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Charlie Barron was 9 years old when he and his family went to Australia for Christmas. But when he didn’t meet the height requirement to climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge — ironic, as he now is 6 foot, 5 inches tall — he went to visit some family friends at Paspaley Pearls in Sydney.

In the basement of the building was a huge vault and, Mr. Barron recalled recently, as its thick metal door swung open, trays and trays of South Sea cultured pearls glowed in the dim light. In that moment, he said, he had found his purpose in life: making and dealing in jewelry.

“I always felt as a child I was in the wrong place,” Mr. Barron, 30, said about growing up as the youngest of four on his family’s potato farm in Newmarket, England. “I was hyper-dyslexic, a total terror at school and a difficult kid, but whenever I thought of jewelry, I was home for the first time.”

Leaving school at 18, he worked as a farm laborer and did odd jobs to pay for a trip to Kobe, Japan, an important global center for pearl trading, where he did a brief internship. Over the next few years he studied gemology, learned diamond cutting and polishing in Amsterdam and then went to Bangkok, where he lived and worked in a jewelry factory, subsisting on what he described as a bottomless supply of steamed rice.

When he moved to London in 2017, he borrowed money to design and create 53 pieces of jewelry, and then began trying to sell them to jewelers as a “white label” collection, the industry term for designs that the buyers could sell as their own. Eventually William Asprey, a member of the prestigious jewelry and leather goods family and the owner of the William & Son luxury brand at the time, bought the lot. Mr. Barron was in business.

And while he still designs the By Barron collection, with pieces such as elaborate chandelier diamond earrings, he spends most of his time now buying and selling jewelry and objets d’art.

He was first exposed to that world while he was growing up in Newmarket, the home of British horseracing and a magnet for the British peerage and Middle Eastern royalty. “It was the perfect breeding ground” for his business, Mr. Barron said.

By the time he was living and working in London, some of those contacts had become clients. And in 2021, he spent time focusing on the United States, building relationships in the playgrounds of the rich, such as Palm Beach, Fla.; Aspen, Colo., and New York City.

Mr. Barron said his age has presented a challenge at times. “Most people don’t want to sell their family tiara to a 26- or 27-year-old,” he said, “but if you’re paying more than everyone else, people listen to the sense of the money and they can feel if you’re competent.”

Also, he added: “My hair is thinning a bit so that helps me look older.” Of course, he is not the only younger person rising in the jewelry world today. Max Fawcett, at just 34, was recently appointed the new global head of jewelry at Christie’s in Geneva. “While buyers are primarily in the Far East, the United States and the Middle East, Europe remains the unrivaled seller’s market and we need ambitious dealers to move it forward,” he said. “Barron is a deal maker, and he loves it.”

The plush yet discreet office of Barron London in the Mayfair area is an Aladdin’s cave of curiosities, including artifacts in his personal collection such as a Gandharan schist column featuring Buddha seated on his throne in paradise and a selection of Egyptian statues with delicate hieroglyphs.

Mr. Barron appears to love antique, vintage and contemporary design equally, but there is a certain twinkle in his eye when he speaks about the history of jewelry. “He cares about the heritage of the piece,” said Joanna Hardy, a fine jewelry specialist in Britain, “and it’s lovely to meet someone who I feel the antique trade going forward, will be in good hands.”

At the ancient end of his stock is a pair of saucerlike yellow gold medallions from the Ziwiye hoard of 1st millennium B.C. Iran that the London jeweler Glenn Spiro crafted in 2020 into diamond-accented earrings.

There is also a 1939 chunky gold bracelet with Ceylon sapphires from Cartier and two rings created 60 years apart: a 1950s Suzanne Belperron design featuring a 35-carat Ceylon yellow sapphire and a honeycomb shank filled with citrines and sapphires and a 2008 piece by James de Givenchy at Taffin that showcases a 22-carat cushion-cut Ceylon yellow sapphire with cabochon rubies and brilliant-cut diamonds.

“I can tell you every weight, every piece of every stone in my safe today and everything I’ve ever sold,” Mr. Barron said. “You always know where you are with a gemstone.” Potatoes (unless they were carved by Fabergé in pink agate) now seem worlds away.

Written by Melanie Grant for The New York Times in December 2025.

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In the dead of night last spring, as rain fell in stubborn sheets upon the Sussex countryside, 79-year-old artist Maggi Hambling trudged with a group of friends to an opening in the forest where nightingales sang and folk musician Sam Lee led an accompaniment on guitar and violin. Hambling, having survived a near-fatal heart attack in New York the previous year followed by a bleak period of recovery, was suddenly overwhelmed by a feeling of hope and experienced something akin to a spiritual epiphany.

This month, she is sharing it with the world. Maggi Hambling: Nightingale Night is the artist’s pivotal new exhibition at Pallant House Gallery. The striking dark paintings feature abstract splashes of gold paint – representing both purity and the divine – and reference bird and human song, inspired by the likes of Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen and even a Nina Simone concert she attended in Harlem. Over 50 years into her career, Hambling continues to push the boundaries of her practice with remarkable intensity. “I still work every day. My art is my life,” she says.

Infused with the life experience that comes from decades at the coalface, the work of important female artists in their seventies and eighties is experiencing something of a renaissance. Finally, these women are being recognised and celebrated by the art world ecosystem of galleries, auction houses and museums. This hasn’t always been the case.

