Precious: The History and Mystery of Gems Across Time

Copyright © 2024 by Helen Molesworth

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

Ballantine Books & colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Originally published in hardcover in the United Kingdom by Doubleday, an imprint of Transworld in 2024. Transworld is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Molesworth, Helen, author.

Title: Precious: the history and mystery of gems across time / Helen Molesworth.

Description: First edition. | New York: Ballantine Books, [2024] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2024010974 (print) | LCCN 2024010975 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593500880 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593500897 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Gems—History.

Classification: LCC NK5550 .M65 2024 (print) | LCC NK5550 (ebook) | DDC 736/.209—dc23/eng/20240506

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2024010974

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2024010975

Ebook ISBN 9780593500897

randomhousebooks.com

Book illustrations by Tony and Hannah at Global Creative Learning

Book design by Barbara M. Bachman, adapted for ebook

Cover design: Studio Secondo

Cover photograph: ©Yevonde Portrait Archive/ILN/Mary Evans Picture Library

ep_prh_7.0_148356982_c0_r0

Contents

Dedication

Introduction

1. Emerald: The Gem of the Ancients

2. Ruby: The Leader of Gems

3. Sapphire: The Gem of Royalty

4. Garnet: The Gem of Warriors

5. Pearl: The Queen of Gems

6. Spinel: The Gem of the Mughals

7. Quartz: The Commoner Gem

8. Diamond: The King of Gems

9. Colored Diamond: The King of Diamonds

10. Jade: The Stone of Heaven

Afterword

Acknowledgments

Picture acknowledgments

Notes

Index

About the Author

_148356982_

To Mum and Dad, the most precious gems of all

Introduction

The moment the box is opened is one every jewelry lover lives for. You take in the faint click of the mechanism and the soft creak of an antique hinge. The smell of the leather. And then the surprise of what has been hiding inside, the sharp glint of a gem that light first touched decades or even centuries ago.

In my life studying, valuing, curating, and most of all loving gemstones, I have often been thrilled by moments such as this, not knowing what I am about to see but having a hunch that it will be special. Working in the auction business, you can be sent to value a collection with little more than a name and a blank sheet of paper. Sometimes your eyes are the first in years to appreciate a remarkable jewel that has been living behind the walls of a safe. This joy, of meeting an object you instantly recognize, or immediately clocking the value of something unheralded, is one of the many reasons to relish the work I have been lucky enough to call a career.

That career was one I had never considered before it started. And it might never have come to pass but for an intervention from my father. Having just finished my Classics degree and decided that I didn’t want to follow the corporate route, nor to pursue my interest in archeology professionally, I returned home at a loss. I told him I had no idea what to do with my life, except that I wanted to be happy. His response was a burst of unconventional careers advice, counting the options off on his fingers.

Hair, makeup, clothes, jewelry. Pick one.

Far from being flippant, my father had struck a chord. While I had never considered what following my dreams might actually mean, the moment he mentioned jewelry I felt a tingle. One thing I knew for certain was that I had loved gemstones for almost my entire life.

Early photographs show me at age two, a white-haired, blue-eyed baby in my birth country of Kenya, bedecked only in my mother’s beads and (matching, I’m glad to say) high heels. I was otherwise tupu-tupu—Swahili for stark naked. I was, I’m told, obsessed with anything sparkly, regularly decorating my toy rocking camel (our equivalent of a rocking horse) with whatever beads and bandeaus I could lay my hands on. When we came to England, I became a tomboy: climbing trees, scrapping with boys, and digging stuff up at every opportunity. Yet the obsession with everything that glimmered remained, and I would rush off to local jewelry shops whenever I could with all the pocket money I had scraped together.

So great was my desire for gems that, when I fell in love for the first time at the age of six, it was not with a boy but an amethyst geode: a mini crystal cave of piercingly purple gems that shone with seemingly impossible sharpness and depth. Unable to take my eyes off this treasure, I believed that destiny had brought the most beautiful thing in the world to a back garden in southwest England and placed its spiky symmetry snugly into the palm of my hand.

