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Jewelry has always been more than the sum of its parts. Beyond sparkling diamonds and exquisite gemstones, it’s the hands that shape them and the imaginations that envision them that make jewelry truly unforgettable. It’s about transformation—of raw materials into wearable works of art, of personal stories into heirlooms.  The people behind the jewels range from heritage brands to radical independents and unsung heroes. Author and curator Melanie Grant has assembled them all in The Jewelry Book, a dynamic new tome released by Phaidon in September.

From visionary designers and master artisans to collectors, cutters, stylists, and cultural icons, the book honors 300 names who have shaped the language of jewelry over the past two centuries.  “This is a love letter to the high art of jewelry and its utilization of creativity and storytelling,” says New York-based designer Lorraine West, who is included in the book. “There’s such a dynamic array of points of view in design and execution across cultures, spanning over 20 decades. This should be in every jewelry and art lover’s library.”

The London-based author and curator began with over 700 names, ultimately narrowing the list with the help of an advisory board of 17 experts and contributions from 27 jewelry writers. The well-known legends are included here, Cartier, Tiffany & Co., Van Cleef & Arpels, but Grant also shined a light on lesser-known names and unsung heroes. There is Theodoros Savopoulos, the ultra-exclusive Athens-based jeweler who makes minimalist yet sensual creations, and the late Gabriel Tolkowsky, a sixth-generation diamond cutter, whose famous commissions included the 545.67-carat Golden Jubilee diamond, gifted to Thailand’s King Bhumibol.

“It’s a 360-degree look at jewelry,” Melanie Grant tells Only Natural Diamonds. Alphabetized from Adler (the Swiss jeweler) to Zendaya (face of Bulgari’s global campaign), it’s an encyclopedia of the international jewelry world. Grant herself has championed many of its players. A journalist for over 20 years, her first jewelry book, Coveted, was published in 2020, and she curated Brilliant and Black: A Jewelry Renaissance, an exhibition with Sotheby’s in 2021 featuring 21 Black jewelry designers. Most recently, she served as executive director of the Responsible Jewellery Council.

Diamonds, unsurprisingly, play a big role in the book, with sumptuous images ranging from Hemmerle’s groundbreaking modernist white diamond set on twisted iron to Van Cleef & Arpels’ elaborate mid-century necklace dripping with diamonds. More than simply carat weight, the book showcases the artistry behind diamonds, from cutting to design to the high-profile personalities who flaunt them on the red carpet.

Grant is particularly drawn to pieces that juxtapose tradition with radical materiality. James de Givenchy for Taffin sets diamonds in pebbles, and Maurizio Fioravanti’s Vanguard collection fuses precious stones with carbon fiber. Bina Goenka’s extraordinary Butterfly necklace, nearly five years in the making, weaves 2,900 diamonds, 300 natural pearls, and 5,900 white clam pearls into a voluminous necklace. Another revelation is the work of Theodoros, whose use of large, prong-less diamonds blurs the boundary between metal and stone.

“What I find most thrilling,” Grant says, “is when designers combine old school artistry with tension and modernity. Pairing it with industrial or humble materials, they take away the formality and create a new dialogue.”  Still, she’s quick to point out: “A great diamond solitaire will always have a place.”

And then there is the late Ambaji Shinde, unknown to many outside the trade, yet one of the most influential designers of the 20th century. A longtime creative force at Harry Winston, his 1954 diamond scroll necklace, designed with Nanubhai Jhaveri, features varying diamond shapes in a platinum piece that exemplifies mid-century glamour. Shinde’s legacy lives on in sketchbooks he donated to the GIA, a treasure trove for future generations of designers.

The Jewelry Book positions jewelry as a cultural and creative ecosystem shaped as much by stylists and celebrities as by gemologists and goldsmiths. The book also considers timely themes, including sustainability, ethical sourcing, and the shifting demographics of luxury.

“Women are buying their own jewelry,” Grant notes. “And they’re choosing bold, architectural, often radical pieces that speak to their vision. The future of jewelry lies in this interplay between artistry and identity, between legacy and experimentation.”

The Jewelry Book was unveiled in September with a series of launch events, starting at Sotheby’s in New York, where designers came out in support. For Lorraine West, it was more than just an inclusion—it was affirmation.  “To be listed among such legends, it’s surreal, deeply humbling, and a moment I’ll treasure,” she says. “Even I learned something new, like Andy Warhol’s obsession with high jewelry. A reminder that jewelry is art.”

London-based goldsmith and artist Joy Bonfield-Colombara echoes this sentiment. “What I think is really interesting about the book is this dichotomy, the traditional houses alongside artists, collectors, musicians, dancers, and patrons that have been so important to the whole ecosystem of the jewelry universe. It reflects how deeply woven jewelry is into the human story.”

 

Written by Jill Newman for Only Natural Diamonds in October 2025.