Throughout the history of Western art, the contribution of women has been largely undervalued and sometimes overlooked entirely. “We’re in a period of great progress,” says Emma Baker, Head of Contemporary Evening Sales at Sotheby’s London. “We’re seeing these artists come to the fore for really good reasons and they’re staying there. It’s not just a moment; it’s a rediscovery and a historical correction.”

The global feminist art movement, which began in the early 1970s, highlighted and promoted the lives, experiences and work created by women. Women in art, as in society, began to take up a lot more space, and economic power followed. In 2014, a painting by Georgia O’Keeffe sold for $44 million, roughly triple its estimate, making it the most expensive painting by a female artist of all time. A self-portrait by Frida Kahlo then sold for $34.9 million in 2021, and a sculpture by Louise Bourgeois went for $32.8 million in 2023. But it begged the question: does a female artist need to be dead to reach such heights? Not at all.

According to an Art Basel report released earlier this month, the top-selling contemporary female artist last year was the very much alive 93-year-old Yayoi Kusama. But recognition didn’t come early. “Kusama was in New York in the 1960s and used to work with the likes of Claes Oldenburg and Donald Judd. She knew Andy Warhol. She knew all of the heavy hitters of the time, but yet she left New York at the beginning of the 1970s as a complete unknown.

It wasn’t until the 1980s, when you had this incredible coming through for artists such as Bourgeois, Kusama and Judy Chicago, that she started getting the attention she hadn’t achieved before,” says Baker. This year alone marked 11 major Kusama exhibitions, including one at the Tate Modern and Every Day I Pray for Love at the Victoria Miro Gallery, which ended earlier this month.

Last year, a major exhibition at the Royal Academy celebrated the work of the performance art pioneer Marina Abramović, and this autumn the 77-year-old opened her first exhibition in China at the Modern Art Museum of Shanghai. Joan Snyder, aged 84, recently joined Thaddaeus Ropac gallery and later this month will show Body & Soul, a new exhibition showcasing over six decades of the New Yorker’s work. Martha Jungwirth, also 84 and at Ropac, recently exhibited at the Guggenheim in Bilbao as well as opening the day and evening sales in October at Sotheby’s.

The type of art in demand is also expanding. Barbara Kruger, aged 79, whose critically acclaimed 2024 show at the Serpentine featured installations, moving images and soundscapes (Barbara Chase-Riboud, 85, held a sculptural show, Infinite Folds, at the same gallery a year prior), is currently showing photography at the Hall Art Foundation in Vermont. Magdalene Odundo, aged 74, is showing ceramics at the Thomas Dane Gallery in London, and Michele Oka Doner, 79, debuts a series of new bronze body sculptures with the Elisabetta Cipriani Gallery in New York this November. Once relegated to the role of muse within art, women are now increasingly its instigators.

At the bedrock of all this creativity stands the collector. Valeria Napoleone, a patron and philanthropist of 30 years and the foremost collector of female artists in the world, said she was “aghast” at how sidelined female artists were when she began her journey in the mid-1990s. Despite the recent advances, she cautions against the artist “being seduced by money, success or being asked to create constant work for art fairs”, explaining that women artists who have been ignored for decades now have substantial bodies of work that are “real” and “uncontaminated” by the market – which is exactly the kind of work she gravitates towards. She is keen to point out, however, that this “choir of female voices” she collects are first and foremost about talent; they just happen to be women.

Still, in a male-dominated field, this stance was not without its challenges. “In my journey as a collector – a woman collector, and not a couple, collecting only female artists – you can imagine how much resistance and sarcasm I received,” she says pointedly. She wants museums to take on the responsibility of showcasing more female talent and would like to see more women featured in regional museums, where representation is still shockingly low. However, the likes of Fatima Hellberg, who will take the helm of the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna in October 2025, Bettina Korek, CEO of the Serpentine Galleries since 2020, and Dr Mariët Westermann, the first female CEO of the Guggenheim, who was appointed just this summer, are leading the change.

How the art world facilitates the evolution of female talent, however, is continually up for debate. “I was also, for a long time, sceptical of exhibitions that just focused on ‘women’s art’ because that felt to me like placing women in a categorisation that men would not be subjected to,” muses Hambling from her South London studio. “But the older I get, and I look back and reflect, the more I realise that as a queer woman I have experienced prejudice. I applaud conscious efforts to address prejudice, so that one day, that ideal world where a work of art stands for itself might exist.”

Written by Melanie Grant for British Vogue in April 2025.

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About the writer: Grant is a writer and curator specialising in the art and economics of jewellery. Her latest project ‘The Jewellery Book’ was published by Phaidon this month.

Julius Caesar was a ruthlessly ambitious man who enjoyed beauty as much as he loved power. He was married three times but had a panoply of mistresses. It was to Servilia, his favourite, that he gave a black pearl that was worth six million sesterces (about €1.3bn today). She wore it as an earring and it is arguably the most expensive pearl in history. Caesar was obsessed with pearls. By the 1st century bc he had passed a law that banned unmarried women from wearing them. Engagements soared. Pearls separated Roman nobility from the hoi polloi but their cost could lead to bankruptcy for all but the wealthiest. Our obsession with them continues millennia later.

Some of the oldest pearls date back 7,000 years to a Neolithic archaeological site in Kuwait. Pearl fishing reshaped the lives and fortunes of those in the Persian Gulf, with Pliny the Elder writing about his admiration for Tylos (now Bahrain) and the greatness of Arabian pearls. He disapproved of men wearing them and believed that they were created when oysters swam to the surface to swallow dew.