It was my first glimpse of perfection, hence my dismay when its owner—my godfather—gently told me that it couldn’t be mine. I watched him place it out of my reach 6 feet high on a drystone wall at the end of the garden and wander back to the table. As soon as adult backs were turned, I ran to the wall and started my ascent. Before I could reach the top and claim my prize, my sneaky scrambling brought the whole thing down on me, trapping and breaking my leg. It was an early lesson in the irresistible attraction of gemstones, the lengths that people will go to pursue them, and the danger that can accompany these most exciting of objects. Not to mention the disappointment that is a perennial fellow traveler on the quest for gem perfection. I never did get to keep the amethyst.

A seed had been planted that day, and my interest continued to grow. Later, I found myself integrating the study of ancient jewelry into the tail end of my Classics degree. It was my archeology tutor who introduced me to Roman gems: tiny, precious, yet often overlooked ancient works of art. Not long afterward I was having that offhand conversation about a choice of career in my parents’ kitchen, and within weeks I was on Bond Street, knocking on the doors of jewelry houses with a CV in my hand, as green as the emeralds on display. Soon I was having the pages pushed back at me over the table, by a man who very firmly insisted—twice—that he was not looking for a secretary. Another dealer, who I ended up working for, initially told me to forget it: I was the wrong gender, wrong family, wrong religion. Why didn’t I just become a lawyer?

It was my first experience of the rough edges that surround an industry dealing in some of the world’s hardest objects. But it was also a suitably fiery introduction to a world full of bright and brilliant human gems: people driven by a passion for their subject whose sparks I had already felt igniting inside me. Another knock on a Bond Street door resulted in a much friendlier conversation, culminating with a visit to the safe and my first experience of the treasures of the trade. I still remember the jewels I saw that day. One diamond dealer showed me a 100-carat stone on the wheel as it was being polished by one of the last diamond-cutters left in London. This was a world I knew I wanted to be part of from the moment its door began to creak ajar. I signed up for night classes in the science of gemmology, and so began the greatest love affair of my life: the study of gemstones.

In joining the gem and jewelry industry, I became part of one of the oldest and richest human fascinations. For as long as people have known about gemstones, they have treasured them. They are objects of great beauty, sources of deep symbolism, stores of significant value, subjects of fierce competition, and catalysts of trade and discovery. Gems have a value that spans the aesthetic, cultural, financial, and historical: they are significant to the human narrative in almost as many different ways as they can boast sparkling facets. They are the ultimate meeting of science and stories.

The gemstone that shines in the auction room and ignites a bidding war is merely the tip of the iceberg: the glittering culmination of an extraordinary journey through time. That stone is a product of nature’s extremes and expanses, born from the collisions and eruptions that shaped the planet as we know it today, as mountains formed and continents closed over long-forgotten oceans. Its natural form was forged at the meeting point of numerous chance happenings: violent geological events that brought together minerals that would never normally meet, provided the necessary heat and pressure for the crystals to form, and raised them from deep below the earth’s surface—tens or even hundreds of miles down—to within reach of human hands and tools. And its stunning beauty was honed by human hands, relying on centuries of accumulated knowledge of how to cut and polish the rough crystal into a glimmering masterpiece that will set hearts racing.

If holding a truly magnificent gemstone in your hand feels like a miracle, then that is barely an overstatement: a stone that may sell for tens of millions of dollars has endured a journey that may stretch back tens of millions of years. The extent of fate and fortune required to place it on your finger or around your neck is almost impossible to grasp.

By contrast, the hard-earned beauty of a polished gemstone is deceptively straightforward: the glorious gift of light and color. The way in which gems interact with light is simply incomparable. The crystalline structure of a diamond can do things to light that should bend your mind as much as the wavelengths. A light wave enters the gem through the many facets the cutter has painstakingly polished onto its surface. It dances around within the stone, and in some cases disperses into its rainbow of component colors. If the stone has been cut properly, every single facet will reflect all of that wonder back into the eye of the observer.

