The pearl fisheries of Australia have displayed wonderful expansion.”

1927 Mikimoto (2) sets up offices in New SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2019

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York City’s Delmonico building on Fifth Avenue and 44th Street.

1929

the end of 1936, however, “styles began to change and already the pearl has regained fashion’s favor.”

Pearl imports to America—presumably early akoyas—hit $10 million. But this lasts only until the stock market crash in October. Throughout the Great Depression, banks are forced to foreclose on pearl stocks, which had been used as collateral for loans.

1940 s

1937

1954

In our March issue, we look back on the low value of pearl imports during the Depression and cite 1934 as the turning point despite the fashions of the day, which did not help demand: “With high necklines, tailor-made effects, and sports costumes, the pearl necklace was not required to enhance the neck and bosom of milady.” By

Marilyn Monroe receives a Mikimoto strand as a honeymoon gift from Joe DiMaggio, further driving consumer demand for Japanese akoya pearls (6).

At the end of World War II, following Japan’s surrender to the Allies, GIs stationed in Tokyo buy strands of Mikimoto pearls to bring home as gifts for their wives and girlfriends. Demand for Japanese akoyas (5) spikes.

1957 The Cultured Pearl Association of America (CPAA)—an alliance of 15 cultured pearl dealers, including Frank

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PEARL WONDER

gemstones

9. 17-inch strand with 8.5 mm–10.5 mm South Sea pearls and 18k white gold clasp; $6,050; mastoloni.com

11. Australian South Sea pearl earrings with pink sapphires, tsavorites, rhodolites, and white diamonds in 18k gold; $10,770; rosavanparys.com

7. Multicolored Biwa pearls

8. 5 mm x 8 mm–

9 mm x 14 mm Rice Krispies pearls, produced in 1976

1959 Jacqueline Kennedy appears on the cover of Life magazine in a double-strand pearl necklace and goes on to popularize multi-row pearl styles in a variety of lengths.

1961 Breakfast at Tiffany’s arrives in theaters. We reports on the adventures of shooting on location in the Fifth Avenue store. Pearl necklace–clad Audrey Hepburn (4) playing Holly Golightly becomes one of the pearl industry’s most influential style icons.

1962 Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone reports on the debut of “nursery grown fresh water [sic] natural pearls” (7) harvested from oysters grown in Japan’s Lake Biwa that “vary in shape from baroque to round.”

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Kittay & Blitz Inc., a New York City pearler, runs an ad in the magazine claiming, “We’re overwhelmed. Our cultured pearl operation is temporarily too successful.” According to the ad, the company’s president “has hurried back to Japan” to replace its wholesale inventory of “the most-wanted, popular cultured pearl items.”

1968 China begins to produce inexpensive Rice Krispies–shape freshwaters (8).

1973 The magazine reports on pollution in Ago Bay (“the crop programmed for 1973–1974 is expected to be down another third or so”).

1981 Frank Mastoloni Sr. is quoted extensively in a New York Times article, “The Return of Pearls: A Guide for Buyers.” He puts the retail price of an 18-inch string of 11 to 15 mm South Sea pearls (9) at $60,000–$150,000, and a 16-inch strand of 11 mm Tahitian pearls at $25,000–$75,000.

1986 Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone editors position cultured pearls as a musthave holiday gift, pegging them to the popularity of Chanel bouclé tweeds (10): “Pearl attachments, mabe pearl earrings, and long pearl strands give the Chanel look added oomph.”

MID-1980 s Freshwater cultured pearl farmers in China begin seeding akoya oysters, producing the coveted pearls at a fraction of the price.

10. Glass pearl

and crystal earrings; $475; chanel.com/us

1989

(PREVIOUS PAGE) 4: EVERETT; (THIS PAGE) 7: PHOTO BY SATOSHI FURUYA/© GIA; 8: © GIA; 9: VICTOR VIRGILE/GAMMA-RAPHO VIA GETTY

Mastoloni Sr., Harry Robin, Edward Slutsky, Louis Borelli, and other industry leaders—is formed to educate retailers, designers, and consumers about the nuances of cultured pearls.

Sotheby’s sells a double strand of natural black and gray Tahitian cultured pearls for $649,000, the highest price ever paid for Tahitians. Designer Kenneth Jay Lane tells the Chicago Tribune that first lady Barbara Bush’s inauguration necklace— a triple strand of faux pearls (12) — quadrupled sales of his famous fakes. “The demand is so great, it’s as if they just invented the pearl,” he said. “I’ve done pearl necklaces for years and JCKONLINE.COM

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12. Barbara Bush, gemstones

Kenneth Jay Lane, and her pearls—still sold for $150 on kennethjaylane.com

1990 s Gem-quality Chinese cultured freshwater pearls flood the market. “The pearls were small, generally below 7 mm, and the quality was much lower than what we see today,” remembers Joel Schechter, CEO of Honora.

1995 The South Sea Pearl (11) Consortium is formed. The initiative, led by Nicholas Paspaley of Paspaley Pearling Co. and George Kailis of Broome Pearls, both of Australia, is intended to educate retailers and the public on how “to discern the genuine article from inferior imitations,” according to a Women’s Wear Daily report. “Other goals are to increase the gem’s visibility and sales volume worldwide.”

1996 Tiffany & Co. hosts a South Pacific– themed Sunday brunch for local and

international press to unveil its spring collection highlighting South Sea and Tahitian pearls, complete with palm trees and exotic macaw birds. Women’s Wear Daily says the event is part of the house’s “year-long project supporting South Sea pearls.”

2002 The American Museum of Natural History unveils “Pearls,” an e xhibit headlined by Elizabeth Taylor’s famous La Peregrina (13), once owned by Queen Mary I. In the October issue, JCK reports that the “Japanese cultured pearl is having a tough time” and that “Chinese cultured akoyas are not necessarily competing [with Japanese akoyas] on quality—just on size and quantity.”

2008 In the wake of the financial crisis, the pearl industry, among other categories, takes a dip. But it recovers quickly, thanks in part to the CPAA’s efforts

to educate retailers on the variety of pearls available on the market.

2014 In September, JCK reports on Edison pearls, aka Ming pearls (14), coming to market, describing them as “fresh waters that are round to baroque in shape, and available in white to natural lavender-peach colors with golden to bronze top hues. All these varieties have, not surprisingly, led to a greater appreciation of pearls among designers.”

PEARL WONDER

years, but it’s Barbara Bush who has sent pearl sales through the ceiling.”

2019 With the 2020 presidential election on the horizon, the climate crisis is a hot-button topic, and the pearl industry is paying attention. The increased frequency of typhoons and hurricanes, pollution, and rising water temperatures all affect pearl harvests (15). Still, the pearl industry has proved itself nimble in the wake of environmental stresses for more than a century. Let’s hope a silver lining—or oyster lip, as the case may be—presents itself soon.

