The Ultimate Dinnerware...

In view of my obvious aversion to rhinestone trimmed dinnerware, I've been asked by a reader what I consider to be really superb china. That's so easy to answer it's practically a no-brainer. Without a moment's hesitation, I'd tell you to check out Royal Copenhagen's magnificent Flora Danica pattern. Not only is it exquisitely hand-molded and hand-painted, it's also the most expensive china in the world and consequently very rare. The King of Denmark still owns the original set and Queen Elizabeth II still has the service that was a wedding gift to Alexandra, the Danish princess who married King Edward VII.

The very first set of Flora Danica was commissioned in 1790 by Crown Prince Frederick on behalf of his father King Christian VII of Denmark. It was intended as a gift for Empress Catherine the Great of Russia, whose love of porcelain was exceeded only by her passion for jewels and handsome young men. Alas, Catherine died before the dinner service was completed so it remained in the possession of the Danish royal family. The fabulous china was used for the very first time on January 29, 1803 at a grand fete in honor of the King's birthday and reputedly was so much admired by the guests that it achieved a small measure of fame. Still, it was not until 1863, sixty years later that a new service was created for the Princess Alexandra's wedding gift.

Today, a five-piece place setting with a perforated border will set you back $8,075 or $6, 975 for a serrated edge. The price of serving pieces is mind-boggling. A five-quart soup tureen runs to $24,725 with an extra $5,900 for the plate that goes under it while the charming covered custard cup and saucer shown above rings in at $3,500. One of the prettiest pieces, an ice-cream dome and basin is a whopping $36,550 while a gravy boat and stand goes for $7,075. A teapot, creamer and small covered sugar bowl will cost about $15K but you could invite Oprah to tea and she'd fell right at home since, as a modern TV queen, she also owns a set of Flora Danica.

Not that you asked, but the silver flatware I'd choose to accompany my china would probably be an antique set of Tiffany's Chrysanthemum pattern. It is, I think, one of the most beautiful silver patterns ever created and a fairly complete service for twelve should run you about $30,000 or so, a fraction of the cost of your china. Now, all you need to decide is whether you'd prefer to set a really spectacular table or buy yourself a Rolls-Royce.

Glitz Addiction...

The only silver lining (or platinum lining since I am after all, The Luxury Diva) in the financial devastation of The Great Recession would be the end of the garish excesses of the conspicuous consumption of the nouveaux riches. Or so I thought. Instead, it seems there is never going to be an end to our glitz addiction and those diamond-paved cel phones, gear shift levers and toilet issue holders are still with us. Even tackier, they are no longer real gems but shiny fake crystals posing as diamonds.

The newest place to stick glitter is on dinnerware. Prouna, a Korean manufacturer, introduced a line of Swarovski crystal-trimmed china that has been so successful in the Middle Eastern sand kingdoms that a family of Iranian steel traders thought it was just the ticket for America's taste-challenged rich guys. Prouna USA has unveiled their "Jewelry Collection" dinner services trimmed in 24-karat gold or platinum and bejeweled with clear or amber crystals.

The five-piece place settings range in price from the $500's to just short of $1,000 depending upon the amount of glitz you can stomach and I do mean stomach quite literally. Although the collection is supposedly dishwasher-safe, those crystals could detach so you'd best be sure your insurance is high enough to cover a dinner guest choking on your glitzy china.

As if that's not quite enough, the 2011 Maybach, that extravaganza yacht of a car that also appeals mightily to the oil-rich, has Swarovski crystal-trimmed seats. Heaven help us...could this be a new trend?

The JARlings...

The master jeweler of out time, the man regarded by his peers as the Carl Peter Faberge of the modern era, is a difficult and mysteriously reclusive American named Joel Arthur Rosenthal who works in Paris under the name JAR Paris. He is the jeweler of choice to an elite coterie of the haute monde, the super-rich and the very famous, yet most people have never heard of him. That's hardly surprising since, unless your name is up in lights or attached to one of the world's great fortunes, Rosenthal has little interest in selling you a piece of his jewelry or allowing you an appointment to visit his by-appointment-only salon. About the only chance a mere mortal has to become a JARling (as the women who wear his jewels are dubbed) is to buy a piece at auction or from a gallery that bought a piece from a private client.

The person whose work has created all the excitement is described by those who have crossed his orbit as either an ornery, cantankerous, rude, snobbish and “incredibly sarcastic” monster or as a genius, the greatest living jeweler. More frequently, he’s called both at the same time. Certainly, his background, or at least what little is known of it, contains no clue to the origin of his staggering talent or his personal eccentricities. Rosenthal was born in 1943 in the Bronx, New York and went on to study philosophy and art history at Harvard University. After graduation, he worked for a time as a screenwriter for Hollywood and French film-makers and then moved to Paris where he joined forces with Pierre Jeannet, a Geneva- based Swiss psychiatrist in a business venture in which Rosenthal worked at designing tapestry-like needlepoint canvases. At one point, Rosenthal returned to New York to spend six months working with Bulgari and in 1977, Rosenthal and Jeannet opened JAR, their tiny two-room shop hidden away in a courtyard off the Place Vendome, with nei ther signs nor display windows but within spitting distance of the Ritz. Once they opened their doors they blew every other jeweler in Paris out of the water—none of them could compare to the jewels of JAR.