The golden age of pearls might have happened centuries ago but a revival has taken place in more modern times. “Jacques Cartier came to Bahrain in 1912 to buy natural pearls from diving families,” says Noora Jamsheer, the ceo of the Bahrain Institute of Pearls and Gemstones (Danat). “That was when they became integrated into international jewellery lines.”

Just before that in 1893, Kokichi Mikimoto, the son of a noodle-shop owner in Japan, invented the cultured pearl by inserting shards of mother of pearl into oysters. Between 1916 and 1935, Japanese farms were producing 10 million pearls per year. Suddenly, everyone could wear them and while imitation pearls made of glass had existed even in ancient Rome, they had never attained this level of sophistication and the industry polarised.

By the 1950s, after two world wars, the Great Depression and the discovery of oil, pearl fishing in the Gulf greatly declined. Natural pearls now account for less than 5 per cent of the market but Bahrain is fighting back. “One of the pillars of the national 2030 plan is the protection of pearl beds and regulating divers,” says Jamsheer. Oyster beds act as carbon sinks and, as water filters, they suck up pollutants – assuming that they aren’t overfished and only plucked when mature by licensed divers employing ethical practices.

Their rarity inspires devotion in some.  Melanie Georgacopoulos uses natural white Hippopus clam pearls from Indonesia in her design, finding them luxurious yet understated with a good price point between cultured and conch. “I gravitate towards pearls” she says. “They don’t scream, they whisper and I like that a lot.”

Conch pearls found exclusively in the Caribbean come at a hefty price and in a variety of shimmering pink hues. Jeremy Morris, the ceo of David Morris, has been captivated by their beauty for more than 20 years and in Vertigo, he sets a 17.19-carat conch pearl in a swirling sea of Paraíba tourmaline with diamonds in a signature pirouette motif.

In his extravagant Feather brooch, which now sits in the permanent collection at London’s v&a Museum, BHAGAT combines the Indian style of layering swags of natural pearls – which gained prominence in the 18th and 19th centuries with the maharajas with Art Deco. Comprised of 424 natural saltwater Basra pearls from the Gulf with an ethereal glow and lustre, set into the finest whisper of platinum, it is edged in diamonds and took about five months to make, once the pearls had been sourced.

The natural pearl, an organic gemstone formed inside a mollusc without any human intervention, still has the power to seduce. “Over my 30-year career, I have seen quite a clear-cut distinction between the global jewellery retail houses that mostly lean towards cultured pearls and the niche family jewellers focused on haute joaillerie,” says Paul Redmayne, the senior vice-president of luxury sales at Sotheby’s.

“Auction houses sell almost exclusively natural pearls, which are the pinnacle of the pearl world, and I would say are best understood and appreciated in the Middle East, as well as in Asia.” To illustrate that point, Marie Antoinette’s pearl pendant – believed to be one of the jewels smuggled out of the Palace of Tuileries as revolutionaries gathered outside – was sold at Sotheby’s Geneva in 2018 for $41m (€35m).

In contemporary design natural pearls combined with emeralds beckon at Taffin in New York, clusters of silky grey pearls cling to the ear at Hemmerle in Munich and at Tiffany a natural saltwater Gulf pearl has replaced their iconic ‘Bird on a Rock’. Western jewellers may use them but desire to own is mounting in the East. “India has an ever-growing appetite for pearls, as does China,” says Charlie Barron, a jewellery and gemstone dealer based in London, and he’s right. “Natural pearls are expensive but actually the most affordable they have been in history – but I would buy them from a trusted source,” he advises.

Caesar didn’t exactly buy the black Servilia from a trusted source. He took it as a trophy during his invasion of Britain in 55bce, in a war instigated by his lust for Scottish natural freshwater pearls –as seen at Edinburgh’s Hamilton & Inches today. He believed that pearls were tears of joy from Venus, the goddess of love and beauty, whom he regarded as an ancestor.

Yet Persian poet Saadi Shirazi perhaps described it best in his 13th-century work Bustan, in which an oyster opens its shell to receive a drop of divine rain, which in time becomes a pearl. This was a spiritual lesson to stay humble and patient while life’s challenges become something valuable – and what better illustration of that than a natural pearl?

Image Chaumet

Written by Melanie Grant for Konfekt in November 2025.

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The warrior queen Boadicea was a woman not to be trifled with.  Ruling the ancient Celtic Iceni tribe with her husband Prasutagus from what is now Norfolk, parts of Suffolk and Cambridgeshire during the 1^st century AD, she led a revolt against the Roman occupation of Britain following the death of her husband and mistreatment of her subjects.  In his will, Prasutagus left his kingdom to their two daughters but instead the Romans seized his assets, had Boudica flogged, and their two daughters raped; unleashing a fury in her that lead to a yearlong war in the East of England, with 80,000 casualties.

And she did it all wearing a golden torque or torc – a rigid neck ring worn by the Celtic tribes symbolising rank, power and beauty.  Boadicea was a statuesque woman with wild, flowing red hair and when she rode her chariot into her last battle, her daughters were beside her.  Outmanoeuvred by the Roman army, she was eventually defeated but many years later during the English Renaissance from the 15^th-17^th centuries and during Queen Victoria’s reign, her bravery and fight for independence were celebrated and she was declared a heroine. In the process, she catapulted the torque into jewellery history where it has reverberated around the necks of powerful women ever since.