15. Harmful algal blooms in Urayasu, Chiba, Japan

13. The iconic La Peregrina

15: THE ASAHI SHIMBUN/GETTY

14. Luxe collection earrings and necklace with natural Ming pearls and diamonds in 14k rose gold; $799–$850; honora.com SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2019

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GEMSTONES

APRIL 1978

THE ‘S’ WORD

Vintage-inspired pendant with aquamarine, black opal, and diamonds in 14k white gold; $3,655; justjules.com

Butterfly pendant with clear fire opals, paraiba, and diamonds in 18k white gold; $198,000; victorvelyan.com Purple spinel, blue-green sapphire, alexandrite, and diamond earrings in 18k rose gold with black rhodium; price on request; omiprive.com

Ring with red spinel and rose-cut diamonds in 18k white gold; $59,000; vtsejewelry.com

OR CENTURIES, CONVENTIONAL wisdom when it came to the pecking order of jewels put diamonds and the “Big Three”—ruby, sapphire, and emerald—at the uncontested top of the heap. The remaining multitudes fell into the vast semiprecious category: lovely, to be sure, but rarely the stuff of heirlooms or the most enduring designs. Generations of JCK issues show a more nuanced picture, with semiprecious stones seesawing between flashes of popularity and playing second fiddle to traditional materials. In February 1914, columnist Isabella M. Archer identified a “notable tendency at present to discard all colored gems as well as pearls in the most sumptuous jewels.” But only five years later, in March 1919, amethyst became de rigueur because it was “the recognized post-war color.” At midcentury, according to the April 1956 issue of Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone, selling diamonds was “the only true definition of a jeweler.” But not two decades later, during the psychedelic Age of Aquarius, semiprecious stones were the centerpiece of the “colored stone ring thing” that was a standout trend in 1969.

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THE ‘S’ WORD

As retailers and designers gravitate toward their variety and accessibility, so-called semiprecious stones have moved from supporting players to starring roles BY TANYA DUKES In the recessionary ’70s, gem sales slumped across the board, we said in December 1976, with semiprecious stones seeing “even worse” results than their pricier precious counterparts. Since the early aughts, however, the momentum for these gems has grown apace. Today, stones that consumers hardly recognized a decade ago are hurtling toward sustained sought-after status. Exhibit A: the run on engagement rings in millennial-pink morganite. What accounts for the snowballing popularity of sphenes and spinels, chrysocolla and kyanite? Stuart Robertson, vice president of Gemworld International, points to the spiraling cost of rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. As a result, semiprecious stones— especially those that look like more

highfalutin gems—are hot commodities. The strength of red garnets and tourmalines has a lot to do with finding something that resembles ruby but is more affordable, Robertson says. Fledgling brands seeking distinction (and affordability) often gravitate to semiprecious stones, which “are available in the sizes and shapes that designers want,” says Doug Hucker, CEO of the American Gem Trade Association. “And most of them are repeatable. You can get big looks for less money.” If AGTA has its way, the term semiprecious will soon fall out of favor. The organization’s code of ethics recommends AGTA members avoid using it to describe gems “because it makes a stone sound semi-desirable,” Hucker explains. We wholeheartedly agree. JCKONLINE.COM

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CHAPTER 7

INNOVATION

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INNOVATION

DECEMBER 1986

JEWELER PHOTOS: UNDERWOODS FINE JEWELERS; CERTIFICATES: GIA AND AMERICAN GEM SOCIETY; 1.02 CT. OVAL-CUT BURMESE RUBY: STONE COURTESY OF DAVE LEROSE, PHOTO BY ROBERT WELDON/© GIA; 1.01 CT. MONTANA PADPARADSCHA SAPPHIRE: PHOTO BY ORASA WELDON/© GIA; 1.06 CT. RECTANGLE RADIANT-CUT DIAMOND, 1.02 CT. PEAR-SHAPE DIAMOND, 2.08 CT. OVAL-CUT DIAMOND: PHOTO BY ROBERT WELDON/© GIA; RING: COURTESY OF SINGLE STONE, SINGLESTONE.COM

THE PAPER TRAIL

HE INFORMATION AGE has unfolded across generations of JCK “All jewelers buy diamonds using GIA stanreaders, and in few product categories has that proved as consequential dards,” Rottenberg says. “But some began to take as in gems. Over the decades, customers have evolved from buying advantage of the market by using the same letters diamonds and colored stones essentially on blind faith to researching and descriptions but a lesser standard. By offerdiamonds with laser-inscribed grading report serial numbers and coming false value, those sellers could beat the jeweler parison shopping them, instantly, online. who was sticking to the higher standard.” “In the very early days, before the GIA Lab was even founded, there When the internet arrived in the mid-1990s, it was no one with authority and expertise,” recalls Bill Underwood, who instantaneously brought greater transparency to founded Underwoods Fine Jewelers in Fayetteville, Ark., in 1957, and the entire d iamond-buying process and exposed as a former American Gem Society president led industry efforts to discrepancies among the various reports. standardize diamond grading. “There were so-called diamond certs, but “Ultimately, the unscrupulous sellers shot themselves in the foot,” says Rottenin many cases they were fraudulent. If a diamond had a cert, it was suspicious.” berg. “People could buy and compare diamonds online and learn to compare stanThat all changed in 1955, when GIA issued its first diamond grading report. dards of IGI, EGL, and HRD to GIA. Boomers are now selling their diamonds Robert M. Shipley had established GIA in 1931 and spent the next two decades and finding out what they really have compared to what they thought they had.” developing methodologies for scientifically describing diamonds. In 1953, the sucThe advent of the World Wide Web helped a new generation of diamond cusceeding executive director, Richard T. Liddicoat, codified that work into the GIA tomers gain greater power over their shopping experiences. “The consumer today is Four Cs grading system, standardizing diamond grading and paving the way for much better educated because of the internet,” Berg says. “They’ve already r esearched reports. Still, universal recognition among consumers remained decades away. diamonds and know much more about grading reports than the consumer of 30 “It took decades before GIA years ago. And they have more became a household name,” says confidence in what they’re buying.” Long’s Jewelers CEO Bob Rotten Today’s consumers are taking advantage of their ability to o btain berg, who followed his father and grand grading report numbers and comfather into the business in Boston. “In the mid-’60s, although pare apples to apples. “People shopthe GIA was out there, it was still ping around cert numbers makes the Wild West. Descriptions resense,” says Craig Underwood, who T H R E E TO P R E TA I L E R S R E V E A L H OW C E RT I F I C AT E S C H A N G E D mained very vague, like Top Wessucceeded his father as president T H E WAY C O N S U M E R S B U Y D I A M O N D S A N D G E M S T O N E S selton or Exceptional white for color.” of Underwoods and has chaired Demand for reports was simply the AGS Laboratory Gemological BY WHITNEY SIELAFF not there. “When we opened in Committee and Diamond StanILLUSTRATION BY MAXWELL BURNSTEIN 1978, the consumer did not rely dards Committee. “If you go to Tifon diamond grading reports,” adds Lee Berg, a former Zale Corp. exec who founded fany, for example, and see a diamond on memo with a GIA number on it, you might nine-store Lee Michaels Fine Jewelry in Baton Rouge, La. “Only if it was a big diafind that exact same laser number somewhere else for less. You can bypass the system.” mond with exceptional qualities—4 carats and above and of exceptional color and But the ease with which the internet enables consumers to comparison shop, clarity—would you put a report to it. For the vast majority, it was good, better, best.” using reports and price lists like Rapaport, has taken a drastic toll on jewelers’ marAs the market expanded through the 1970s and into the ’80s, the trade, includgins. Few people would deny that the industry’s long-standing fear of commoditiing scientists at GIA and elsewhere, became aware of an onslaught of treatments zation has come to fruition. developed to enhance a diamond’s apparent quality—processes such as laser drill“The historically large markup on diamonds has opened the door for a Blue ing, fracture filling, and chemical vapor deposition, followed later by irradiation Nile or James Avery to cut traditional margins in half and still cover expenses,” and high-pressure, high-temperature annealing. For the most part, these became says Judd Rottenberg, Bob’s son and a principal at Long’s. concerns within the trade even as they remained a nonissue among end customers. “We’ve had to lower our margins across the board to ensure we’re competitive,” “Most consumers remain more concerned with what they’re buying, whether adds Lee Berg’s son Ryan, who serves as Lee Michaels’ market president. they’re getting a good value, and dealing with a reputable source,” Berg says. With colored stones, report usage has evolved differently. That market has always But the dawn of treatments did spawn a proliferation of diamond grading labs, been much smaller than the diamond market. And colored stone customers— many situated in the world’s principal diamond trading hub, Antwerp. The Belgian typically more experienced than diamond buyers—are often considered aficionacity witnessed the opening of the state-sponsored Diamond High Council (HRD) dos, limiting the use of colored stone grading reports to high-end goods. lab in 1973, plus the private European Gemological Laboratory (EGL) in 1974 “For anything $20,000 and under, it’s really not a part of it,” says Ryan Berg. and International Gemological Institute (IGI) in 1975. The tail wagged the dog, “But we’ve sold six-figure colored stone pieces, and those have certificates. At that and the increase in available reports finally sparked traction at the consumer level. level, the consumer wants to know if there’s been any type of treatment.” “The ’80s is the earliest I can remember customers voluntarily asking about For such higher-end colored stones, reports are also valuable in providing cusreports and information,” Underwood says. tomers information on origin, helping to drive up premiums for gems from covIt wasn’t long before retailers began voicing concerns about the disparities in eted places, such as rubies from Mogok, Burma (Myanmar). “There is an expense grading among the new labs, which seemed to be muddying the waters rather than to it, but it’s great when you can tell the story and journey,” Judd Rottenberg says. increasing transparency. Many believed less scrupulous dealers and retailers were Even with today’s heightened knowledge among consumers and reliance on chasing the highest possible grades by submitting stones to multiple labs, since reports, however, jewelers tell JCK that their expertise continues to outweigh such most facilities had adopted grading scales similar to GIA’s. Questions arose as to considerations in closing the majority of gem sales. whether the various issuers had consumers’ best interests in mind or were primarily “We can’t just depend on reports to sell product,” Judd Rottenberg says. “People concerned with cashing in on the profitability of selling paper. buy diamonds because they’re pretty, not because they come with a piece of paper.”

