The Polished Carat

Fei Liu produces collections that embody distinctive style, superb gems and high production values that retail at luxury leaders like Harrods and Liberty of London. A mere handful create one-of-a-kind, bespoke high jewelry pieces valued between $US 1,000,000 and $1,500,000. Fei Liu of Birmingham, England ticks all three of those dazzling boxes— and many more. Some U.K. notables who wear Fei Liu jewels include Amanda Holden, the actress and judge on the television show Britain’s Got Talent, Chinese international film star Zhang Ziyi, television personality and fashion model Jodie Kidd, and US leading ladies Lisa Edelstein and Betsy Brandt. Because his creations are worn by people around the world, the U.K. National Association of Jewellers (NAJ) has chosen Liu jewels to represent the finest in British jewelry design in exhibitions that have traveled to the USA, Europe, the Middle East and Japan. As Gary Wroe, Chair of the NAJ explains, “Fei Liu has been a great ambassador for the U.K. jewelry industry, from championing cutting edge designs to speaking about his journey from China to the Birmingham School of Jewellery to becoming an internationally renowned award-winning designer. We are proud to have supported him throughout his career.” When His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales and Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cornwall toured the Birmingham Jewellery Quarter in 2014, the School of Jewellery exhibited work by Fei Liu and other alumni. Six years later, Liu marvels at the thrill of it all. “Meeting the Royals with colleagues and professors and showing them our jewelry designs was a great Birmingham jewelry celebration,” he recalls. “In gratitude for their visit, my fellow School of Jewellery alumnus, the goldsmith Jack Row, presented the Royals with limited edition handcrafted silver fountain pens. I gave Prince Charles a pair of sterling silver cufflinks I designed.” Because Liu produces such diversely styled collections in gemstones and precious metals that range from the refined to the incomparably sublime, his style eludes easy definition. One can safely say, however, that his jewels are nature-inspired, graceful and alluring embodiments of beauty and structural integrity that flatter the wearer while giving pleasure to others. Liu’s designs, materials, quality control and finished jewels are all based on what he calls ‘the five values of jewelry.’” He named them as: “Design value, artisanal value, material value, emotional value and cultural value.” This last value, Liu clarified, is humanistic and fact-based. “The cultural value of jewelry references how, where and by whom the jewels were fabricated. In an ideal world,” he added, “Jewels are created in an environmentally responsible manner by people who work in safe conditions, are paid fairly and have employee or national health care coverage.” He vets suppliers and fabricators to ensure that they fulfill that brief.

“While my jewelry is a vehicle for my self-expression, it is also intended to bring more beauty, meaning and emotional fulfillment to people,” Liu explained. Living proof: he collaborates with independent jewelers around the U.K on initiatives that foster community spirit while bejeweling people. For example, since March 2020, Liu has been working with independent retailers around the U.K. as well as the family-owned, heritage jewelry chain T.H. Baker on an initiative which involves donating pieces from his fine sterling silver Carpe Diem collection. These are gifted to people whose good works have earned them gratitude and appreciation from their communities.

Liu explained the paths he travelled before he opened his atelier in the city’s historic Jewellery Quarter in 2006. Born and bred in China, he was trained by master jewelers at the Birmingham School of Jewellery. Founded in 1890, “The school gave me an invaluable education in all aspects of jewelry design, fabrication and technical ingenuity.

This New York based jeweller and gemstone carver's handmade jewellery and is inspired by the drape of fabric, the fluidity of running of water and nature. Her aesthetic is realised through carved gemstones, fiery Mexican opal, amethyst, aquamarine, topaz, jade, zircon and chrysoprase. Naomi can confidently conquer any gem, relishing the challenge of even the most difficult stone to carve. With the shapes she fashions in her cocktail rings, brooches and pendants, Naomi pays tribute to a gem’s natural dynamic, coaxing a gem to reveal it's true form and flow, embracing perceived flaws and allowing a stones inner beauty to shine. Naomi Sarna travels the world in search of her beloved coloured gemstones, recounting her travels to Tanzania in Africa as one of the best experiences of her life. Her jewellery beautifully reflects how she is inspired by the fluidity and organic forms and elements found in nature. To manifest these qualities, she has mastered the art of hand carving and inlay. Das As one of the best gemstone cutters in the world, Naomi has also won many prestigious accolades, including 23 AGTA Spectrum Awards. Naomi Sarna says of her carved gemstones jewellery,  “I see my jewels as transitional objects, ones that evolve from their natural origins as crystals found in the earth to their completed journey for the person who wears them. My hands construct their story ". "The happy wearer treasures both their existence and their story in the same way that mineral origins are treasured. To see them in that context is a union of spirit, art and nature,” says Naomi.

Luis Alberto Quispe Aparicio, founder of L’Aquart lapidary creative studio, was born to a family of jewellers. Since childhood, Luis was bewitched by the beauty of precious stones and while gradually mastering gem-cutting, he began to dream about starting his own business – “The first luxury goods brand from Peru.” His dream was so overpowering that its incarnation was just inevitable. Luis Alberto founded L’Aquart, a brand that offers a variety of art objects whose central elements, accents and details are artfully embellished with carved gemstones.

Meet the all ladies team behind the Indian brand Adastra Jewellery who keep the past alive with their replicas of heritage pieces custom made to order for their clients! They have an Elizabeth Taylor inspired collection, pieces from the Maharaja's feature prominently as well as a sprinkling of THE Queen's Cullinan diamonds like my favourite "granny's chips"!

We’ll be honest – there’s no dearth of jewellers in India, but once in a while, you’ll find a gem that’ll make you stop and pay attention. This is what happened when we were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the works by VAK, a niche jeweller that was established in 2015. For the first five years of operation, it operated only upon word of mouth.