 

 

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Sotheby’s is preparing to open ‘The Jewelry Book: An A to Z Exhibition’ this evening, a jewelry exhibition presented with Phaidon in New York to mark the launch of the celebrated art publisher’s latest jewelry tome, The Jewelry Book. Curated in partnership with the book’s editor, Melanie Grant; luxury editor, curator and former executive director of the Responsible Jewelry Council; the show is a celebration of high jewelry in 50 pieces from independent jewelry designers and established houses, all of whom are featured in the book itself.

The exhibition brings to life the latest in a Phaidon series presenting a survey of a particular art form, joining existing volumes The Art Book, The Fashion Book and The Photography Book on bookshelves around the world. “It is an honor to curate a living rendition from such a seminal work as The Jewelry Book—a project that took three years to complete and reflects the contributions of a host of advisors, experts, and writers,” writes Grant. “Spanning over 200 years, the book—and exhibition—reveal the transformative power of jewelry through creativity, ultimately to freedom.”

Masterpieces from contemporary designers like Taffin, Jacqueline Rabun, Hemmerle and Bina Goenka will be show in New York, as well as representative pieces from heritage houses like Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels and David Webb. The public will be able to purchase selected jewels from the show in person, and also via Sotheby’s online marketplace.

Grant has already worked with Sotheby’s on several projects, including the Brilliant & Black exhibitions in 2020 and 2022, groundbreaking showcases which provided a previously non-existant platform for Black jewelers in the luxury world. “Sotheby’s is thrilled to partner with Melanie Grant on another exciting project,” writes Frank Everett, Sotheby’s Vice Chairman of Jewelry. “The Jewelry Book is the long overdue and highly anticipated addition to Phaidon’s iconic series, and Melanie brings to it her own special perspective on the jewelry world.”

Phaidon, which also published Grant’s 2020 jewelry book Coveted, is considered to be the world’s leading art and creative publisher. The Jewelry Book charts the past 200 years of jewelry history spotlighting 300 houses, designers, collectors and tastemakers who have helped shape the industry. From Paris to New York, household names like Cartier, Chanel and Tiffany & Co. feature along with the Maori jade carver Joel Marsters and Native American jewelry artists Gail Bird and Yazzie Johnson, in a book that celebrates the effervescence of Erykah Badu’s jewelry choices alongside Jackie Kennedy Onassis’ restrained elegance.

According to Deb Aaronson, publisher of Phaidon, “for 100 years, Phaidon has published the world’s most important art books. With the publication of The Jewelry Book by Melanie Grant, we celebrate the art of jewelry as never before. We are grateful to Sotheby’s for hosting an exhibition bringing this important book to life.”

 

An opening reception will be held at Sotheby’s New York, 1334 York Avenue, New York, NY 10021, Wednesday September 10, 6pm-8pm. The public exhibition will be open until September 21.

 

Written by Kate Matthams for Forbes in September 2025.

 

 

Press

 

New Releases: Fall 2025

New craft books featured in the Fall 2025 issue of American Craft.

 

The Jewelry Book

By Melanie Grant
Phaidon, 2025
$79.95

This sumptuous, image-rich volume covers 300 of the greatest names in jewelry over the past 200 years, exploring the profound connection between jewelry and style, art, and culture. An alphabetical presentation of designers, artists, houses, collectors, and style icons includes legendary names like Boucheron, Cartier, Lalique, Tiffany, and Van Cleef & Arpels, along with innovative contemporary designers and makers.

Written by John Spayde for The American Craft Council in August 2025.

 

 

Press

Its editor, Melanie Grant, described how difficult it was to choose just 300 designers, makers and other jewelry-related personalities.

 

Written by Melanie Abrams for The New York Times in July 2025.

 

 

Press

From established jewellery houses, to up-and coming designers and avant-garde artists, a new book by Phaidon spotlights the stand-out jewellery from the last two centuries

 

Written by Hannah Silver for Wallpaper in October 2025.

 

 

Press

From leading editors and style muses to all-round diamond devotees, these are the Instagram accounts that will feed your fine-jewelry fetish, says CHARLIE BOYD.

 

 

 

Written by Charlie Boyd for Porter Magazine in October 2023.

 

 

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Industry urged to see the light on the future of the planet

Sustainability Climate change and inequality are not just threats but opportunities, a recent global summit heard. Caroline Palmer reports

If participants in last month’s summit on the future of the jewellery industry were initially unsure of their role in tacking climate change and inequality, the heavy hitters from Harvard University and MIT left them in no doubt. First, keynote speaker, Dan Schrag — who holds professorships in geology, environmental science and engineering, as well as public policy, at Harvard, where the event was held — was clear:although the jewellery sector represents a “tiny little sliver” in the global mining industry, “you will be affected profoundly by the changes that are happening around the world.”