THE PAPER TRAIL

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APRIL 2001

THE GAME CHANGERS

Over the past 150 years, which technological innovations have most improved the jewelry business? We vote for these 10. BY MARTHA C. WHITE

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BURGLAR ALARMS

These alarms—which became available in the late 1800s to shopkeepers in big cities alongside the rise of phone and electrical line networks—led to a sea change in retailers’ ability to thwart thieves. Many magazine articles from the era that mention burglar alarms include a line or two about how they work, introducing them to readers who might not have been familiar with the technology. One feature from 1899, “The Holmes Burglar Alarm Worked to Perfection,” references the name of the inventor, entrepreneur Edwin Holmes. In an issue from 1891, a short item whimsically titled “The Burglar Alarm Worked Charmingly” tells the story of two Milwaukee jewelers who wanted to see if their “automatic burglar alarm” really worked—so they broke into their own store. When the authorities “caught” the pair, The Jewelers’ Circular and Horological Review said, “it took several minutes of active talking and explanation before the guardians of the law were convinced that the members of the firm in question were not burglars.” Jewelers, don’t try this at home.

1: SPARKMUSEUM.ORG; 2: BETTMANN/GETTY

LTHOUGH HUMAN BEINGS have adorned themselves with jewelry for millennia, the ways technology has shaped the modern jewelry business are readily apparent in the pages of 150 years’ worth of JCK. Technology we now take for granted—be it jewelry-centric, like pavé setting, or relevant to retailers of any consumer goods—could shift the nature of the business in ways early craftsmen, watchmakers, and jewelers never anticipated. At each turn, JCK and its numerous predecessors could be found at the forefront, patiently explaining to readers how electric wiring and bells could deter theft, how war revolutionized the way we view timepieces, and how an invisible network of digital connectivity could usher in an entirely new format for making sales. Below are the top 10 technological innovations since JCK ’s founding in 1869—and snippets of how we described those marvels when they made their respective debuts.

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Cushion halo ring by moissanite creator Charles & Colvard

3: CHRISTIE’S IMAGES LTD.; 6: THE DENVER POST/GETTY

THE FLAME FUSION METHOD

The 20th century began with the invention of the erneuil process, aka flame fusion, the first economically V feasible, scalable process for manufacturing simulated red rubies. The 1902 breakthrough formed the foundation of techniques for manufacturing synthetic gemstones—a topic of great interest to early readers—still in use today. In an 1893 article about the invention of simulant diamonds that would come to be named moissanite after inventor Henri Moissan, The Jewelers’ Review wrote, “For centuries it was the dream of the alchemists to change baser metals into gold. This has been succeeded in the scientific world by an effort to produce artificial diamonds.” The article explained Moissan’s discovery and ended with this philosophical musing: “It is another evidence that the earth has few secrets which man, by persistent effort, cannot wrest from it and adapt to his own uses.” SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2019

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A multigem butterfly brooch by pavé master JAR; sold at Christie’s for $407,237

PAVÉ SETTING

THE GAME CHANGERS

The first patent for a cash register—which had metal keys stamped with denominations and a bell to ring up sales—was filed by Ohioans James Ritty and John Birch in 1883. The next year, the National Cash Register Co. was formed; the first electric cash register came along in 1906. Three decades later, the National Cash Register Co. ran a full-page ad in The Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone, promising to reduce errors and make bookkeeping easier. “We have e liminated mistakes, and therefore increased the efficiency of our office,” an effusive testimonial letter read. “We are able, at any time, to obtain a picture of the day’s business”—an unremarkable thought now, but a marvel back then.

innovation

CASH REGISTERS

In an 1893 issue, The Jewelers’ Review described this breakthrough in craftsmanship: “From Oriental and Italian jewelry the Bohemians learned the Pave method.” (The term comes from the French for “to pave”; there was no accent on the e in those early years.) The article explained how the gems were mounted and set in a way that would secure them without the “teeth” of a prong setting: “This proved not only to be durable, but allowed the utmost variation of form, so that the invention may be considered the foundation of the present industry.” The pavé setting offered another key benefit: Metalsmiths could utilize gemstones that were too small to be secured by prongs, expanding their stylistic options tremendously and giving them a more affordable way to create eye-catching, expensive-looking pieces. That trend endures today, fueling the tremendous popularity in recent years of halo engagement rings.

WRISTWATCHES

Early iterations of “wristwatches” were more like bracelets and were considered jewelry—for women. That changed around 1914, when military pilots needed to be able to coordinate maneuvers with their fellow airmen. Instead of pulling out and opening a pocket watch, they began tethering timepieces to their wrists or thighs. There was initially considerable skepticism that this trend—ridiculed by “cartoonists and joke smiths,” as The Jewelers’ Circular and Horological Review noted in February 1917—had staying power. The magazine, however, was an early proponent, running an article, “The Time to Push Wrist Watches,” in that same issue. “Real soldiers wear wrist watches,” assured editors, who suggested the following copy for merchandising purposes: “They are manly watches for manly men.” A sidebar showed retailers how to capitalize on this trend, confirming that “the wrist watch is not an effeminate article.”

