Today's Reading
Central to that story is how gemstones provide a point of connection from the present to a long-distant past, allowing us to compare the way we think, the beliefs we hold, and the aesthetics we admire to those of people who lived centuries or millennia before us. So often the earliest history is something we can only squint at through fragmentary pieces of literary evidence or archeological ruins that give just a hint of the world these civilizations inhabited. But the innate durability of gems, often preserved in the graves of those who owned them, or in the hoards of those who stashed them, means they can survive intact, as if they had not aged a day in more than a thousand years. Like us, our ancestors wore these precious objects close to their skin, and close to their hearts. With a piece of jewelry that once lived around the neck of a Roman aristocrat or on the hip of an Anglo-Saxon royal, we can hold that history in our palm: seeing what they saw, feeling what they felt, and even sensing the faint shadow of their presence.
Gemstones also open a wider window into history, with their stories helping to reveal much about the past that might otherwise remain hidden. They illuminate the nature of belief and superstition in ancient Egypt, Rome, and Greece; the dynamics of power and status, commercial trade, and cultural exchange in the early medieval world once demeaned as the Dark Ages; the ambition of dynasty building in Mughal India and Napoleonic France; and the reality of how colonial expansion drove the extraction and exploitation of gemstones, from South America in the sixteenth century to Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Gemstones have been a consistent feature of human history, and the history of gems is ultimately a story of people: hands that have sought and found, cut and polished, treated and tested, bought and sold, owned and cherished these remarkable treasures. That human dimension helps to explain why no gemstone group has had an entirely straightforward journey through their long history. All the gemstones this book will explore have seen their fortunes fluctuate, whether because their supply has waxed and waned, their reputation has risen or fallen, or their popularity has not traveled from one place or point in history to another.
As we will see, much of what we now take for granted about gemstones has not always been true: the diamond's clear-cut status as the symbol of eternal love is a relatively modern development, in part shaped by the advertising industry; the ruby was not always the peerless prince of red stones; and the preferred gem of the Mughal emperors, perhaps history's most lavish jewelry collectors, is one that has become less well known and frequently misunderstood—the spinel. Gemstones may be a constant in history, but the way they have been used, prized, valued, and marketed has also been the subject of constant change and evolution. These are dynamic and ever-changing objects as well as perennial ones.
I have made a life and career in gemstones not just because I love the objects but because this line of work feels like no other, almost a perfect synthesis of every subject under the sun. The study of gems involves history and politics; it includes archeology and engineering, geography and geology, chemistry and physics, psychology and romance, fine art and high finance. It is a subject with something for everyone, whether one is interested in the geology of how gem deposits are formed, the chemistry and physics that lie behind their existence, the craftsmanship that reveals their beauty, the money and markets of prices rising and auction gavels falling, or the simple romance and psychology driving our attraction to their glittering facets and rich colors. In my career, I have worked with miners and geologists, laboratory technicians and scientific researchers, archeologists and curators, sales executives and auctioneers, stone-cutters and valuers, and even held several of these roles myself.
This work has taken me all over the world: from the sapphire-rich rivers of Sri Lanka to the auction houses of London and Geneva; from knee-deep snowdrifts in Moscow to 100-foot-deep mining shafts in the emerald districts of Colombia. In the gem trade, your work can be at an oligarch's dinner party or in the African bush, wearing an evening dress one week and a hard hat the next. Some days will be spent getting lost in a museum archive, and others presenting to high-net-worth clients. I adore the contrast between the earthy and the exquisite, the aesthetic and the scientific, and the gentle rhythm of research set against the sharp tension of an exciting sale. No other work could have allowed me to indulge so many interests: to dig through the dirt as often as I get to try on tiaras.
But nothing has ever quite matched a highlight that came quite early in my career. After the street-level apprenticeship, my jewelry life began in earnest when I enrolled in a graduate program at Sotheby's. Within a year of starting, I had been sent from London to Geneva to work on multimillion- dollar sales, and two years later I was in charge of my first auction back in London. A few years later, not long after I had moved to work at Christie's, the phone in my office rang, with the head of the jewelry department on the line.
"Helen, there's a valuation. You're good at research; I want you to do it."
Only when I was instructed to present myself at Kensington Palace did I get butterflies. When I arrived the next day with a colleague, we were shown to Princess Margaret's old apartments and greeted by our clients. First a bottle of vintage champagne was opened, and then box after box of her jewelry—from famous pieces she had worn to royal weddings and functions, to sentimental brooches and rings that had never been seen by the public.
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