Features

Hot Jewels

31 Aug 2008 by business traveller

Making glamorous jewellery requires nerves of steel and years of experience. Sara Turner meets the man who turns dreams into glittering reality.

Asprey’s flagship London store is a treasure trove of curiosities. Once you leave New Bond Street and enter through the revolving doors (the same doors that have seen elegant Edwardian gentlemen sporting silk top hats), you can easily lose a few hours examining silver goblets, hand-crafted purple leather vanity cases and everlasting clocks.

But the real focus of the shop is the jewellery – glittering, glamorous and to die for. I’ve always wanted to know how the sort of show-stopping pieces Asprey specialises in are made, and to find out more about it, I make my way to the top of the building (pausing only to browse the store’s extraordinary collection of rare books) until eventually I find myself in a light, airy room. By the window is a line of old wooden desks, and on top of one of them is a bowl of diamonds.

I’m here to meet the man responsible for the apple of my eye, an Asprey-cut diamond ring. Stuart Greig, a charming Londoner with a taste for gold, has been working in the jewellery trade since the age of 15, when he started out as an apprentice in a workshop, just yards from the Asprey store. He has been working in these streets his entire career.

But has he got used to handling diamonds? “No, never. I still get a kick out of big stones,” he laughs. “Last week was quite exciting – I mounted a pair of million quid (US$1.86 million) diamond earrings. Five-and-three-quarters of carat in each stone. You don’t see that every day, but if you did you’d become blasé.”

Asprey is one of the few stores on Bond Street still to have its workshops in the building and the small jewellery workshop produces wonders every day. To my surprise, there’s very little in the way of high-tech equipment involved in the process – all you need is some tools and years of experience. Greig explains: “This is the traditional kit – your hammers and steel pliers. This hasn’t changed since the days of the Romans. There are about 20 different pliers there, and I’ve had those for 20-odd years. This is the bare minimum that I’ll need. I can do a single-stone diamond in about a day. If it’s more complicated – perhaps, an eternity ring – it can take a week. I have done jobs that have taken six months, such as a huge diamond-encrusted bird.”

The first step in making a ring is to choose the metal, which is then melted down so it can be reshaped completely. “For me, gold is at its best when it’s molten,” says Greig. “The colour is fantastic. It’s such a luminous yellow. And platinum when it’s melted is pure white, like the sun – it glows like a light bulb.

“For modern jewellery, my favourite metal is platinum, because you can solder so accurately. It’s lovely and clean all the time. But traditional 18-carat yellow gold is great fun – as it’s slightly softer you can carve it, cut it, do all sorts of things with it.”

So the metal is the right shape, what next? “I take a rod of metal and mill it out so it’s close to the size that I want for the shank.” The machine for this also looks like it hasn’t changed for centuries. It’s a chunky piece of kit which gradually compresses the metal into a smaller and smaller rod.

“Then, I take a pair of pliers,” continues Greig, “and bend the whole thing up, close to the finger size I want. Then, I solder it up across the join, put it on this great lump of steel here, which is perfectly round, and just bash the ring with a mallet to make sure it’s nice and round.

“Once I’ve done that, I’ll turn up another piece of metal to make the collet that holds the stone in place. That is probably the longest part because it can be so diverse – four claws, eight claws, and all sorts of fancy designs.

“That’s where you need a pair of fairly good eyes and a lot of patience, and it tends to get a bit blue when it goes wrong.”

The result is a perfect diamond ring, sleek and chic. The Asprey-cut diamond has 61 facets for the light to bounce through (the brilliant cut typically has 57 facets). It was designed exclusively for Asprey by Gabi Tolkowsky, the great-nephew of the man who invented the brilliant cut. The design has its roots in the 17th-century cushion cut.

As in the rest of the Asprey jewellery range, it is classic with a contemporary twist. Many of the designs are inspired by the old tomes in the archives. Catalogues dating from the 1920s show art-deco diamond and platinum jewellery, made for kings and queens from across the globe.

But if it’s not in the catalogue, don’t worry – appropriately for today’s ultra-rich international customers, the motto on Asprey’s coat of arms declares: “It can be done.” In other words, if you can imagine it, Greig and his colleagues can probably make it for you.

For more details, visit asprey.com

BUILDING ON SUCCESS

One of Asprey’s greatest assets is its store at 167 New Bond Street, which the firm has occupied since 1847. The building still retains many of its original features – including elegant geometrical staircases, ornate fireplaces, vaulted ceilings and bay windows – but the original Georgian design was given a stunning facelift in 2000 by Norman Foster and interior designer David Mlinaric. The central atrium of the shop now soars up to an ingeniously engineered glass canopy, similar to the one Foster designed for the British Museum, while below an apparently free-standing spiral staircase adds to the impression of height.

THE PERFECT CUT

There are four things to look for when choosing a diamond, whether it’s for a pendant, ring or earrings. All these “four Cs” are important, but you may want to trade in one for the sake of another (such as size for clarity). When buying a diamond, you should always receive a certificate detailing its quality and characteristics.

CUT

There are many different cuts, the most famous of which are probably the brilliant (round), emerald (rectangular) and princess (square). With a cut, the diamond takes on a personality and reveals its dazzling nature – the cut allows the light to be refracted and creates brilliance.

CLARITY

When diamonds are formed, deep in the earth’s crust, they usually have small imperfections, or birthmarks. Depending on the size and number of these “inclusions”, a diamond receives a different clarity rating. Internally flawless diamonds are the most expensive, although the flaws of very slightly included diamonds are invisible to the naked eye.

COLOUR

Pure diamonds, which are made of pure carbon, are perfectly transparent and colourless. Although to the untrained eye many diamonds appear colourless, it is common for them to possess a slight yellow tint due to the presence of nitrogen. The presence of other impurities can create other colours – from steel grey to green, pink, or extremely rare red.

CARAT

Unlike with gold, where carat refers to the purity of the metal, the carat of a diamond is its weight. The more carats, the more it’s worth.

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