The effect can be almost spiritual. Talking, one day, with a friend (who was Buddhist) about why we loved gems so much, I tried to express the way it made me feel to escape into the soul of a stone—examining it for every detail, hunting down information I could use to determine more about where it had originated and what had happened to it—but especially how I found the rest of the world drift away as I did so, a moment of hyperfocus and peace. She replied, so simply and profoundly, It’s a bit like meditation, isn’t it?

In many gemstones, the power of color is equally important. Caused by complex chemistry and chance physical anomalies in the crystal, these hues are not just natural phenomena in their own right, but psychologically important, conveying timeless meaning and symbolism. The associations of blue stones with heavenly might, reds with fire, blood, and passion, and greens with the colors of nature and rebirth stretch back millennia and remain resonant today. They help to explain why gemstones have been esteemed not just as aesthetic items but as objects that denote power and status, convey religious meaning, and have often been thought to serve a medical purpose.

This is part of what makes the study of gemmology and gem history so fascinating. The flashing fire of the brilliant-cut diamond, the dark pools of the blood-red garnet, and the soothing green of the Colombian emerald do not just reflect and disperse light, engaging and enticing the eye. They also mark a trail of cultural and social significance whose footsteps can be followed from the modern world far back into antiquity.

This book will follow that trail and my own travels down it during nearly twenty-five years in the industry, crossing the world in search of gemstones and their stories—from the mines where they are extracted to the markets in which they are traded, the workshops where they are fashioned, the auction houses where they are tussled over, and the museums and country estates where they come to rest. It will explore the meaning, mystery, and history of ten of the most famous and historic gemstones. Some are closely related whereas others are entirely separate from one another, but all are resonant of how gems have adorned human history.

Central to that story is how gemstones provide a point of connection from the present to a long-distant past, allowing us to compare the way we think, the beliefs we hold, and the aesthetics we admire to those of people who lived centuries or millennia before us. So often the earliest history is something we can only squint at through fragmentary pieces of literary evidence or archeological ruins that give just a hint of the world these civilizations inhabited. But the innate durability of gems, often preserved in the graves of those who owned them, or in the hoards of those who stashed them, means they can survive intact, as if they had not aged a day in more than a thousand years. Like us, our ancestors wore these precious objects close to their skin, and close to their hearts. With a piece of jewelry that once lived around the neck of a Roman aristocrat or on the hip of an Anglo-Saxon royal, we can hold that history in our palm: seeing what they saw, feeling what they felt, and even sensing the faint shadow of their presence.

Gemstones also open a wider window into history, with their stories helping to reveal much about the past that might otherwise remain hidden. They illuminate the nature of belief and superstition in ancient Egypt, Rome, and Greece; the dynamics of power and status, commercial trade, and cultural exchange in the early medieval world once demeaned as the Dark Ages; the ambition of dynasty building in Mughal India and Napoleonic France; and the reality of how colonial expansion drove the extraction and exploitation of gemstones, from South America in the sixteenth century to Africa in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Gemstones have been a consistent feature of human history, and the history of gems is ultimately a story of people: hands that have sought and found, cut and polished, treated and tested, bought and sold, owned and cherished these remarkable treasures. That human dimension helps to explain why no gemstone group has had an entirely straightforward journey through their long history. All the gemstones this book will explore have seen their fortunes fluctuate, whether because their supply has waxed and waned, their reputation has risen or fallen, or their popularity has not traveled from one place or point in history to another.

As we will see, much of what we now take for granted about gemstones has not always been true: the diamond’s clear-cut status as the symbol of eternal love is a relatively modern development, in part shaped by the advertising industry; the ruby was not always the peerless prince of red stones; and the preferred gem of the Mughal emperors, perhaps history’s most lavish jewelry collectors, is one that has become less well known and frequently misunderstood—the spinel. Gemstones may be a constant in history, but the way they have been used, prized, valued, and marketed has also been the subject of constant change and evolution. These are dynamic and ever-changing objects as well as perennial ones.

