What True Craftsmanship Means: A Definitive Guide to the World's Greatest Makers
An essay and field guide to the brands and master artisans that still make things the way they were meant to be made — from Pagani's San Cesario atelier to...
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Why Watches Were the Only Good Jewellery for Men. Until Now.
Walk into any decent jewellery hall in London, Paris or New York and you will see, within a minute, that almost nothing on display was made for you. The tennis...
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Why Watches Were the Only Good Jewellery for Men. Until Now.
Walk into any decent jewellery hall in London, Paris or New York and you will see, within a minute, that almost nothing on display was made for you. The tennis...
Guilloché: The Engine-Turned Art Behind Fine Jewellery
In 1786, Abraham-Louis Breguet turned a rose engine lathe inward on a watch dial and changed the visual language of European horology. The patterns he cut into metal — clous de...
Viking Rings: Oath, Status, and the Weight of Silver in the Norse World
In 876, King Guthrum stood before King Alfred of Wessex and swore an oath on what the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle describes as a "sacred ring" — a holy bracelet upon which...
Mongol Empire Jewelry: Gold, Conquest, and the Adornment of the Steppe
In 1948, the Soviet archaeologist Sergei Kiselev began excavating the ruins of Karakorum on the Orkhon River in central Mongolia. What his team unearthed over two seasons was not the...
Traditional Goldsmithing Techniques: The Endangered Crafts That Shaped Fine Jewellery
Sometime in the seventh century BC, an Etruscan goldsmith sat in a workshop somewhere in central Italy and fused a gold granule measuring less than a quarter of a millimetre...
Mongolian Jewelry History: Gold, Power, and the Ornament of Empire
In 2004, archaeologists working the Tavan Tolgoi site in eastern Mongolia opened an aristocratic burial and recovered a golden ring bearing a falcon seal. Published excavation photographs show the bird...
Ancient Roman Rings: Instruments of Power, Identity, and Empire
A gold ring recovered from the ruins of Pompeii, now held by the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, bears an intaglio portrait of its owner carved into carnelian. The man's...
Alexander the Great Jewelry: Gold, Power, and the Adornments of Conquest
Perdiccas watched Alexander die in Babylon in June of 323 B.C. and received from the king's hand the object that mattered more than any territory: his signet ring. Not a...
The Guilloché Enamel Technique: A Vanishing Craft and Its Uncertain Future
Somewhere in a workshop in Geneva, or perhaps Birmingham, or one of the handful of ateliers in Moscow that still maintain the tradition, a craftsman is bent over a machine...
How to Tell if Jewelry is Real Gold: A Gentleman's Guide to Authentication
In 1896, the Louvre paid 200,000 francs for a magnificent golden tiara said to have belonged to the Scythian king Saitaphernes. The provenance appeared sound, the craftsmanship extraordinary, the gold...
The Mens Cameo Ring: Carved Relief, Ancient Lineage, Modern Command
The Grand Camée de France is the largest surviving cameo from antiquity. Carved from a five-layered sardonyx circa AD 23, it measures roughly 31 by 26.5 centimetres and depicts the Julio-Claudian imperial...
The Signet Ring: A History of Authority Worn on the Hand
Before there were signatures, there were seals. Before there were seals, there were men who pressed carved stone into wet clay and understood that the mark they left behind would...
Jewelry Craftsmanship: The Disciplines Behind Pieces That Endure
Peter Carl Fabergé never enamelled a single egg. He never cut a guilloché pattern, never operated a rose engine, never stood over a kiln waiting to learn whether a firing...
Platinum vs White Gold Jewellery: A Metallurgical and Material Comparison
In 1557, the Italian humanist Julius Caesar Scaliger described a mysterious metal found in Central American mines that "no fire nor any Spanish artifice has yet been able to liquefy."...
Mens High Jewellery: A History of Power, Craft, and Conviction
Image Credit: Met Museum Signet Ring with Tutankhamun's Throne Name New Kingdom ca. 1336–1327 B.C. A gold signet ring recovered from the tomb of Tutankhamun bears a cartouche so finely...