But he added: “It’s not just darkness, it’s also light, because there are incredible opportunities to make this world a much better place through some of the work we do.” This particular opportunity to discuss the latest developments in research, technology, business and art in jewellery was organised by the Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC), the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), and the Mineralogical and Geological Museum at Harvard University. Light and dark were present in equal measure. Yang Shao-Horn — who is professor of engineering at MIT, and works on the production of green hydrogen and battery technologies — laid out where the challenges lay: “For the entire jewellery industry, 95 per cent of the CO₂ generated is in the production of metals,” with the extraction of gold, platinum and silver having a much higher carbon footprint than, for instance, aluminium oxide or iron ore.

Her suggestions to tackle the problem involve a mix of a carbon tax (“say $50-$100 per tonne of C0₂ [each tonne of gold produces 38,000 tonnes of C0₂; and about 3,000 tonnes of gold are produced each year]”), which could encourage the use of new technology, including electric vehicles, as well as shifting mining practices away from open site to the development of mobile mining vehicles powered by renewable energy or hydrogen. Her fellow panellist was Daniel Nocera, professor of energy at Harvard, who has created a “bionic leaf”. This takes “the biological process of photosynthesis and does it more efficiently in the lab”, he told the summit.

“Right now, when you look outside, you think about the sustainable Earth and then you think about technology. What you forget is the human piece of it. So I am going to claim you cannot have a sustainable Earth with poverty.” Nocera was referring to the 6bn new energy users in the global south who will drive the doubling of energy needs over the next 30 years. To meet even half of this increase with nuclear energy within that timeframe would require a new nuclear power plant to be built every 1.5 days. “So, if you want to head off a major catastrophe, we need to figure out how to give energy to the poor,” he argued. Nocera’s message to the jewellery industry was to “start demanding from your suppliers, because you’re taking from the global south, to leave something behind. And the most important thing you can leave behind now is sustainable energy — for you and for them.”

However, Toby Pomeroy, founder of Mercury Free Mining and a jewellery designer, outlined a different route to address poverty. He believes that the technology exists to remove mercury from mining and, in one sweep, improve the safety, health and profitability of the 20mn artisanal and small-scale miners and the 100mn people who depend on them. His nonprofit company is working to eradicate the use of mercury, a neurotoxin, in mining. Almost 5.5 tonnes of the metal are released into the environment every day, he said. Working with the Alliance for Responsible Mining, with a grant from the GIA, Pomeroy has successfully tested a new, low-cost system for mercury- free processing of gold ore in three communities in Colombia’s Chocó and Antioquia gold-mining regions.

“We are presenting proposals to USAID [the United States Agency for International Development] and the GIA on how we can scale this,” he said. “I don’t think there is a bigger issue for our industry and the business reputation opportunities if we take this on.” Melanie Grant, executive director of the RJC, warned the industry that it also needed to embrace technology to keep up with new patterns of buying highend jewellery online — in particular by people under 40. She urged art jewellers to highlight not only their artistry but also their responsible, ethical practices. The importance of this was stressed by Colleen Rooney, chief communications and ESG (environmental, social and governance) officer at Signet, the world’s largest retailer of diamond jewellery. She said the company was “attracting 22.5mn new customers in the US alone”, following a realignment of its culture to embrace human rights and sustainability, to “use our voice for good”.

However, embracing ESG principles can be daunting, particularly for smaller businesses, which may not always recognise the implications. At the summit, the RJC launched an ESG toolkit that explains what ESG is, how it can benefit business and how that ties in with impact globally. And there was a further dimension to the discussions at the summit: about how sustainability connects with jewellery on an emotional and spiritual level. Wallace Chan, a jewellery designer and master craftsman, spoke about how a childhood of extreme poverty taught him to be frugal “and get the best out of every last piece of material”. “I like to think, when a dream falls into pieces, it multiplies and becomes more bright and beautiful dreams,” he said. “So when a vase broke, I turned it into a bangle. Sustainability is a very long word . . . for me, it is not a buzzword but a way of life.” 

 

Written by Caroline Palmer for The Financial Times in June 2023.

 

 

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For fine jewellery curator and writer, Melanie C Grant, the King’s Coronation must have felt like an extension of Kensington Palace’s Crown to Couture exhibition that she recently helped curate. But unlike the grand archival tiaras featured in the palace’s Jewel Room, once owned by Queen Victoria and Princess Louise and permanently on display, the matching Coronation headdresses worn by the Princess of Wales and Princess Charlotte at Westminster Abbey were by comparison remarkably low-key. Conversely, it is celebrity royals such as Queen B (aka Beyoncé) who are found basking in the limelight, glittering in gold.