Earlier this year, the brand, headed by designer and founder Vishal Kothari, opened its first boutique in the landmark Royal Opera House in Mumbai. Kothari was born in a family of jewellers, but knew very quickly that he wanted to march to the beat of his own drum. Says Kothari, “I am largely self-taught as a creator though I come from a family of jewellery creators who have been in the business for three generations. My father and grandfather have been highly revered in the jewellery business. When I joined my father I felt a sense of continuity but also a lock down. I had my own ideas. And a very strong design aesthetic. So I undid everything – the factory, the office, the design ethos. I unlearned everything that is quintessentially ‘of the trade’. So in that sense you could say I am a first.  A rebel. I wanted to be a sculptor or a couturier or a musician. My expression as a jewellery creator today is an amalgam of this.”

In the past five years, he has achieved recognition for his subversive take on traditional jewellery – vintage cuts such as rose or portrait were modernised with a combination of rare coloured gemstones. In terms of design ethos, Kothari reveals that he has “a sculptural vision to breathe life into motifs in nature and architecture”. “Much like a painting,” he continues, “my pieces are on a seamless canvas of floating gemstones with minimal metal to highlight the carnal beauty and boldness of the stones. “I have a strong artisanal bent and find art everywhere. I often start with a design in my head and it evolves into its own being.  The ideation process goes through days, often months. Then it almost creates itself. My design vocabulary draws from art, sculpture, nature and motifs in architecture. I am very inspired by the architecture from my city – Mumbai – so there are Gothic, Victorian, Indo-Saracenic and at times Art Deco influences in my work. Recently the baroque edifice and interiors of The Royal Opera House in Mumbai inspired me. I created a line of jewellery based on this. I see jewellery as self-expression. Not adornment. I therefore can only make very few pieces.  I like to think my pieces are intelligent. They are always thinking.”

Given the amount of attention and detail that goes into each piece, VAK creates only 100 – 120 pieces a year, and each jewel is unique. His clients include private collectors and royal families around the world (he refuses to share names), while many of his jewels have found their way on the auction circuit. He has no website, but what would you expect from a brand as exclusive as VAK?

Source: ROBB REPORT Singapore 2020

Welcome to my reading room where I'll be reading from actual books! The Cartiers is the revealing tale of a jewelry dynasty—four generations, from revolutionary France to the 1970s. At its heart are the three Cartier brothers whose motto was “Never copy, only create” and who made their family firm internationally famous in the early days of the twentieth century, thanks to their unique and complementary talents: Louis, the visionary designer who created the first men’s wristwatch to help an aviator friend tell the time without taking his hands off the controls of his flying machine; Pierre, the master dealmaker who bought the New York headquarters on Fifth Avenue for a double-stranded natural pearl necklace; and Jacques, the globe-trotting gemstone expert whose travels to India gave Cartier access to the world’s best rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, inspiring the celebrated Tutti Frutti jewelry.

Francesca Cartier Brickell, whose great-grandfather was the youngest of the brothers, has traveled the world researching her family’s history, tracking down those connected with her ancestors and discovering long-lost pieces of the puzzle along the way. Now she reveals never-before-told dramas, romances, intrigues, betrayals, and more.

The Cartiers also offers a behind-the-scenes look at the firm’s most iconic jewelry—the notoriously cursed Hope Diamond, the Romanov emeralds, the classic panther pieces—and the long line of stars from the worlds of fashion, film, and royalty who wore them, from Indian maharajas and Russian grand duchesses to Wallis Simpson, Coco Chanel, and Elizabeth Taylor.

Published in the two-hundredth anniversary year of the birth of the dynasty’s founder, Louis-François Cartier, this book is a magnificent, definitive, epic social history shown through the deeply personal lens of one legendary family.

5 min soothing meditation to calm your frazzled lockdown nerves

Coco Chanel got the tweed memo in the Twenties and used it to create what is still one of the most covetable fashion items of all time - the Chanel jacket. She was mad about hunting and fly-fishing, and it was when she borrowed some tweed from her boyfriend, the Duke of Westminster, that she fell in love with it and commissioned a Scottish factory to produce it in colours inspired by the Scottish countryside. She then moved production to France, but the origins are Scottish and that's what counts. See? Tweed can also be high fashion.

Royals and aristocrats have always loved tweed. Even actors playing royals and aristocrats in The Crown and Downton Abbey have contributed to sales of tweed reportedly increasing by 400 per cent. We ALL want to look like Princess Margaret.

SherlockHolmes's deerstalker and Inverness cape were made of tweed. In fact, Sherlock Holmes now has his own tweed, designed by the Museum of London and inspired by the colours described in the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stories, fashion from the Victorian era and current menswear trends. Remember though - it's not real tweed if it doesn't come from the Hebrides. Sorry, Sherlock.

Titled Tweed de Chanel, Chanel‘s latest high jewellery collection is inspired by the house’s signature tweed.

There are many symbols that are synonymous to the house of Chanel, the lion, the star, the number 5, to name a few, but perhaps none of the above is as iconic as the tweed — the handwoven Scottish woollen fabric Gabrielle Chanel was so passionate about that it not only became an essential element of her wardrobe, she also repeatedly adapted it, from menswear into womenswear she created for the free-spirited women just like her.

A show about jewellery because all great stories start with a piece if jewellery. Pop in for a little listen to interviews with jewellers, stories behind high jewellery collections and all kinds if interesting facts and details of jewels that fascinate me. I'll also be chatting about all things Elizabeth Taylor and her wonderful archival jewellery moments.

---

Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thepolishedcarat/message

Chatting to my ring twinsie who is even more obsessed with Elizabeth Taylor than me, my friend and fellow page curator of our instagram fan page dedicated to Elizabeth Taylor's style and epic archival jewellery moments!