1929 wristwatch that inspired the current Longines DolceVita collection

AIR CONDITIONING

A/C revolutionized retail by transforming stores into cool, crisp oases in the sweltering summer months. A feature in the June 1936 issue began with the warning, “The dog days are coming. It will be a matter of only a week or so until the populace will be ‘hot under the collar’.… The progressive jeweler, however, will find it no longer necessary to let his trade go to the bow-wows.” The piece touted a mechanism that could operate “automatic and practically clocklike in precision in maintaining the atmosphere most agreeable with outside climatic conditions,” and predicted—correctly—that the technology would “revolutionize merchandising in all fields.”

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Today, Americans are used to buying on credit with a swipe, dip, or tap. But prior to the debut of the Diners Club card in 1950, credit was perceived as unseemly and beneath the dignity of affluent consumers. It was also much more individualized; back then, jewelry store credit cards weren’t connected to any larger payment networks such as Visa or MasterCard, or issuing banks that would absorb charge-off losses—and charge interest. In fact, charging interest was discouraged, as it was seen as cheapening the offer of credit. A 1948 case study in The Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone profiled a jewelry store that managed to solve “the problem of how to make credit attractive to the discriminating customers who comprise the clientele of this high-class jewelry store,” and explained how retailers could avoid “the stigma of ‘cheapness’ attached to credit selling.”

VIDEO SURVEILLANCE

QUARTZ WATCHES

Invented by Seiko in 1969, the quartz watch set off a seismic shift in the industry—one that threatened manufacturers and sellers of mechanical watches (which a 1973 Jewelers’ Circular-Keystone article called “tick-tocks”). Not only did the timepieces send the Swiss industry into a tailspin, forcing thousands of companies out of business over the ensuing decade, but U.S. retailers and watchmakers also had to reckon with a whole new repair regime. Although JCK (perhaps grudgingly) conceded that “electronic watches create consumer-interest magic,” the unease with which jewelers first approached this radical answer to mechanical timekeeping peeks through. “Electronic watches account for only 1% of Swiss watch production. But that’s about 50% more than a year ago. And, every quartz watch exhibitor insists, this is the year of full-scale production.” Who could’ve guessed that in the 1980s, Nicolas G. Hayek’s Swiss-made, quartz-powered Swatch watch would be the catalyst for a mechanical watchmaking renaissance, creating a now $21 billion market?

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Special Swatch 1983 Jelly Fish watch

The burglar alarm was a boon for jewelers because they could notify authorities of a crime in progress, ideally in enough time to foil the thieves. But if the crooks escaped, they could remain anonymous. A century later, cheap, user-friendly security cameras changed all that. A September 1975 JCK article explained this groundbreaking new technology, detailing how cameras were installed and positioned, and—just imagine!—snapped images every 30 seconds, providing a sort of jerky, time-lapse viewing (film was only developed if a crime took place). Experts even predicted that real-time monitoring would grow in popularity, with it becoming second nature for jewelers to keep one eye on a closed-circuit video screen most of the time. “We’re a nation that has grown accustomed to watching TV while working,” a Panasonic exec told us. “The average housewife can prepare dinner, do the wash, and still tell you everything that happened on her favorite soap opera.” Dated gender references aside, he never could have imagined how prescient his comments turned out to be.

THE INTERNET

Although the bones of what we now know as the internet were developed in 1983 as a research tool for academic institutions to share information, it was only in 1989 that the “www” prefix was invented, and the World Wide Web as we know it was born. The concept of digital communication—never mind the now-ubiquitous e-commerce—took some getting used to. In January 1995, we profiled the owner of Chicago’s Steve Quick Jeweler in an article called “Jewelry in Cyberspace.” An early adopter of e-commerce, Quick let customers order over the “net,” JCK reported (yes, we used quote marks). But the process wasn’t as streamlined as it is today; he had to manually verify each customer’s credit information. (Quick told JCK he found internet users to be “very interesting people from extremely diverse backgrounds.”) The same article claimed that the “Internet has more than 20 million users worldwide.” Today’s estimate? About 4.2 billion.

9: IAN MCKINNELL/PHOTOGRAPHER’S CHOICE/GETTY; 10: HERO IMAGES/GETTY

innovation THE GAME CHANGERS

CREDIT CARDS

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9/4/19 11:16 AM

DORIAN & ROSE

The Jewelry Industry’s

is winter oasis Wednesday, February 5 Ð Saturday, February 8, 2020 J W M A R R I O T T T U C S O N S T A R R PA S S R E S O R T & S PA LESS THAN 10 MINUTES FROM DOWNTOWN TUCSON

A C U R AT E D E X P E R I E N C E F O R R EC ONNEC TING , UNCOVERING TRENDS A ND EXPLO R ING U N I Q U E D E S I G N S , T E C H N O LO G Y, LO O S E S TO N E S & M O R E

PETRA CLASS JEWELRY

R E G I S T E R TO DAY AT

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Epilogue

What will the jewelry trade be like in the year 2069?

S WE LOOK back over the past 150 years of JCK, it’s easy to indulge our nostalgia for the way things were. But equally tempting is the urge to look forward and indulge our imagination about the way things will be. Fifty years from now seemed like a good place to land. Rather than grapple solo with what the future has in store for the jewelry trade and our magazine, we asked 19 of the industry’s best and brightest—people who, like many of us, hope to be around to see 2069—to divine how jewelry retail will evolve over the next h alf-century. Some envision robotic sales clerks and virtual reality experiences to the max. Others expect to read the daily news not on today’s tablets or smartphones but via smart chips implanted in our brains. Still others imagine a better, more environmentally friendly future, in which mining and manufacturing processes give back rather than detract from the earth and its people. All told, the forecasts are thoughtful, optimistic, and wacky—and offer a hopeful glimpse of staggering changes to come. —BRITTANY SIMINITZ

“The value of handcrafted jewelry will never be lost, and one-of-akind, designer jewelry is here to stay. I truly believe technological advancements can never replace the human element that makes artisan jewelry special.” —LENA AGDERE, designer, Lord Jewelry

“By 2069, jewelry will be able to transport you to a different experience. Just pop on the ring,

strap on the watch, or clasp the necklace and—if you opted in— you’ll be shifted to another place in your mind that you won’t be able to distinguish from reality. To sell these fine items, jewelers will be fanciful departure gates where shoppers can travel for a few minutes to far-off lands or intimate fantasies as they try different items.” —PIERS FAWKES, founder, president, editor-in-chief, PSFK

“There will be a renaissance in the need for human interaction, due to being flooded with so much autonomy and digital intake. I believe that in the future, we

will go through a period where it will be cooler to be unplugged completely—we’re already seeing that as people take long breaks from their social media accounts.” —DANIEL GORDON, store director, Diamond Cellar

“The production processes of luxury products like jewelry will face increasing amounts of scrutiny for environmental friendliness as living a green life becomes more important to the world, and, simultaneously, more of a status symbol. As younger generations that have grown up with a green message develop more buying power, consumers asking questions

ILLUSTRATION: MARIO WAGNER

FUTURE SHOCK

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PROTECT YOUR STORE FROM CRIME JOIN THE JEWELERS SECURITY ALLIANCE

BENEFITS OF JOINING THE JSA:

Weekly Email Crime Alerts on criminals and scams

A free copy of the JSA’s Manual of Jewelry Security

Unlimited expert telephone advice on security issues

Rewards offered if your firm suffers a criminal loss

Support of JSA’s work with the FBI and local police

Visit JSA at www.jewelerssecurity.org or contact JSA via jsa2@jewelerssecurity.org or 212-687-0328. For the latest news follow us on Twitter @jsajohnkennedy.