“For me, jewellery is a tool of transformation, of empowerment,” says Dina Komal, designer of the MM Torc and the Tribal Disc Torc in her signature beige gold and diamonds. “It is 100% warrior, and the state of mind that gives you power.”  She created her first torque in 2015 when one of her collectors wanted something bigger with an edge and she became obsessed with them, gaining a cult following for her designs. “I like the fact in history, you couldn’t take it off,” she muses. “It feels like body scaffolding and changes your posture. 

I want the torques I create to hit a nerve physically and mentally.” The ideology behind the torque centres around strength, with many ancient cultures wearing them including the Scythians of Eastern Iran, the Illyrians in the Balkans and the Persians during the Achaemenid dynasty who had a soft spot for stylised animal heads at the tips during the 8^th – 3^rd centuries BC. Texture was often a key feature among the Kalabari of Nigeria who wore bronze torques during funerals rituals and the Maasai in Kenya whose stack of neck rings show social and marital status. 

In the Blast collection at Repossi, the Maasai have inspired a diamond studded collar to accompany their more traditional drop diamond torques which open at the front for women who may be fighting their own modern-day battles. In Glenn Spiro’s Materials of the Old World Collection, amber beads and antique Baoulé are suspended from solid hammered gold in totemic formation in a revival of torque art.

Torques are having a moment and The Calypso Torque in yellow gold with swaying blue topaz pendant is no exception, recalling Calypso from Homer’s Odyssey as she falls for a shipwrecked Odysseus, bringing Greek mythology into the mix within Cassandra Goad’s new Compass collection.  Grima have also been suspending great chunks of colour in the form of amethyst and aquamarine from their classical torque necklaces since the 1970’s.

At Misho, sapphires and rubies pop from odd angles of an open-backed torque and at Tasaki, their torques get a refresh with the looping Chants Luxe Diamond Necklace where a single pearl sits regally on the collar bone.  This is a romantic departure from their more minimal Balance Parallel necklace and worlds away from the Danger Gulper, a torque of magnificent proportions with pearl studded shark’s teeth and a piece that Boadicea would have surely worn had she been around today. 

At Dior, Victoire de Castellane takes the braided gold motif inspired by chairs from the era of Napeleon III and encircles the throat dramatically with her torque-esque My Dior choker and at Thelma West, the Sade’s Embrace Torque with its slender pipes inspired by Nigerian sugarcane tethered by golden wire is tipped with marquise-cut diamonds in honour of musical royalty. Whichever way you wear your torque and whatever material you choose to lavish upon it; the sculptural intensity goes beyond simple link and chain.

Brazilian designer Fernando Jorge is experimenting with wood in earthy browns for his Deep Stream torque as an ode to the Amazon River, translating nature to the body. Back in 2019 he began using fossilized wood, horn and tagua seeds – recalling that early adornments were made of elements like claws and teeth.  Movement is the key “There is sensuality, even if the piece is hard. A torque is more structural from the beginning and sits completely differently but it still has beauty and a purpose,” he says.  

His creation in wood brings the torque back to its tribal roots and his research led him to the Kalabubu from Indonesia who wore torques of coconut shell slices held together with brass wire into battle for protection. The gallerist Nina Yashar wears his wooden torque with a jaunty Prada hat and Grace Jones is on his list of wild women he would like to adorn. He describes wood as part of the ‘circle of sophistication’ where collectors on their jewellery journey wear it having fulfilled their earlier needs for more classic materials. 

The Ocean silver torque twisted and spiralling downwards by Ute Decker provides a more minimalist alternative to the warmer shades of wood, bronze and gold.  As does the Blade, a razor flat hammered torque by Giovanni Raspini.   Ana Khouri seduces in a rock crystal iteration from her RAW collection with a white diamond perched at its centre and Jacqueline Rabun pays colossal tribute to queenly accessory in Metanoia with rutilated quartz, also in flashing silver. 

In Artemis, named after the Greek goddess of the moon and using recycled silver with gold elements, Joy BC speaks of kinetic carved portraiture. Ultimately, the torque transforms a strong woman into something more. Claire Choisne at Boucheron has made a series of six ikebana in the tradition of Japanese flower arranging and in Composition no.2 combined a bejewelled branch of magnolia with a torque in black anodized aluminium.

A detachable stick insect looks quizzically on, delicately stepping from torque to flower. “I wanted this composition to be alive,” she says. Life and beauty have inextricably channelled through the torque throughout jewellery history, evolving with each designer’s touch.  Before going into battle, Boudica reportedly called upon the Icenic war goddess Andraste woman to woman calling for victory and liberty and her torque held that energy until the very end.

Image Boucheron

Written by Melanie Grant for Tatler in October 2025.

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From ancient Egyptian broad collars to contemporary studio pieces, the story of jewelry spans time and space. So, too, do the stories jewelry can tell. The renowned collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, showcases global stories of human ingenuity through an incredible array of jewelry designs, materials, and techniques. Each object boasts a unique history of its own; when considered side by side, however, they speak to one another across cultures and generations.

Brilliance explores jewelry as a messenger, a decorative art, and an object of adornment over the course of four thousand years. This catalogue features more than 150 works in the MFA’s collection, exploring their makers, their uses, and their meanings. In championing the breadth and depth of the MFA’s collection, Brilliance includes both exquisitely humble and extraordinarily detailed objects that together illustrate the timeless human desires to self-fashion, collect and create. Whether in silver or gold, pearls or plastic, jewelry tells multifaceted stories about its makers, wearers, collectors, and, ultimately, human nature as a whole.