In Grant’s rich and informative glossy tome Coveted: Art and Innovation in High Jewellery, she writes: “Worried by accusations of extravagance, today’s royals have been forced to play down their jewellery, but a captivated audience can still luxuriate in the gloriously expensive jewels that are an intrinsic part of the spectacle of Hollywood or Cannes.” No such restraint can be found in Grant’s curation of jewellery designs or Crown to Couture, the largest exhibition Kensington Palace has ever staged that invites visitors to draw parallels between the Georgian glitterati and modern celebrity. “I thought it was fascinating seeing how you’ve got this very traditional idea of the Georgian court juxtaposed with what I’d describe as ‘black style’,” says Grant. “There are a lot of black stylists, designers and actresses referred to in the show. I wasn’t expecting that from the palace.

On the one hand, you have the traditional historical context, then culture and fashion, with celebrity, which you could argue is modern-day royalty.” One standout exhibit is the Peter Dundas gold gown and headdress worn by a pregnant Beyoncé at the 2017 Grammys, displayed at the palace in front of a scarlet throne. “You’ve got Queen Elizabeth II and on the other hand you have Beyoncé,” Grant explains. “When I visited, a steward at the exhibition said to me: ‘Which queen do you want, dear?’ I think the exhibition brings up questions of power in society and how that’s changing.” Grant, who confesses to being “obsessed with jewellery” and “a disruptor”, started at The Economist in 2006 specialising in styling and photography, learning to write on the job and rising to become the luxury editor of its spin-off 1843 Magazine. In January this year, she became the executive director at the Responsible Jewellery Council. But more of this later.

In 2021, she broke down barriers when she created Sotheby’s Brilliant & Black, the first-ever selling exhibition of black jewellery designers, in New York and then in London the following year. Even so, she says it was the book Coveted, published by Phaidon in 2022, that was the game-changer. It came about as the direct result of delivering a talk at another auction house, Phillips, on 21st-century master jewellers. “It really opened the door to other projects,” she recalls. “One of them being Kensington Palace. Post Black Life Matters, a lot of people have been much more open to unusual contributors.” Regarding the inclusion of pieces for Crown to Couture, Grant looked for those pivotal in terms of jewellery design, imbued with meaning, or worn by both men and women on different occasions. When she suggested ‘The Great King’ Sacred Skull necklace designed by Judicael Sacred Skulls and worn by Jason Momoa to the Aquaman premiere in 2018, she was surprised that the reaction was so positive. Undoubtedly, the exhibition at Kensington Palace has a very American slant. But then the significant red-carpet events –The Met Ball, The Grammys and The Oscars – happen across the pond where mostly American or heritage fine jewellery brands are worn.

The ‘Rebel Black’ ring sported by Rhianna at the Met Gala in 2021 is one of the few exceptions. Designed by Thelma West, a London-based Nigerian designer whose five-carat pear-shaped Botswana diamond has an unusual black ceramic on a gold setting, the piece also featured in Grant’s Brilliant and Black Sotheby’s showcase. Politics and novel backstories also informed Grant’s selection. Included is the Schiaparelli dove brooch, identical to the one worn by Lady Gaga to Joe Biden’s inauguration. Also of note is the feather headdress, on loan from New York-based Verdura’s Museum Collection. First worn by Betsey Cushing Witney to a court presentation at St James’s Palace in 1957, the next time it appeared was when it crowned the head of Hamish Bowles at the 2022 Met Gala. “It ticked all the boxes and summed up the different personalities that a piece of jewellery can have,” explains Grant, adding that the ‘Pensive’ cameo earrings (a design collaboration between Liz Swig and Cindy Sherman worn by Cate Blanchett) do the same. “Cameos are quite historical, but this is modern, inspired by Instagram.”

She chose the ‘Amazonia’ necklace from exhibition sponsor Garrard (which also made The Imperial State Crown worn by King Charles III on May 6 in 1937) because she is “a bit of a sucker for green stones.” She has known the creative director Sara Prentice for quite some time and says she has “hit a hot streak”, adding: “it’s remarkably flamboyant for Garrard.” When we talk in early May, on the eve of the Coronation, Grant has just returned from a gold mine in West Africa, a trip that left her amazed by the number of people employed in mining and provided her with a more nuanced consideration for the ethics around it. She’s buzzing about her new role at the Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC) and all the issues now front of mind – sustainability, gender equality and education. “If you get to a level of being good at anything, you’re the kind of person who needs to progress and learn and keep moving,” she says, explaining the reason why she accepted the Responsible Jewellery Council position.

“I think they wanted someone different. Someone who was going to bring awareness to the RJC beyond the industry. Ten years ago, I’m not sure I would have been given this job. As a curator and a writer, I’m so different to the people who have come before, from mining. But then we’re in a period of much more openness regarding who fits where,” she concludes.

 

The exhibition is open at Kensington Palace, London, April 5 – October 29, 2023, and is supported by Garrard, the Blavatnik Family Foundation and Cunard.