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Epilogue about sustainability in jewelry production will become more common. The industry should anticipate this market need—and do its part to help the world—by taking steps to ensure more sustainable production now.” —BECKY STONE, founder and CEO, Diamonds in the Library

JCK will be “completely digital, and use of mixed reality will be prevalent. Reporting will no longer be a point in time, but a dashboard that gives real-time data/metrics/ analytics and intelligently tells you what is about to happen next.” —BEN SMITHEE, CEO, The Smithee Group

“Specialty, customization, and customer service will reign. But the biggest challenge I see in the next 50 years is getting someone’s attention. We’re going to have to think creatively on how to capture an audience beyond our current methods—social media, influencers, geo-fencing, beacons, etc. As an industry, we need to stay curious and understand the world will continue to be disrupted. There is a place for everyone, and the curious and strong will survive.” —DESIREE HANSON, VP, WWIN and AXN, Clarion UX

“By 2069, I predict we will see high levels of integration between technology, medicine, augmented reality, and jewelry. Just because a piece of technology provides a convenience or important service doesn’t mean it can’t look fantastic while doing it. Earrings that double as a hands-free microphone? Rings

that capture your heart rate, blood oxygen level, and share it with your doctor in real time?” —JORDAN TUCHBAND, industry vice president, JIS

“JCK will transform its Las Vegas and Tucson events to create a digitally based, ongoing virtual trade show where vendors can continuously display their wares, database their design copyrights, and allow wholesale clients to do updated shopping around the globe without travel.” —JESSICA HERNER, design and illustration, Gem State Concepts

“I hope adornment will evolve and jewelry will be an experience beyond the physical aspects. I would love to see a world where jewelry is multisensory— mind-reading devices that can let you project any jewelry, stone, color, form, shape—depending on your mood.” —REENA AHLUWALIA, jewelry designer, painter, and professor

“The common theme will be the implementation of AI in our business; that’s something that is really going to affect not only how we merchandise product but how people interact with it. A lot of retail stores may not have physical salespeople on the floor. The individual that greets customers when they walk in may be some kind of robotic enterprise that is highly intelligent and already knows something about the client before he or she walks in. Facial recognition will be big because it will allow retailers to target their clients and immediately

know how to service their needs. You might even see less actual product in showcases. Instead, you’ll see a VR representation of a piece of jewelry before it’s even made. And, not to sound like I’m extremely biased about colored gemstones, but I think people will place a lot more value on colored gems, thanks to the advent of virtual technology to transport someone to a mine in Sri Lanka and see the journey of how the gem ends up on their wrist. What’s really going to determine how consumers perceive value is how we tell the story of the product, and technology is going to help us.” —DAVE BINDRA, vice president, B & B Fine Gems

“My boldest prediction is that all retail will be delivery based, and real estate will serve as a showcase for viewing only. The instant gratification may disappear entirely, making impulse purchases a thing of the past.” —LISA NIKFARJAM, president, Lisa Nik

“By 2069, everything will be 100% digital, 3D, and highly responsive. Instead of flipping through pages, the reader will be traveling through three-dimensional presentations engineered specifically for their perceived interests.” —RYAN KAROLAK, cofounder, Edelweiss Jewelry

“I see jewelry that can change appearance at your technological command—maybe it will change even when you don’t command it, reading your mood or what colors/ style you’re wearing or thinking

about, and the piece evolves in front of your eyes. Saying that, I think, Isn’t that crazy? But at the rate things are progressing, it could happen sooner than 50 years!” —LAURA CHAVEZ, founder, Lark & Berry

“I see autonomous robotics playing a much larger role in the industry, meaning that we will need to create more inventive job roles for those overseeing the safety and security of tasks being achieved by AI.” —KAITLIN DERKACH, VP, integrated marketing communications, The Promotion Factory

“If sci-fi predictions hold true, in 2069, news media will take the form of psionic bytes of data uploaded directly into people’s brains. JCK will provide that data. I see JCK maintaining its identity as a beacon of information and a resource for how to do business in the industry.” —CAROLYN THAMKUL, executive vice president, Belle Étoile

“There’s no question that jewelry retailers will need to embrace many emerging technologies in the years to come. That said, worry less about what’s trendy and focus more on innovations that enhance your ability to offer customers exceptional service alongside a more personalized selection. In the face of limitless choices in the hands of a radically more knowledgeable consumer, it’s those who leverage new technology to earn trust that will continue to thrive well beyond 2069.” —MICHAEL SCHECHTER, director of customization, Richline Digital

“Buying watches is becoming more about community and customer experience every day. The very best retailers will be just as much community spaces for enthusiasts as places to purchase things. Whether a customer leaves the store with a new watch, a new strap, or just some knowledge they didn’t have before, that will be considered a win.” —STEPHEN PULVIRENT, managing editor, Hodinkee; co-author, The Watch, Thoroughly Revised

“In the year 2069, jewelry will have evolved to encapsulate tangible human emotions. Technological advances will allow for brain waves to finally align with crystal structures of gemstones and harmonize emotional responses in the vicinity of a jewel. History and gemstone lore have foretold that particular gems emit an aura of influence over certain emotions, and being able to tap into these innate powers is soon to be within our grasp. One can dream!” —LEVI HIGGS, jewelry and decorative arts historian; archivist, David Webb

“People are going to be shopping everywhere: in their driverless cars, while they’re walking around. Eye-detection technology will be the norm. Say they walk past a billboard or a poster—they can glance at what they see, blink twice, and get that ring, those earrings, or that pearl bracelet delivered to their house.” —BENJAMIN GUTTERY, founder, Third Coast Gems

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Arch Crown Inc. Blue Ray Diamonds

45440 Ford Road Canton, MI 48187 Tel: 734-459-8664 Fax: 734-459-8617 Email: takess@aol.com Website: blueraydiamonds.com Our invention is called the Super Halo. We have enhanced the halo and solitaire jewelry with diamonds. In this innovative design, the center diamond/stone sits in a shimmering pool of diamonds.

Omi Privé

100 N. Barranca St., Suite te 970 West Covina, CA 91791 Tel: 877-OMI-GEMS Fax: 626-331-4533 om Email: prive@omigems.com Website: omiprive.com d passion for f the h craft f are evident d in every A celebration of nature and piece of jewelry from Omi Privé. Award-winning design, combined with skilled craftsmanship, captures the essence of each gemstone.

460 Hillside Ave. Hillside, NJ 07205 Tel: 800-526-8353 Fax: 973-731-2228 Email: info@archcrown.com Website: archcrown.com Bar Code Technology Solutions for Jewelry Pricing! Print professional tags with or without bar codes. Our thermal transfer packages feature E-Class Advanced printer, Voyager MS9540 scanner, plus everything you need to print and scan tags using DataTagger, BarTender for Windows, or your software. JIS Miami Booth 1855

Herco

833 Market St., 10th Floor San Francisco, CA 94103 Tel: 415-543-1580/800-864-0767 Fax: 415-398-3699 Email: info@herco.com Website: herco.com Herco offers a wide variety of 14k and 18k yellow, white, and pink gold jewelry. We also carry many items in 22k and 24k gold, platinum, silver, titanium, palladium, and stainless steel.

Midas Chain

151 Veterans Drive Northvale, NJ 07647 Tel: 201-244-1150 Fax: 201-244-1151 Email: sales@midaschain.com Website: midaschain.com Type x Midas, an all-inclusive personalization line, is Midas Chain’s love letter to gold. Design your own love letter with this 14k yellow gold tilted letter pendant bearing the initial of someone you love. MSRP: $499

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Artistry Ltd.