Melanie contributed two entries: The first on Hemmerle, the German high jeweller and the second on Wallace Chan, the Chinese sculptor come jeweler.  Other contributors included MFA Curator Emily Stoehrer, Bettina Burr, Tanya Crane, Helen W. Drutt English, Yasmin Hemmerle, Amin Jaffer, Henrietta Lidchi, Bella Nyman, Victoria Reed, Kendall Reiss, and Joyce J. Scott.  In the reviews Christies said “As in fashion, the greatest jewelry designers understood that they were working in the realm of make-believe, and the works in this book ensure there is never a dull or tarnished moment.” —The best new art books of 2026.

Brilliance: Jewelry, Art and Fashion was published by MFA Boston Books in October 2025.

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London is heaving with history at every corner and jewelry is the timeless vessel that tells its full, rambunctious story. Let’s start in Mayfair, the city’s epicenter of fine jewelry (among other moneyed pursuits), where supercars elegantly glide past glittering diamond window displays. Unknown to many, though, is the neighborhood’s fascinating past.

The May Fair began life as St. James’s Fair from at least 1560, which drew the likes of both nobility and the hoi polloi, who would come to gasp at the gamblers and fire eaters, the twirling acrobats and notorious brothels—there was even a live cattle market. It was as popular as it was rowdy, and despite complaints to Queen Anne, kept going until the Earl of Coventry and a flurry of aristocrats moved into the area in the 1760s and—aghast at the riotous spectacle of it all—officially gentrified Piccadilly and ushered in its luxurious future.

At the heart of modern Mayfair today, a bejeweled Bond Street showcases contemporary British design houses such as Boodles, famous for their Ashoka cut diamonds; David Morris, with their stunning pink pearls; Graff, heralded for their enormous flawless white and yellow diamonds; and Moussaieff, whose diamond suites in a dizzying array of colors will root you to the spot. This, however, is just the tip of the iceberg.

In the adjacent Burlington Arcade, Lily Gabriella, granddaughter of famed Brazilian philanthropist and collector Lily Safra, has a gloriously pink atelier (above) showcasing all manner of juicy colored cocktail rings. On Piccadilly, at the southern tip of Bond Street, is the perch of Bentley & Skinner who first equipped the Royal Family with jewels while Victoria was on the throne and who now specialize in antique tiaras and signet and engagement rings from the affordable to the outrageous.

Cross the street to St. James’s and you come across Wartski, a treasure trove of Fabergé from hardstone miniature animals to great swathes of Lalique and Castellani. Walk farther down for the exquisitely curated jewels at Hancocks London, which offers devilishly tempting diamond rivières, Georgian and Victorian jewels, as well as their own classical designs.

If antique is your thing, continue up Bond Street to SJ Phillips on Bruton Street, where European silver, snuff boxes, and delicate antique jewels await, and on the same street, Glenn Spiro combines ancient artifacts with modern design. Finally, on Davies Street, Grays Antique Market majestically beckons as the largest indoor art and antique markets in London.

For lovers of cutting-edge contemporary design, the independents are just as enticing—and often by appointment only. Natural pearls, carved emeralds, and sumptuous rubies in a fusion of Art Deco and the Mughal style await at Bhagat. Grima creates elegantly textured, baguette-strewn 1970s-style gold talismans, while Fernando Jorge brings a Brazilian sensuality to London with warm wood punctuated by colored diamonds and swirling hoops of aquamarine.

Cora Sheibani has matte metal cloud brooches (perfect for English weather. Speaking of, bring an umbrella!) and Matturi has a cacophony of beautiful West African tribal masks in rubellite, green onyx, and golden south sea pearls. Magnificent Fleur de Sable petal-like ear clips in titanium drenched in blue sapphires are all the rage over at Vanleles on Brook Street, while weighty Cuban Link chains bedazzle in a riotous array of diamonds at Chiefer.

For lovers of jewelry made by fine artists such as Frank Stella or Alexander Calder, look no further than the Elisabetta Cipriani Gallery off Regent Street or the Louisa Guinness Gallery in Kensington where precious stones are supplanted by sizeable body sculpture.

Tired after all that shopping? Tea at Fortnum & Mason might be a good idea. Queen Anne’s footman William Fortnum founded the fancy department store in 1707—it was just blessed with an unprecedented second Royal Warrant last year by King Charles and Queen Camilla.

Affectionately known to Londoner’s as Fortnum’s, a recent resurrection of its jewelry department brought back memories of its jewelry heyday in the 1930s. Gold vermeil bee necklaces by Alex Monroe (interestingly, Fortnum’s harvests their own rooftop honey) and graduated pearls by Coleman Douglas compliment a fun and affordable selection of fine and costume jewelry on the 2nd floor. You’ll probably also leave with a hamper though, so be warned.

Beyond Mayfair,Cassandra Goad’s Ozymandias triple stone rings in a kaleidoscope of mouthwatering colors inspired by the golden pillars of the ancient Egypt are worth jumping in a black taxi to Knightsbridge. Sloane Square, which is close by, peels off into other fascinating jewelry destinations such as Kiki McDonough (a favorite of Kate Middleton where you can build your own hoops from scratch or simply buy a pair of tasty studs that look like candy.

