Jewelry & Watch News

Here’s some old-fashioned Christmas Spirit in action. An unknown woman slipped a fistful of valuable fine jewelry into a red Salvation Army donation bucket in Annapolis, Md., last week. Capt. Ryan Vincent, commander of the Salvation Army in Annapolis, told local newspaper the  Capital Gazette  that the woman dropped a ring and two bracelets into the bucket outside the Festival at Riva shopping center, said “Merry Christmas,” and walked away. One of the bracelets was a yellow gold Tiffany & Co. style that was valued at $6,000 by a jeweler and was sold for $1,500 worth of donation money. The ring and second bracelet are a matching set that feature diamonds and rubies. According to the news outlet, their value is being determined by a gemologist. Pearl Eldridge, the bucket ringer who saw the woman put the jewelry in the bucket, called the woman a “quiet spirit.” It’s not the first time someone’s put fine jew...

Uncut Gems , which features Adam Sandler as a jeweler, hits theaters today, and critics say it might his best work yet. In a review for Entertainment Weekly , Darren Franich calls Sandler’s performance “loud and meaningful, hyperbolic yet terribly human.” In the film from Josh and Benny Safdie, Sandler plays Howard Ratner, described on the movie’s official website as “a charismatic New York City jeweler always on the lookout for the next big score.” “When he makes a series of high-stakes bets that could lead to the windfall of a lifetime, Howard must perform a precarious high-wire act, balancing business, family, and encroaching adversaries on all sides, in his relentless pursuit of the ultimate win,” according to the site. Franich gives the movie an A-, noting that Sandler “exudes the self-lacerating melancholy familiar from his acclaimed dramatic work in  Punch-Drunk Love  and  The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) .” In a headline, Entertainment We...

Kentucky Derby Origins When it comes to American heritage, the Kentucky Derby is an important part of our country’s cultural history. It’s the longest running sporting event in the U.S. with a legacy that spans 144 years. In the late 1800s, the grandson of William Clark – yes, of Lewis and Clark – spearheaded the creation of the event. Along with his uncles, John and Henry Churchill, Clark raised funds and secured land for the racetrack. Here, they organized the Louisville Jockey Club who sponsored the first Kentucky Derby on May 17, 1875. Only three horses participated in the first race, but the event attracted around 10,000 spectators. Kentucky Derby Traditions There are a few other milestone moments that led to the Kentucky Derby as we know it today. In 1883, the name “Churchill Downs” was first used to landmark the racetrack. Today, it’s on the registry of National Historic Landmarks. Then, just twenty years after the first Kentucky Derby, the now-iconic Twin...

It’s an obvious and necessary step in the value proposition argument to evaluate usage.  When buying a watch, especially a first watch, this is a really popular question that’ll plague you until you make the purchase.  Now, let’s define a couple things:  When I say ‘watch’, I mean an heirloom piece that, at minimum, has an in-house movement.  When I say ‘purchase’, I mean the moment that you decide which watch that is going to ride your wrist for years to come. Look at this purchase as a watch that will get wear.  A lot of wear.  Let’s call this the ‘middle 80%’.  In a bell curve, the fringe 10% on the far left and the far right are too far outside the norm to be considered as practical.  Focus on that middle hump, it’s where we’re operating today. And there isn’t a category that fits every man’s needs.  It all depends on the kind of guy you are- your style, your day job, your weeknight and/or weekend activities.  It’s...

Never mind that old Coco Chanel chestnut about taking one thing off before walking out the door. Today, you may want to add more to the mix. One of the current preoccupations of fine jewelry collectors is an assemblage of necklaces that is layered, personal and playfully disheveled (or artfully edited, as the case may be). It is an ideal display for items à la mode — initial necklaces, chains, coin pendants — and whatever else finds its way into the jumble.  (The look even has an Instagram nickname: the neckmess. Coined in 2016 by the Rhode Island-based designer Jessica Kagan Cushman, the term has made it into jewelry vernacular.) According to Lauren Kulchinsky Levison, the vice president of the East Hampton boutique Mayfair Rocks, the practice of stacking and staggering necklaces is an approach favored by clients who “want to wear jewelry in a more magical way,” rather than the blunt force of big statement pieces. “Any jewelry designer who isn’t making ne...