8272 Lincoln Ave. Skokie, IL 60077 Tel: 888-674-3250 Fax: 847-674-3208 Email: orders@artistrylimited.com Website: artistrylimited.com This 14k yellow gold dragonfly pendant with vibrant blue enamel and 0.3 ct. t.w. diamonds includes a 16- to 18-inch adjustable chain. MSRP: $1,774

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019

PRODUCT

SHOWCASE

Nelson Jewellery USA Inc. 631 S. Olive St., Suite 300 Los Angeles, CA 90014 Tel: 213-489-3323 Fax: 213-489-1832 Email: info@nelsonus.com Website: nelsonus.com Nelson’s tradition of creating unique and timelessly elegant fine jewelry continues. The diamond pendant pictured was a finalist in the 2016 Jewelers’ Choice Awards’ Best Price Point Under $500 category.

Jewelers Mutual Group 24 Jewelers Park Drive Neenah, WI 54956 Tel: 800-336-5642, ext. 2118 Email: sales@jminsure.com Website: jewelersmutual.com/benefits jewelersmutual.com/ben Try our Program Benefits Calculator and learn how JM Care Plan™, JM Shipping Solution™, and Jeweler’s Cut® Link can help you grow revenue and cut costs.

Hoover & Strong THE INDUSTRY AUTHORITY STAY CONNECTED WITH

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The industry’s go-to online source for breaking news and the consumer-led style trends that shape the jewelry industry. JCKonline.com connects the industry influencers who drive the jewelry business forward. JCKONLINE.COM

10700 Trade Road North Chesterfield, VA 23236 Tel: 800-759-9997 Fax: 800-616-9997 m Email: info@hooverandstrong.com Website: hooverandstrong.com Hoover & Strong has over 650 die-struck bands including hundreds of new classic, fancy, multi-tone, and diamond styles! All bands are Made in the USA with Harmony Recycled Precious Metals. Visit hooverandstrong.com to see all our products.

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Costar Imports, Inc.

Shy Creation

Tel: 650-389-6969 Email: info@costarimports.com Website: costarimports.com

631 S. Olive St., Suite 900 Los Angeles, CA 90014 Tel: 213-623-8900 Email: info@shycreation.com Website: shycreation.com

After customer demand, we have taken our most popular stackable wedding bands and introduced matching stackable bangle bracelets with our new locking mechanisms! These bracelets can be customized with diamonds and birthstones.

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Come see what’s new from Shy Creation at JIS Miami October 4–7, JA New York Fall October 27–29 and JIS San Diego November 2–4.

Royal Chain Group 2 W. 46th St. New York, NY 10036 Tel: 800-622-0960 Fax: 212-730-7616 Email: sales@royalchain.com Website: royalchain.com Commemorating the resurgence in gold, Royal Chain released a fabulous, special edition gold collection of new designs. See our new brochure called “The Gold Book,” and try these adorable Amore Knot bangles.

Amden Jewelry

Le Vian® Tel: 877-2LEVIAN/516-466-7200 Fax: 516-466-7201 Email: eddielevian@levian.com Website: levian.com Le Vian® introduces a selection of designs for 2020 including this pairing featuring the iridescent Phenomena Gem Neopolitan Opal™, in a pear shape, the Cut of the Year, each style shimmering with Nude Diamonds™.

Jye’s International Inc.

550 S. Hill St. Los Angeles, CA 90013 Tel: 213-327-0863 Email: pat@amdeninc.com Website: amdeninc.com

1633 Bayshore Highway, Suite 136 Burlingame, CA 94010 Tel: 415-621-8880 Fax: 415-552-1675 Email: jyescorp@gmail.com Website: jyescorp.com

Amden is a prime manufacturer for 40 years and a leader in exclusive styles, concepts, programs, and copyrighted and patented items. We carry loose diamonds and an extensive line of natural yellow fancy color diamonds and jewelry. Most orders ship within three weeks.

Our beautiful aquamarine products made in 18k white gold include bracelets with 2.56 cts. t.w. baguette diamonds (MSRP: $20,410), earrings with 1.28 cts. t.w. round diamonds (MSRP: $30,000), and rings with 0.4 ct. t.w. baguette diamonds (MSRP: $8,600).

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SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019

PRODUCT

SHOWCASE Rand & Paseka Mfg. Co. Inc. 10 Hanse Ave. Freeport, NY 11520 Tel: 800-229-0006 Fax: 516-867-0230 Email: sales@randpaseka.com Website: randpaseka.com Rand & Paseka has the most extensive line of religious jewelry found anywhere. We manufacture over 18,000 items in gold and sterling silver, all made in the USA. Visit our website or call for more info.

Christopher Designs 50 W. 47th St., Suite 1507 New York, NY 10036 Tel: 212-382-1013 Fax: 212-768-8978 Email: info@christopherdesigns.com Website: christopherdesigns.com The Christopher Designs portfolio of patented diamond cuts allows retailers to differentiate from the competition and remain profitable in the diamond category. All settings are meticulously crafted and proudly made in the USA.

Royal Chain Group 2 W. 46th St. New York, NY 10036 Tel: 800-622-0960 Fax: 212-730-7616 Email: sales@royalchain.com Website: royalchain.com Menâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s jewelry is on fire, and Royal Chain is pleased to bring you all-new menâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s stylings. See our new collection at the JIS October Show in Miami, including these updated Figarope chains. MSRP: starting at $1,640

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Gabriel & Co

Effy Jewelry

Website: effyjewelry.com Eternally yours. Effy pieces are more than diamonds and gold—they are your personal collection of moments and the way you honor your one-of-a-kind journey. Celebrate yours with Effy’s diamond infinity band, set in 14k gold.

Midas Chain

151 Veterans Drive Northvale, NJ 07647 Tel: 201-244-1150 Fax: 201-244-1151 Email: sales@midaschain.com Website: midaschain.com With Love From Midas: Block-letter stations make this 14k yellow gold necklace a standout. The delicate LOVE letters perfectly frame the neckline, making this piece one that will be worn often. The necklace sits on an adjustable chain. MSRP: $319

545 W. 45th St., Third Floor New York, NY 10036 Phone: 212-519-1400 Fax: 646-273-1611 Email: lverona@gabrielny.com Website: gabrielny.com A delicate arc of gold balls, radiant mini-clusters of diamonds, chains of perfect gold circles: This is how Gabriel & Co. interprets Bujukan, the Balinese act of persuasion achieved by a subtle wink, a gentle touch, that one perfect word spoken in a whisper. MSRP: $505–$2,600

Pink Diamond

550 S. Hill St. Los Angeles, CA 90013 Tel: 213-624-2611 Fax: 213-624-0289 Email: info@pinkdiamondusa.com Website: pinkdiamondusa.com Pink Diamond specializes in all types of colored stones. We pride ourselves on using the best color and quality stones available!

Stuller Inc. Rahaminov Diamonds

606 S. Olive St., Suite 2018 Los Angeles, CA 90014 Tel: 213-622-9866 Email: melanie@rahaminov.com Website: rahaminov.com Rahaminov Diamonds’ rare 10 ct. baguette-cut three-stone diamond ring with matching baguette channel band is set in platinum.