I have made a life and career in gemstones not just because I love the objects but because this line of work feels like no other, almost a perfect synthesis of every subject under the sun. The study of gems involves history and politics; it includes archeology and engineering, geography and geology, chemistry and physics, psychology and romance, fine art and high finance. It is a subject with something for everyone, whether one is interested in the geology of how gem deposits are formed, the chemistry and physics that lie behind their existence, the craftsmanship that reveals their beauty, the money and markets of prices rising and auction gavels falling, or the simple romance and psychology driving our attraction to their glittering facets and rich colors. In my career, I have worked with miners and geologists, laboratory technicians and scientific researchers, archeologists and curators, sales executives and auctioneers, stone-cutters and valuers, and even held several of these roles myself.

This work has taken me all over the world: from the sapphire-rich rivers of Sri Lanka to the auction houses of London and Geneva; from knee-deep snowdrifts in Moscow to 100-foot-deep mining shafts in the emerald districts of Colombia. In the gem trade, your work can be at an oligarch’s dinner party or in the African bush, wearing an evening dress one week and a hard hat the next. Some days will be spent getting lost in a museum archive, and others presenting to high-net-worth clients. I adore the contrast between the earthy and the exquisite, the aesthetic and the scientific, and the gentle rhythm of research set against the sharp tension of an exciting sale. No other work could have allowed me to indulge so many interests: to dig through the dirt as often as I get to try on tiaras.

But nothing has ever quite matched a highlight that came quite early in my career. After the street-level apprenticeship, my jewelry life began in earnest when I enrolled in a graduate program at Sotheby’s. Within a year of starting, I had been sent from London to Geneva to work on multimillion-dollar sales, and two years later I was in charge of my first auction back in London. A few years later, not long after I had moved to work at Christie’s, the phone in my office rang, with the head of the jewelry department on the line.

Helen, there’s a valuation. You’re good at research; I want you to do it.

Only when I was instructed to present myself at Kensington Palace did I get butterflies. When I arrived the next day with a colleague, we were shown to Princess Margaret’s old apartments and greeted by our clients. First a bottle of vintage champagne was opened, and then box after box of her jewelry—from famous pieces she had worn to royal weddings and functions, to sentimental brooches and rings that had never been seen by the public.

Being present at such an appraisal means bearing witness as tiny, exquisite doorways are opened into history, its artifacts peeking out after years or even decades spent in hiding. And rediscovering stories that might never have otherwise been told. The jewels we were handling not only defined the princess as a style icon of her era but also told of the person and personality, on a private, almost intimate, level. Many of the boxes we opened contained handwritten notes, including one that accompanied a simple sapphire brooch: To darling Margaret on her confirmation from her loving Granny Mary. God bless you. A gift from a queen to a princess, but also a simple token of love from a doting grandmother.

The collection ranged from sentimental to spectacular, and one jewel in particular overshadowed them all: the star lot of the sale, the Poltimore Tiara. An intricate canopy of scrolling diamonds, this was without question the iconic piece of Princess Margaret’s jewelry. It was the tiara she had worn for her wedding to Antony Armstrong-Jones in 1960, one that wrapped around her famous beehive as if it had been made to do so.[*] The jewel gained fresh renown much later, when a photograph of the princess wearing it in the bath was published, a scene re-created in The Crown. I loved the Poltimore not just as a gorgeous and glorious jewel, but for what it said about this famously independent woman, the royal with a rebellious streak. This was not a piece borrowed from the Royal Collection, as one might expect for the sister of the sovereign, but one she had bought herself, secondhand, at auction. She had even worn it, contrary to tradition, before she was married. This was the tiara of not just a powerful and beautiful woman, but one who knew exactly what she wanted—even if, infamously, she was not always permitted to have it.

