Two of the most commonly asked questions I get asked is, “When did you know you loved gems?” and “Did you always know you wanted to deal in gems & jewellery?”
I would love to wax lyrical and say it was love at first sight and I knew from the get-go but the truth is much like many a romance novel, at first it was unrequited love and I played hard to get. For me the true love affair only started when I was immersed neck-deep in the business.
But to truly understand how it all started, we have to go back many years to when I was around 4 years old. As the youngest [by quite some margin] of 3 siblings, I was often left to my own devices. One day I found myself in my father’s office staring at a cabinet full of silver candelabras, candle sticks, Judaica and other various attractive ornaments. Taken in by their shininess, I stared at them, taking in all their shapes and contours but being quite oblivious to their true value. My father, ever the one to frown upon idleness, saw it as an opportunity to keep his son busy and perhaps teach his son a thing or two. So he put me to work with a polishing cloth and one by one handed me these very valuable silver ornaments. I remember until this day the acrid smell of the polishing liquid. I didn’t care for the smell much but I loved making these objects super shiny and seeing the pride my father had when one by one I handed him a gleaming silver treasure.
I’d love to tell you that from then on I was hooked but that would be false. Like most petulant children I grew bored of the activity after a number of times and took up other hobbies and interests. However, what I never grew tired of was seeking my father’s approval. He would give me various tasks over the years and I always carried them out diligently but never fully appreciated the lessons I was being taught. Until that fateful day when my father took me with him to Thailand on a buying trip.
It was 1991 and my father was going on one of his regular buying trips for gemstones. Like many trips before, I accompanied my father. Previously, these trips had always been a holiday for me, a chance to laze about by the pool and sightsee in between his business appointments. This time was going to be different. This time my father decided that his 15 years old son needed to learn something useful and earn his keep. So off we went to one of his appointments and the only thing I knew was we were going to look at gemstones.
As we arrived at a tiny non-descript office in the centre of Bangkok in what looked like a very old and simple office block, I was less than enamoured. In my mind we were going to see gemstones of untold value and the setting for this was to be regal and impressive. Little did I expect the true setting to be far from this dream. As I sat in this pungent, drab office quite dejected and already muttering under my breath that I wanted to go back to the pool at the hotel, my father paid my behaviour little attention. After exchanging a few niceties with the owner of the business, a gesture was made to one of the office staff to bring out the gems. Shortly after, the timid and soft-spoken assistant returned with several large black trays. I couldn’t quite see from my seat what was in the trays until they were laid out stacked in front of us on the desk. What I saw then I shall never forget and was certainly the last thing I expected to see in such an underwhelming setting.
As each box was opened the biggest most incredible gems revealed themselves. Talk about sheer exhilaration. This was a visual treat of the highest order. A myriad of colours washed over my eyes with almost every colour imaginable arranged neatly in single-file rows. One by one I took in the sight of the most incredible gems, each one dancing in the light as I craned my neck to take it all in. Blues, pinks, greens, purples, reds & yellows. Golden glows followed by bright flashes of light. I soaked it all up. For the first time I was smitten by a world yet undiscovered. But this was not a pleasure trip. There was business to be done and some serious lessons to be learned. My father set upon teaching me how to hold a gemstone - ever so carefully yet precariously, gently squeezed in a pair of jeweller’s tweezers. Then as if that wasn’t enough pressure, I now had to do it one-handed while struggling to find focus with a jeweller’s loupe to magnify each gem and peek into its world and see what each one revealed – each facet, each imperfection and each nuance. I wish I could say I quickly got the swing of things but in truth this first excursion was physically painful and emotionally taxing. By the end of that first day, my eyes burned as if I had watched 48 straight hours of television about an inch from the screen. My nerves were shot from constantly being petrified of dropping or breaking a gemstone and making an irreparable mistake. My father seemed all quite bemused and pleased with my discomfort, much to my displeasure of course. I kept thinking, “What is he so happy about!?”
Well the very next morning, the “torture” commenced once again and so it did every morning for several days in a row. However, each day my nerves steadied a little more and my eyes burned a little less and as the pain eased it was replaced with the pleasure of seeing what my father had intended all along – the beauty of the gems’ inner world.
On the final day of the trip, we visited yet another non-descript office smelling intensely of burned incense. The task of inspecting gems was once again at hand. Armed with my new found confidence and newly-learned skill, I aimed to impress my father. He handed me a huge stack of trays, all filled with gemstones and simply said to me, “All the good ones go on the left. All the bad ones on the right.” A man of many words.
After several hours, the stack of “bad” gemstones was piled high on the right and there were hardly any “good” ones to be counted. My father looked at this. Quite dubious and sceptical that I had done a good job, he proceeded to take several gemstones from the “bad” pile and to recheck them. One by one he inspected them and then proceeded to replace them back in the right-hand pile. Throughout the process he said nothing and when he had finished, he simply said, “You’re right.” That was it. No pat on the back, no accolades of job well done. As I have said before, my father was never one for many words. However, I did catch him smiling ever so slightly and I knew then I had found the greatest treasure in my mind, a father’s pride.
My true journey and love affair with gemstones began here on this trip. No fanfare, no award ceremony, no regal setting. Just a son and his father in a non-descript office, sharing the simple pleasure of looking and choosing some of the earth’s finest treasures. The rest is history.
