Why do you think that vintage and antique jewels are a good investment for people?

You barely see that quality of handwork or craftsmanship anymore. You sometimes see
it in contemporary High House jewelry, but how many people can access it? With mid-priced vintage and antique jewelry, or even a low-priced great find, you can find superior design, the hand of the maker, and a quality of craftsmanship that elevates the jewel to a much higher level than its peers today. If I could find a unique vintage jewel with a good story at a low price for a young or new collector, I’d be thrilled. While they certainly are that, I often try to escape the jewel as a pure commodity. I prefer to think of jewels as ravishing design objects. They become jewels only once they attach to some part of our human bodies. That’s when they develop purpose and activate as
beautiful jewels.

Why do you think the story of a maker is so important to share when collecting
jewels? 

Jewelry is not disconnected as an outlier from cultures or the sacred. It must be understood as linked to them. It can open up an entire world, so we discuss the maker. Let me give you a quick example from London of the 1930s to 1950s. Moshe Oved—whose animal rings, some with Hebrew inscriptions, are coveted today—was an immigrant watchmaker and owner of a little shop called Cameo Corner where he specialized in cameos and antique jewelry. He was also a sculptor, erudite, a founding member of the historic Ben Uri Society, and a collector and good friend of the sculptor Jacob Epstein. Through Oved’s storytelling, he explains why he made the animal rings and much more: a ring and its times are created for you. When you look at a ring in the Mahnaz Collection, I hope you get an introduction to the maker, the larger body of work he introduces us to, and his world, which might engage you as a visit to a museum, an art gallery or online. It’s history that becomes yours, and you make it anew.

How do you present your renowned collections?

We develop two kinds of exhibitions. Significant formal exhibitions are when we feel we have something to contribute to the field of jewelry history overall and sufficient jewelry to match and have something to say. These take years to plan, and as examples, I would cite our London Originals exhibit and our Material Beauty show. Both made contributions to the field. A second type of exhibition is more informal and of shorter duration. It takes place when we want to make a particular point not explicitly covered in our significant collections: cover a single jeweler’s career or draw attention to the design elements in the particular school of jewelry making. 

Can you tell us about your famous catalogues? 

I am a scholar and author. We write original essays and publish catalogues whose clients are primarily scholarly institutions, scholars and collectors and jewelry lovers. We hire an excellent design director and editors pay close attention to good photography, and also bring in photos from the era. Our first was called London Originals, and it was about a group of jewelers working in London in the 1960s and 1970s who transformed the world of jewelry and made a dramatic leap from the jewelry of the 1950s. Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon provided a cachet to these jewelers and helped the artist jeweler emerge and thrive in Swinging London. We did another one on the transformation of Indigenous Native American jewelry since the 1960s. While we showed several jewelers’ designs, we focused on two particular jewelers, Charles Loloma and Richard Chavez, whose work represented a Modernist transformation in very different ways. 

Why do you feel you share a “kindred design spirit” with ABASK?

ABASK is interested in a small production and looks for curious minds and producers—and it’s an intelligent selection. Like us, ABASK looks for handwork in a way that’s focused and interested in preservation. ABASK recognizes that good design is timeless. We both carry a luxury product, yet we try to make some of it accessible. I'm very lucky, I have an amazing team, and I think ABASK has that, too.