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302 Rue Louis XIV Lafayette, LA 70508 Tel: 800-877-7777 Fax: 800-444-4741 Email: sales@stuller.com Website: stuller.com Our new designer bridal collection boasts the industry’s trendiest design elements. For modern brides, these showstopping features are sure to dazzle and delight. View all of our designs at stuller.com/designerbridal.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019

PRODUCT

SHOWCASE Rembrandt Charms

370 S. Youngs Road Williamsville, NY 14221 Tel: 800-828-7840 Fax: 800-828-7811 Email: orders@rembrandtcharms.com Website: rembrandtcharms.com Rembrandt Charms displays produce $4,500–$7,500 in sales per square foot! The repeat business and sales generated through our Business Building Charm Program spell success for retail jewelers just like you!

Tasha R LLC

7500 Bellaire Blvd., Suite 900 Houston, TX 77036 Tel: 888-999-1597 Fax: 713-995-0756 Email: info@tashar.com Website: tashar.com Tasha R carries all current trends in bridal and fashion. Choose Tasha R to be your preferred vendor. With our quality and pricing, you will be highly competitive. We specialize in fancy shape diamond jewelry.

Stuller Inc.

302 Rue Louis XIV Lafayette, LA 70508 Tel: 800-877-7777 Fax: 800-444-4741 Email: sales@stuller.com Website: stuller.com Stuller’s branded packaging can be made to match every business’ professional style. Stuller offers ways to display a logo on elegant boxes, pouches, bags, displays, and jewelry care products. See more at stuller.com/buildyourbrand.

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SHOWCASE Cirari by Color Jewels 36 W. 44th St., Suite 900 New York, NY 10036 Tel: 212-764-2823 Fax: 212-354-8488 Email: info@cirari.com Website: cirari.com

Cirari is a leading designer and manufacturer of gemstone and diamond jewelry. Our collection is finely crafted with exquisite style and competitive prices to meet every womanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s demand at every stage of her life. We are committed to providing superior quality and craftsmanship in each item.

Thorsten Rings

404 E. First St., Suite 1204 Long Beach, CA 90802 Tel: 888-209-4757 Email: support@thorstenrings.com Website: thorstenrings.com Over 600 styles backed by the security of a lifetime warranty. Sign-up is easy on our website. See what all the hype is about at thorstenrings.com!

RDI Diamonds Inc.

2300 W. Ridge Road, Fourth Floor Rochester, NY 14626 Tel: 800-874-8768 Fax: 585-225-0415 Email: arickard@rdidiamonds.com Website: rdidiamonds.com Guaranteed to help you never make a bad inventory buy again. You Me Weâ&#x201E;˘ offers complete customization that includes our no-risk 100 percent Sell Thru Guarantee! Customize your solution for your store with four different package options.

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Nicole Barr

Charles & Colvard

Tel: 877-810-7312 Fax: 919-846-3705 Email: us-info@nicolebarr.com Website: nicolebarr.com

170 Southport Drive Morrisville, NC 27560 Tel: 877-202-5467 Email: sales@charlesandcolvard.com Website: charlesandcolvard.com

Rich colors and hues accented by white sapphire adorn one side, while the other reveals a beautifully carved pattern. These reversible necklaces are available in 18k gold or sterling silver in a variety of colors.

We aim to deliver beautiful gemstones with a conscience. Starting with the world’s most brilliant gem, moissanite—which is made, not mined—we create luxury pieces that look good so you can feel good.

Parade Designs Inc.

1327 S. Myrtle St. Monrovia, CA 91016 Tel: 213-627-4019 Email: contact@paradedesign.com Website: paradedesign.com Parade’s award-winning designs feature nature-inspired classics as well as modern vintage compositions. By incorporating brilliant-cut diamonds and gemstones, the f inest metals, and precise techniques, each piece is meticulously crafted and ready to wear for generations.

Congratulations from Rio Grande! riogrande.com

Earstuds USA

5580 LBJ Freeway, Suite 525 Dallas, TX 75240 Tel: 972-458-2076 Fax: 972-458-1412 Email: david@earstudsusa.com Website: earstudsusa.com For customers who crave individuality, glamour, and style, these elegant fancy yellow radiant-cut drop earrings are perfect. Mounted in 18k yellow and white gold, the earrings are set with 6.03 cts. t.w. radiants and 0.8 ct. t.w. round brilliant G VS diamonds.

150 YEARS

800.545.6566

CLASSIFIEDS

149

REPS WANTED

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WATCHES & WATCH WORK ACCUTRON REPAIRS Done by a Certified Accutron Technician 45+ years experience, 99% parts in stock, quick turnover, all work guaranteed, reasonable prices. Star Findings PO Box 6167, West Orange, NJ 07052 212-941-7655 ernie@starfindings.com www.starfindings.com

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AGS Laboratories pg. 107 Website: agslab.com AGTA pg. 129 Website: agta.org Toll-Free: 800-972-1162 Alex Velvet pg. 42 Website: alexvelvetusa.com Email: info@alexvelvetusa.com Phone: 323-255-6900 Amden Jewelry pg. 67 Website: amdeninc.com Phone: 213-327-0863 Fax: 213-327-0865 American Gem Society pg. 104 Website: ags.org Email: membership@ags.org Toll-Free: 866-805-6500 Arpas Gold Jewellery pg. 99 Website: arpas.com Email: info@arpasusa.com Phone: 212-869-5548

Chow Tai Fook North America pg. 27 Website: heartsonfire.com Email: marketing@ctfna.com Toll-Free: 877-737-3328 Fax: 617-523-4814 Christopher Designs pg. 51 Website: lamourcrisscut.com Toll-Free: 800-955-0970 Color Jewels Inc. pg. 35 Website: cirari.com Email: tarek@colorjewels.net Phone: 212-764-2823 Fax: 212-354-8488 Costar Imports pg. 65 Website: costarimports.com Email: info@costarimports.com Toll-Free: 877-7COSTAR Earstuds USA pg. 43 Website: earstudsusa.com Email: sales@earstudsusa.com Toll-Free: 866-327-7883

Artco Group pg. 144 Website: artcogroup.com Toll-Free: 877-222-7820

Effy pg. 31 Website: effyjewelry.com Email: inquiries@effyjewelry.com Toll-Free: 855-ASK-EFFY

Artistry Ltd. pg. 46 Website: artistrylimited.com Email: getinfo@artistrylimited.com Toll-Free: 888-674-3250 Fax: 847-674-3208

Facet Barcelona USA Inc. pg. 70 Website: facetbarcelona.com/usa Email: sales@facet.es Phone: 212-302-8200 Fax: 347-441-0908

Charles & Colvard pg. Gatefold Cover Website: charlesandcolvard.com Email: sales@charlesandcolvard.com Toll-Free: 800-210-4367

Forevermark pg. 29 Website: forevermark.com Phone: 203-388-3550

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G Panther pg. 32 Email: mailgpanther@aol.com Toll-Free: 888-430-4344

Gabriel & Co. pg. 37 Website: gabrielny.com Phone: 212-519-1400

JCK Events pg. 20-21, 137 Website: jckshows.com Toll-Free: 800-257-3626

GIA pg. Inside Back Cover Website: gia.edu Email: marketing@gia.edu Phone: 760-603-4000 Toll-Free: 800-421-7250

Jewelers Mutual Insurance pg. 8-9 Website: jewelersmutual.com Toll-Free: 800-558-6411