In Cadogan Gardens, Annoushka is cultivating chunky attention-grabbing chains in silver, yellow, and white gold in a new collection called ‘Knuckle’—be prepared for Cockneys to admire your ‘Tomfoolery’ (jewelry) on your travels. The tourist paradise that is Covent Garden lies a short tube ride away and is a blessing for those with teenagers in tow: Crazy Pig with its gothic skull rings, Tatty Devine focused on Pop Art-infused acrylic jewels, or Rokit, where vintage meets a Batcave of rockstar style for those fully prepared to embrace street culture.

Written by Melanie Grant for Town & Country in November 2024.

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Phaidon is pleased to announce The Jewelry Book, a decadent exploration of the world’s greatest contributors to jewelry. Journeying across more than 200 years of history, this collection spans everything from Chanel pearls and iron jewels at Hemmerle set with flawless diamonds to the Notorious B.I.G. and Greta Garbo, offering indispensable insight into the artists, creative houses, collectors, and style icons who have defined jewelry.

Edited by Melanie Grant, author of Phaidon’s Coveted (2020), and carefully curated in consultation with an international panel of industry experts, this survey provides an equally expansive glimpse into jewelry with discerning contributions by the foremost writers in the field including Sarah Royce-Greensill at The Telegraph, Anthony DeMarco and Kate Matthams at Forbes, Ranyechi Udemezue at British Vogue, Hannah Silver at Wallpaper*, Coco Romack at T: New York Times Style Magazine, Felix Bischof at THE WEEK Fashion, Tanya Dukes contributor to The New York Times, curator Emily Stoehrer at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and many more.

Given its ambitious scope, it’s unsurprising that The Jewelry Book encompasses renowned and more under the radar designers alike. Eminent creatives such as Wallace Chan, Elsa Schiaparelli, Suzanne Belperron, and Bhagat appear alongside such lesser-known trailblazers such as Maōri jade carver Joel Marsters and Winifred Mason Chenet, a pioneering Black metalsmith and designer. And, of course, no book on jewelry would be complete without pieces from the great heritage houses: Cartier, Tiffany & Co., Van Cleef & Arpels, Bulgari, Chaumet, Harry Winston, and Chopard.

This sprawling collection also showcases the work of celebrated artists, including Louise Bourgeois and Salvador Dalí, as well as archival illustrations, campaigns, and editorial photos by Irving Penn, Toni Frissell, Juergen Teller, and Roxanne Lowit among others. An introduction by Grant chronicles adornment through the ages and across the globe. She writes, “Jewelry is perhaps the most enduring expression of freedom that exists in material culture. . .”

A new generation of jewelers has taken up the call to break the rules as well as pay homage to jewelry traditions. Sustainability movements advocated by millennials, Gen Z, and civil society are fighting for greater care of the environment. A range of unorthodox materials are appearing in high jewelry, such as black sand at Boucheron steered by Claire Choisne, and wood, steel, and pebbles at Taffin orchestrated by James de Givenchy. John Moore is creating gargantuan neckpieces out of Morphit—clay mixed with recycled paper—and Joe Sheehan is making chains out of argillite, basalt, and graywacke.

Entries are accompanied by large-scale images that showcase, in lavish detail, a diverse array of jewelry, whether it be diamond jewels by Moussaieff and Graff, an 18-karat gold ring hand-carved by Haroldo Burle Marx, or an intricate pectoral collar by Azza Fahmy. Explanatory texts are also featured, delving into each entry’s relevance within the broader context of jewelry. A directory concludes the volume, complete with a selected list of galleries, institutions, and other jewelry organizations and destinations.

The book doesn’t merely focus on specific types of jewelry, it also highlights the figures that have influenced and reimagined the pieces they wear. For instance, an entry focuses on Beyoncé, foregrounding not only how she stylizes her jewelry but her collaborative work with industry greats, such as Tiffany & Co. and Lorraine Schwartz, while also championing independent jewelry makers, such as Lorraine West.

Filled with iconic and inspirational images, The Jewelry Book is the most comprehensive A-to-Z guide to the glorious, yet often secret, world of jewelry today. Boasting a cover with a luxe, faceted deboss on a metallic material, this is a shimmering tribute to the timeless artistry, beauty, and history of jewelry.

ABOUT THE EDITOR

Melanie Grant is a luxury writer and curator based in London, specializing in the interplay between art, jewelry, and economics in society. With more than two decades as a journalist, she has worked at The Times, the Financial Times, Independent, Guardian, the BBC, and the Economist, where she spent sixteen years overseeing luxury content and photography for their 1843 Magazine. She also writes for Vogue, Vanity Fair, Tatler, and The New York Times, and has curated for Sotheby’s as well as Kensington Palace. She published her first book, Coveted, in 2020 and served as Executive Director for the Responsible Jewellery Council from 2023 to 2025 where she continues to consult.

ABOUT PHAIDON

Phaidon is the premier global publisher of the creative arts with over 1,500 titles in print. They work with the world’s most influential artists, chefs, writers, and thinkers to produce innovative books on art, photography, design, architecture, fashion, food and travel, and illustrated books for children. Phaidon

Title: The Jewelry Book

Author: Edited by Melanie Grant

Pub Date: 24 September 2025

Price: £59.95

Binding: Hardback

Extent: 328 pp

Illustrations: 300 col illus

Size: 290 x 250 mm

ISBN: 978 1 83866 778 8

To order: phaidon.com

Feature

On a rainy day in June, in mid-lock down 2020, the artist Emma Witter was wrestling with romantic heartbreak and wondering how she was going to pay the rent on her Hoxton apartment as the pandemic took hold. A number flashed up on her phone from Gallery Fumi, the Mayfair space founded by Sam Pratt and Valerio Capo, who then visited her and bought a Bone Nest – a wall hanging of intricately arranged chicken feet bones. ‘That call was a bright light on a really grey day,’ recalls Witter.