It is also a highly versatile item, capable of being worn not only as a diadem but as a necklace, or further disassembled into a series of brooches. And it is the only tiara I have handled in my career that I was specifically forbidden from trying on. I couldn’t wear the Poltimore, but I certainly could get my hands on it—exploring the many forms that had helped make it famous. One of the first things I noticed on taking it out of the box was the screw fittings at the back and the screwdriver that had been stored underneath it. So I happily got to work one afternoon, as we readied the collection for sale in 2006. It was only when its various pieces were spread on the desk around me that I realized how much time had passed: there was just half an hour before I was due to meet a prominent journalist for a preview and photo shoot. Only some of the quicker handiwork of my career ensured that the collection’s signature item was fully present and correct for its first public inspection.

The sale of Princess Margaret’s jewelry collection was one of many that have captured my imagination over a career working with gemstones, spanning researching, teaching, curating, sourcing, and, of course, selling. These gems and jewels are such a perpetual source of interest because of the stories they tell: the efforts of those who mined and fashioned them; the intimate, personal histories of the individuals and families who owned them; and the sweeping narratives of empires, trade routes, conflict, and craftsmanship that have made them such an intrinsic part of culture and civilization for millennia.

As objects that have been so consistently and comprehensively loved through human history, they have abundant truths to tell and secrets to share. Gems speak a universal language of human belief and behavior through history: they illuminate a treasure map of what people did and thought thousands of years ago, and why in so many cases we continue to do and think the same things today. Far more than being objects to look at, they have so much to teach us: a shortcut into whole swaths of human history, beckoning us to understand all the cultures that existed before us, and how close the connections are with our world today.

Skip Notes

* It had in fact been made in the nineteenth century for Lady Poltimore, who had worn it to the coronation of Princess Margaret’s grandfather, King George V, in 1911.

1

Emerald

The Gem of the Ancients

Fair speech is more rare than the emerald that is found by slave-maidens on the pebbles.

—The Instruction of Ptah-Hotep, 2500 b.c.

As the pickaxe went through the cellar floor, the workmen paused. It was 1912, East London, and they had a job to do. They were taking down a centuries-old building in such a state of disrepair that it needed razing to the ground and rebuilding from the foundation up. But as they broke through the ancient flooring, a reflection caught the light. There was a glint of something peeking out of a broken wooden box stashed beneath the chalk floor—something shining. They were about to unearth a treasure chest that would astound the world, but raise many questions that still remain unanswered. A priceless cache of late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century jewelry had lain hidden undetected for centuries. It would turn out to be one of history’s most significant gem discoveries, and would become known as the Cheapside Hoard.[1]

Now, almost exactly one hundred years later, I had it in front of me. Select pieces had been laid out in preparation for an exhibition to be put on to celebrate the centenary of its discovery, and I was here to examine them. I felt like the proverbial kid in a candy store. There was one jewel that immediately jumped out at me: an enormous emerald crystal, which also enclosed a secret. Inside it was a watch.

Every gemstone asks a question, and the best contain many: puzzles of history and mysteries of time as enticing as the colors and reflections that have long bewitched those who work with and collect them.

But before the questions, before any thought can be given to every hand that touched it on its way to yours—hands that mined it, sculpted it, traded it, and treasured it—the first sight of a remarkable gemstone prompts something simpler. There is a moment of wonder, taking in something so astonishingly beautiful that it clears the mind, a meditative respite from the questions that will soon follow. This first contact is not analytical, or even professional, but purely emotional. There is only the hypnotizing quality of the colors, the movement of light, and the swirling patterns of the gem’s internal world. This admiration of natural beauty is intensified by the technical skill of the artisan, the gem formed and fashioned to bring out a life previously hidden within, and set in a marvel of handiwork, at times as stunning as the stone itself.

The Cheapside Hoard watch is just such a combination: nature’s miracle uplifted by supreme human craftsmanship. It is also an unusual gem, in that nature provided the casing for the expert’s craft, and not the other way around. A timepiece dating to around 1600 had been embedded in a huge hexagonal emerald crystal an inch deep, with a hinged lid, probably cut from the same crystal. The watch face had been cleverly applied with green enamel to blend in, giving the impression of a never-ending gem, and the lid was so fine and transparent that the time could be seen even with the case closed. Although as an object it seemed small—especially