Herco pg. 59 Website: herco.com Email: info@herco.com Toll-Free: 800-864-0767 Fax: 415-398-3699 Hoover & Strong pg. 77 Website: hooverandstrong.com Email: info@hooverandstrong.com Phone: 804-794-3700 Toll-Free: 800-759-9997 Imperial pg. 120 Website: imperialpearl.com International Gemological Institute pg. 45 Website: IGI.org Email: info@igi-usa.com Phone: 212-753-7100 Toll-Free: 888-BUY-IGIS Fax: 212-763-4052 Italgem Steel pg. 44 Website: Italgemsteel.com Email: sam@italgemsteel.com Phone: 514-388-5777 Toll-Free: 855-ITALGEM Fax: 514-384-5777 Jack Abraham pg. 84 Website: JackAbraham.com Email: Jack@jackabraham.com Phone: 212-688-6700

JIS Show pg. 18-19, 22-23 Website: jisshow.com Email: info@jisshow.com Toll-Free: 800-840-5612 Jyeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s International pg. 69 Website: jyescorp.com Email: jyescorp@gmail.com Phone: 415-621-8880 Le Vian pg. Inside Front Cover, 1 Website: levian.com Email: sales@levian.com Toll-Free: 877-2LEVIAN Midas pg. 10-11 Website: midaschain.com Email: sales@midaschain.com Toll-Free: 877-643-2765 Nelson Jewelry USA pg. 100 Website: nelsonus.com Email: info@nelsonus.com Toll-Free: 800-489-3327 Nicole Barr pg. 34 Website: nicolebarr.com Email: us-info@nicolebarr.com Phone: 919-846-3704 Toll-Free: 877-810-7312 Fax: 919-846-3705 Norman Silverman Diamonds pg. 83 Website: normansilverman.com Email: info@normansilverman.com Phone: 213-687-3985 Fax: 213-624-2758

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INDEX Omi Privé pg. 53 Website: omiprive.com Email: prive@omigems.com Toll-Free: 877-OMI-GEMS Parade Designs, Inc. pg. 39 Website: paradedesign.com Email: info@paradedesign.com Phone: 213-627-4019 Pink Diamond pg. 88 Website: pinkdiamondusa.com Email: info@pinkdiamondusa.com Phone: 213-624-2611 Fax: 213-624-0289 Rahaminov Diamonds pg. 33 Website: rahaminov.com Email: info@rahaminov.com Phone: 213-622-9866 Fax: 213-622-6113 Rand & Paseka pg. 40 Website: randpaseka.com Email: sales@randpaseka.com Toll-Free: 800-229-0006 RDI Diamonds pg. 113, Back Cover Website: rdidiamonds.com Toll-Free: 800-874-8768

Rembrandt Charms pg. 130 Website: rembrandtcharms.com Email: orders@rembrandtcharms.com Toll-Free: 800-828-7811 Rio Grande Inc. pg. 148 Website: riogrande.com Email: info@riogrande.com Toll-Free: 800-545-6566 Toll-Free Fax: 800-965-2329 Royal Chain Group pg. 2-3 Website: royalchain.com Toll-Free: 800-622-0960 Shy Creation Inc. pg. 12-13 Website: shycreation.com Toll-Free: 800-606-1749 Siera Jewelry, Inc. pg. 47 Website: sierajewelry.com Email: info@sierajewelry.com Phone: 213-623-6370 Fax: 213-623-1302 SPB Gems pg. 118-119 Website: spbgems.com Email: info@spbgems.com Phone: 212-719-5170

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Star Jewelry pg. 115 Website: blueraydiamonds.com Email: Takess@aol.com Phone: 734-459-8664 Fax: 734-459-8617 Stuller Inc. pg. 6-7, 108 Website: stuller.com Email: info@stuller.com Toll-Free: 800-877-7777 Fax: 337-981-1655

Tim Roark Inc. pg. 146 Website: timroarkinc.com Email: info@trimportsatl.com Phone: 404-872-8937 Toll-free: 800-568-2011 Fax: 404-872-9346 Umicore pg. 147 Website: umicorepreciousmetals.com Toll-Free: 877-795-5060

Swarovski Gemstones pg. 48, 54 Website: swarovski-gemstones.com

World’s Gold & Diamonds/Low Cost Leader/Low Cost Luxury pg. 4-5 Website: lowcostleader.com Email: wgd@lowcostleader.com Phone: 713-995-7033 Toll-Free: 866-8-LOW-COST Fax: 713-995-0756

Synchrony Financial pg. 87 Website: synchronybusiness.com/luxury Toll-Free: 855-433-3772 Tasha R Bridals pg. 4-5 Website: tashar.com Email: info@tashar.com Toll-Free: 888-999-1597

Zen Diamond pg. 16-17 Website: zendiamond.com Phone: 201-842-7698

Testi USA, Inc. dba Rebecca pg. 30 Website: rebecca.it Email: info@testiusa.com Phone: 310-319-9600 Fax: 786-453-0278 Thorsten Jewelry pg. 41 Website: thorstenrings.com Email: support@thorstenrings.com

Copyright ©2019 Reed Exhibitions. All Rights Reserved. JCK Vol. 150 No. 6 (ISSN 1534-2719) is published 7 times a year in January/February, March/April, May, June, July/August, September/October, and November/December for $59.95 by Advance Local LLC d/b/a Headline Studio on behalf of Reed Exhibitions, 383 Main Avenue, Norwalk CT 06851. Reed Business Information is a division of Reed Elsevier, Inc. Circulation records are maintained at (800) 305-7759. Periodicals Postage paid at New York, NY, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to JCK, P.O. Box 5663, Harlan, IA 51537. JCK is a registered trademark of Reed Properties Inc., used under license. This advertiser index is published as a conve-nience and not as part of the advertising contract. Every care will be taken to index correctly. No allowance will be made for errors due to spelling, incorrect page number, or failure to insert or include information. Please reference page number listed for more information.

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Postscript

BY THE NUMBERS B R E A K I N G D OW N 150 Y E A R S O F J C K

Pages in the debut American Horological Journal. Just a few of the topics covered: “English Opinion of American Watch Manufacture,” “Pinions,” and “Watch and Chronometer Jewelling.” A lapel watch by Tiffany & Co.’s Paulding Farnham, inspired by a twig from a blossoming apple tree

330,000

Swiss watch imports in 1870, the year after the founding of the American Horological Journal

Age of Daniel H. Hopkinson when he founded The Jewelers’ Circular in February 1870

Times the word Diamond appears on the first page of the premiere issue of The Jewelers’ Circular. Curiously, it was always capitalized. Victorian 8 ct. t.w. diamond silver-topped 14k gold ribbon brooch; $7,550; wilsonsestatejewelry.com

548

Pages in the Feb. 5, 1919, Jewelers’ Circular-Weekly— our biggest issue ever. The 50th-anniversary issue looked back on 1860s jewelry fashions; declared a U.S. cameo-cutting renaissance; and profiled jewelers and manufacturers in Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Providence, R.I.

2.8 MILLION Swiss watch imports in 2018

18k pink gold self-winding Royal Oak with alligator strap; $32,000; audemarspiguet.com

Years that T. Edgar Willson, the longest-tenured editor-in-chief in our publication’s history, held the position (from 1903 to 1935)

118.66 Carats of diamonds model Lauren Layne is wearing on JCK ’s June 2019 cover— our diamond-heaviest ever

BEJEWELED WATCH: TIFFANY & CO.; BREGUET WATCH: COURTESY OF SOTHEBY’S; BOTTOM RIGHT: DIEGO UCHITEL

Circa 1870 Breguet 18k gold open-faced watch; sold at Sotheby’s for $10,487

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