For many New Yorkers, living in a full-service doorman building simply means being able to receive Amazon packages and FreshDirect shipments headache-free. But for Madhuri Parson, a sixth-generation jeweler whose Hudson Yards studio has doubled as her company’s base of operations since she moved there in the summer of 2016, it was an absolute must. Ms. Parson had been living in her brother’s two-bedroom West Village co-op since 2011, when she came to the city to learn the ins and outs of the jewelry business, first at the Fashion Institute of Technology and the Gemological Institute of America, and later in the design and sourcing divisions of Liz Claiborne and David Yurman.  “It’s ingrained in Indian women that we wear lots of jewelry — a lot of gold, 22-karat usually, gifted by someone who loves you,” she said. “I was inspired by my family’s Old World heritage, but I wanted to blend it with a modern sensibility.” But shortly after she devoted herse...

As a curator, I have always seen my role as the messenger, the one who carries the artists' voices to a larger audience. From the very beginning of my career, I tried to put that message forth either by publishing articles, then later, creating Platforma through which I co-curated jewelry exhibitions, then as the director of a contemporary jewelry gallery in New York where, from 2014 to 2018, I organized 23 exhibitions. Now, finally, I have co-founded New York City Jewelry Week. Certainly my most ambitious project to date! If staging a city-wide festival dedicated to jewelry and flooding the city with 100 events doesn't create a large enough platform for artists to exhibit their work, doesn't spread my mission, then I am not sure what will. Galleries Are Great, But You Need More As a curator I pay attention to themes in the field, similarities or contrasts in practices, and strong voices who are louder and more innovative then their contemporaries. Each s...

In March the halls of Baselworld, usually packed with brand representatives, buyers and members of the media, were instead buzzing with talk of a show in crisis. The world’s largest watch and jewelry fair by both exhibitors and visitors — an event held in Switzerland that had helped brands shape the public’s perception of the two industries for more than 100 years — had lost 75 percent of its exhibitors in a little over a decade, dropping to 520 this year from its 2008 high of 2,087. Attendance declined, too, and organizers said later that the 2019 event had lost money. The problem? Some exhibitors said the fair didn’t connect with consumers. And, in an age of direct-to-buyer sales and ubiquitous social media, that meant it was something like an analog solution to a digital problem. “Baselworld celebrates a form of luxury rooted in the 1990s,” said Rolf Studer, joint executive officer of the independent Swiss watch company Oris, a longtime Baselworld e...

The Italian fashion house shows its first high jewelry collection during the couture in Paris. PARIS — Gucci’s much-touted inclusivity is not limited to community: It extends to products, too. There is little, it seems, that the brand and its creative director, Alessandro Michele, do not see as potential parts of their magic magpie mash-up vision, from sneakers to china and, as of this past week, haute jewelry, that top-end intersection of rare gems and elevated workmanship. They can go low, they can go high, they can go everywhere. The brand has already moved into the neighborhood. During the couture, the twice yearly gathering of the wealthy to view the finest and most expensive clothing creative minds can make, Gucci opened a boutique on the Place Vendôme, the 17th-century square in central Paris known as the center of the high jewelry universe.  And it presented a collection called Hortus Deliciarum, or Garden of Delights, more than 200 pieces de...

A New (Age) Shrine to Wellness The founders of the Well — a design-conscious new health club that will open this September off Union Square in New York — are devotees of science, but they also buried crystals in the foundation of the building’s soundproof meditation room. “We are type-A New Yorkers,” says Kane Sarhan of himself and his partners Rebecca Parekh and Sarrah Hallock. “We like facts, data and results — that’s why the Well was built as a science-backed ecosystem for wellness. But we also believe in the ‘woo woo’ and encourage the exploration of approaches to healing and wellness that are more spiritually based.” Accordingly, the space, an 18,000-square-foot shrine to holistic well-being, will offer a reflexology lounge and a meditation studio but also a full-service spa and private training gym for its members. It will also include an organic cafe from the team behind the health-conscious West Village restaurant Cafe Clover that will be open to the public...