Making art from tiny bones wasn’t something that she considered possible as a career growing up in the commuter belt of Hertfordshire as the working-class child of a father who worked in IT and a mother who was a teaching assistant. Alignment to a trade loomed, but she resisted and found her way to Central Saint Martins to study Performance Design where the magic of scenography blew her mind. Design also felt safer than art but somehow obsession for the objects and materials themselves took hold and the multi-disciplinary artist she is today was born.

‘Emma’s work touches on so many important ideas, our history, how we have become conditioned to think about how we place value. Our views on fragility and beauty,’ says Trino Verkade, the CEO of Sarabande, an accelerator foundation for artists established by the late great fashion designer Lee Alexander McQueen. While at Sarabande, Witter became homeless, and Verkade secured her a 6-month live-work residency with Selfridges which literally saved her. The web of collaborators, mentors and collectors is more vital now than ever for artists with the volatility of world markets scaring clients and an art market in the doldrums.

Then on July 3rd, her first solo exhibition for Fumi opened called ‘The Moon’s Daughter is a Pearl,’ inspired by the poetry of Anna Souter and the intertwining of art and ecology. Discarded oyster shells bathed in copper sulphate, distilled water and charged with electricity became textured metallic pearl keepsakes. Some clustered around mirrors, some acted as goblets and others as bowls in either black or reddish gold with a shimmering pearlescent inner world. The results are as mesmerising as if Witter with her wild red hair had collected scallop shells from the fictional world of Botticelli’s Venus.

To make something this beautiful out of waste has become her signature, transforming both her and the object. Her dream now is to start a large-scale production line where food waste like bone and shell could be deconstructed into artistic resources such as charcoal, inks and oils to create art, akin to Warhol’s legendary factory – but with food. This type of boundary-pushing is exactly why FUMI are showing her work according to Sam Pratt. “The art world’s pace pushes artists into a kind of hyper-productivity, often at the expense of depth, reflection, and a genuine engagement with craft and materiality. Emma’s work is the antithesis of that.”

Image Sarah Cuce

Written by Melanie Grant for Wallpaper in September 2025.

Feature

One balmy day in Rome a few years ago, Bvlgari muse and film star Zendaya sashayed past a bevy of press to toast the launch of the new Bvlgari hotel.  Fresh from airport drama having lost her suitcase and her original outfit, the actress and her long-time stylist Law Roach had settled on a glittering Valentino suit complete with dangerously see-through mesh top, white diamond jewellery and a Tubogas Serpenti watch which coiled seductively around her wrist.  Introduced in 1948, the Serpenti hit a hot streak in the 1960s, adorning the wrist of icon Elizabeth Taylor in 1962 on the set of Cleopatra and going on to become a powerful union between high jewellery and horology. 

This spring, that union was on full display at the annual Watches & Wonders fair in Geneva. Often the talking points are the mechanical heavy hitters. Yet this year, the artistry was just as remarkable as the engineering, with new takes on much-loved classics. Case in point? The Bulgari Misteriosi Cleopatra cuff watch with diamond dial peeping out from behind a faceted rubellite. A new Pallini in Serpenti form with gold bead or diamond scales also slithers into the spotlight but the most daring iteration of the Serpenti yet is a vision of sleek minimalism signalling a new design era according to Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani, Bvlgari’s Product Creation Executive Officer.  “Aeterna is the rebirth of our iconic Serpenti. I wanted something different and modern. We removed the eyes and made the design sleeker and more contemporary. A futuristic version of Serpenti for a different type of clientele.” 

The 60s were also a period of metamorphosis for Paiget reflected in their ‘Piaget Swinging Sautoir’ in rose gold fringed with yellow sapphires, cornaline, diamonds, white opal and ruby root beads which transforms from wristwatch to necklace illustrates that perfectly. “A watch is first and foremost a piece of jewellery” Yves Piaget once said and as the pioneers of pop art and Op art infused designs, Piaget collaborated with John-Claude Gueit as much stylist as watch designer to bring art, craft, technology and design together.

The art of Cartier also manifested at the fair in a vintage-leaning design family called Tressage with twists of gold framing a snow-set diamond or lacquered dial arching around the wrist in almost a free-standing sculpture acting as a bridge between the ever-evolving panthère now bathed in white diamonds and the more utilitarian Tank Louis Cartier – both of which see new creations this spring.

Going further back in time, just as Faberge before the Russian Revolution experimented with the plainness of stone fruit and vegetable object d’art as a palette cleanser to his extraordinarily ornate eggs, H. Moser & Cie have from their base in the Vallée de Joux produced a wildly bejewelled Streamliner Skeleton with baguette and rose-cut diamonds ensconced in every crevice. Having experimented with the emptiness of Vantablack dials, composed of carbon nanostructures absorbing 99.965% of light and even a circular watch case made from Swiss cheese, their famously minimalist design has been turned upside down in this watch to dramatic effect.

The science of space is explored in Vacheron Constantin’s Traditonelle Moon Phase, powered by Calibre 1410 AS/270 and tracking the lunar cycle with 122 years of accuracy. 270 pieces in reference to their 270^th anniversary this year come with a high precision astronomical moon phase on a hot pink strap with a smattering of diamonds on the bezel.  Alchemy in midnight blue Aventurine glass as a dial adorns the L’Heure du Diamant Moonphase at Chopard embracing their new 09.02-C self-winding movement.  As legend has it, that in the 17^th century, copper filings were accidentally dropped into molten glass at the Murano glass making workshop in Italy and a unique material called “peravventura” meaning ‘by chance’ was created which became Aventurine. Chopard have encircled theirs in fat juicy diamonds in a setting of their own design.

Aside from Pop and Op art, perhaps the most prevalent art movement to influence watchmaking is Art Deco which emerged in the 1920s after WWI conjuring up geometric lines.  In Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Reverso One Precious Colours, a mother of pearl dial flips to reveal grand feu enamel on the reverse set with diamonds and fired at 800 degrees centigrade up to 15 times with drying phases at 200 degrees in a masterclass of patience as well as an understanding of metier d’art from their in-house decorative crafts atelier. Flowing lines of artistic beauty energetically executed by skilled artisans bring the Reverso, first launched in 1931 up to date. 

Art Deco experienced a golden age until 1939 when modernism took over and at Van Cleef & Arpels a watch called the Rabun Mystérieux brings strong lines and abstraction to the fore combining both using the Mystery set gem-setting technique which they patented in 1933.  As art forms overlap and converge, watches and jewellery do the same, whether in the most chi chi of circles in Rome or quietly in the workshops of the world’s best watchmakers. 

Written by Melanie Grant for Harrods Magazine in July / August 2025 issue.

Feature

The poet Ferdowsi spent twenty years between 977-1010 writing a book called Shahnameh which contained 50,000 rhyming couplets dedicated to the history of Persia’s kings.  In it, a warrior called Saam leaves his newborn son Zal on Mount Alburz to be raised by a magical bird because he was born with white hair, a sign of demonic possession. Much later they are reunited, and this tale of love and forgiveness is now captured in exquisite detail over a thousand years later using miniature painting, grand feu enamelling and paillonnage in a watch by Jaeger-LeCoultre. 

Over two thousand years ago in ancient China, the great wall was erected to protect the Qin dynasty from nomadic hoards and the MasterGraff featuring a tower with diamond windows, baguette-cut diamond path and miniature painted forest, pays homage to that history complete with moonphase indicator and double-axis tourbillon. 

The merging of art, history and poetry in metier d’art watches is reaching epic proportions this year and at Louis Vuitton, the Age of the Samurai is providing ample inspiration for their new Tambour Bushido Automata which counts enamelling and engraving within its repertoire with a mechanical calibre animating the central character’s expression flanked by Mount Fuji. On a gentler note, at Van Cleef & Arpels, lovers coquettishly flirt on a modern-day bridge kissing at midnight for The Pont des Amoureux Matinée watch brought together by a double retrograde and on-demand animation mechanism.

Grisaille enamel with the soft wash of a watercolour palette articulates a background scene illuminated by the moon as blue sapphires twinkle on the bracelet.  Midnight tones also appear on the Eternity by Tiffany Wisteria watch which draws from cascading wisteria blossoms infused with the Art Nouveau style in plique-à-jour enamel and directly references one of Tiffany’s famous lamps.  Night turns to day at Piaget on a single dial for the Altiplano Skeleton High Jewellery watch created in a collaboration with their Ateliers de l’Extraordinaire and enamel artist Anita Porchet. Grand feu cloisonné enamel connects with a skeletonised framework in a cacophony of artisanal skill fused to high jewellery wrapped around a stylishly slim movement.

In 1914 The Cartier panthère streaked across their first ladies’ watch and this year peeping languidly from behind laser-cut leaves at four dimensional levels, staring out with hypnotic emerald-green eyes against a white mother-of-pearl and lacquer dial is a new incantation in 36mm, limited to 50 pieces.  Carved from black lacquered mother-of-pearl coloured with golden thread, panthère represents the enduring majesty of the animal kingdom.  The Slim d’Hermès Cheval brossé designed by Dimitri Rybaltchenko features a simple portrait of a horse against an enamel blue sky made from crushed coloured glass fired with natural oils.  

Deft brush strokes are achieved by hollowing a base and filling it with paint before using a flexible pad to transfer said paint to the dial in layer upon layer of colour.  The ultra-thin Hermès H1950 mechanical self-winding movement fits snuggly beneath each design limited to 24 pieces. As the year of the snake unfolds, Dior’s Grand Soir with its Toile de Jouy printed dial and mother-of-pearl opaline serpent slithering beneath rose gold butterflies’ ushers in a time of transformation, intelligence and mystery.

There is no mystery about Les Cabinotiers Tribute to the Tour de l’lle as an ode to Geneva and 270 years of watchmaking at Vacheron Constantin because in its sublime execution, the full force of metier d’art is unleashed in a single, mind-bending unique piece.  Bas-relief engraving in buttery pink gold a millimetre thick, chiselled trees and windows, polished roofs and clouds awarded a satin finish requiring 140 hours of work glint under sunlight.  Time may march forward, but the poetry and artistry perfected over millennia lives on in these miniature works of art.

Written by Melanie Grant for Vanity Fair in April 2025 for the Spring issue.