Rosenthal’s work is whimsical and extremely complex. His obsession is nature; life-size blossoms and butterflies rendered so perfectly as to appear real, were they not composed of a myriad of tiny brilliant stones in almost invisible settings. He pioneered the use of micro-pavé and perfected the technique of making a “thread” of tiny diamonds. He uses this thread to create meshes or galleries in which to set stones, for the most part eschewing traditional settings. The only metal of which he seems particularly fond is color-oxidized titanium, but he uses platinum and also mixes silver with gold of various shades. His approach to color is that of a watercolorist and he has no great interest in stones for the sake of carat size alone. Rather, he uses stones that entrance his artistic eye such as ancient pigeon-blood Indian rubies, Kashmiri sapphires, green garnets, Golconda pure water clear diamonds or rare gray-green pearls. So complicated are his designs that certain pieces contain as many as 10,000 stones. Naturally these pieces are made very, very slowly so only about seventy pieces per year are produced and the waiting list, that may require as long as a three year wait for a piece, just grows larger. Don’t think that Rosenthal makes each piece all by himself, he isn’t that skilled. He is essentially a designer, his extraordinary vision creates the idea but the work is performed by a few master craftsmen who are, in essence, his hands.

In 2002, this intensely private jeweler and his equally private clientele allowed 400 pieces of his work to be shown at Somerset House in London. “The Jewels of JAR, Paris” was held at the Gilbert Collection under the auspices of Lord Rothschild, who is rumored to be one of Rosenthal’s backers. That may well be true since there’s a huge gaggle of Rothschild’s who wear JAR. The deep Victorian gray and mauve mourning colors of his Paris shop were echoed in the Stygian darkness of the exhibition rooms. With little in the way of lighting, each visitor was given a flashlight with which to illuminate the jewels, the same obsessive procedure that Rosenthal insisted upon at the one-night show he permitted in New York City nineteen years earlier. So far, he hasn’t forbidden his clients to wear their jewels in daytime or electric light but that could become a future condition before being granted the privilege of buying a JAR piece.

No matter the lighting conditions, the exhibition was a pure celebration of genius. Each of the 400 pieces, though divided into themes, was a highly individual work of art. There were full-sized lilac branches in diamonds and violet sapphires, flocks of butterflies with jeweled wings, a diamond serpent necklace with amethyst spots and a zebra of black and white agate with a diamond bridle and feathered plumes to mention only a few of the wonders on display. Supposedly, there were people who returned time and again to marvel at the jewels and check to see if their flashlights had missed any pieces.

When I wrote that I was going to stick my neck out and make a prediction as to which jeweler of our time would withstand the vicissitudes of time, it really wasn't too much of a gamble.

The Future Legend?

After I received a couple of comments on my last post asking if there were any jewelers working today who had the chops of a Verdura, I did a quick mental review. There certainly are a goodly number of talented and creative jewelers who are currently much in demand but the real question is whose work is timeless enough to still be coveted fifty or more years in the future?

Verdura made it, as did Jean Schlumberger, whose magnificent jewelry is still carried by Tiffany. There are devoted fans of Seaman Schepps chunky, overscaled pieces and a growing band of devotees of David Webb. Webb was the favored darling of the 1960's ladies-who-lunched and his pieces bring hefty prices at auctions and galleries. But basically, there is no way to predict which of today's current crop will become a legend, since only time will tell.

That said, I'm going to stick my neck out and make at least one educated guess. If you are mega-rich and want to adorn yourself with jewels today while being assured that your great-granddaughter will admire your taste and thnk of you kindly, you might turn your attention to the jewels of Joel Arthur Rosenthal. His label is JAR Paris and although he is hardly a titled nobleman like Verdura, he sure acts like one. In fact, JAR is interesting enough to warrant a post of his own so I'm going to work on one. Just be patient!

Meanwhile, admire the luscious beauties shown above...those cuffs on the left are Seaman Schepps, the gold and enamel bangle is classic Schlumberger and comes in a wide range of jewel tones and the adorable zebra is pure David Webb.

The Jeweler Duke...

Verdura and his muse, Coco Chanel

Personally, I like my jewelry to have a sense of provenance and timeless design so I am, of course, a great fan of Verdura. Should you be unfamiliar with Verdura's legendary ouevre, check out the film "DeLovely" based on the upmarket lives of Linda and Cole Porter or simply pull up the website www.verdura.com and feast your eyes on the current catalog.

Fulco Santostefano della Cerda, Duke of Verdura, was the scion of an aristocratic Siciliam dynasty who spent his privileged childhood at his grandmother's elegant mansion, the Villa Nascemi in Palermo. Much to the shock of both his mother and himself, young Fulco was passed over in his grandmother's will (now that must have been a story worth knowing!) so even though he inherited his title at the age of 23, he was by his standards, left penniless. His lack of funds never seemed to affect his playboy lifestyle and in the 1920's he met Linda and Cole Porter, who were so taken with the artistically talented young bon vivant that they folded him into their famously elite and very moneyed circle. They remained life-long friends.

At one of their fabled parties in Venice, the Porters introduced the Duke to Coco Chanel who hired him as a textile designer. She soon recognized his passion and talent for jewelry design. When Chanel ended her scandalously torrid liaison with Grand Duke Dimitri, much of the remaining stock of Romanov jewels smuggled out of Russia remained in her possession and sensing that the Russian/Byzantine look could start a new trend, she assigned Verdura the task of re-inventing them. He modernized the heavy Russian style into a series of stone-studded brooches that combined precious and semi-precious gemstones (very daring at the time) set in asymmetrical patterns and different colors of gold. Chanel wore the originals and copied them as costume jewelry to sell in her boutiques. Verdura also set a multi-jeweled gold Maltese Cross into the center of a massive cuff bracelet which became Chanel's personal signature, always worn as a pair. They are iconic classics that to this day are identified with her name as well as his.

By the mid-thirties, with the rise of the Nazis, the cocktail and party crowd had largely deserted Europe for New York and in 1934 Verdura moved to America, finally settling in New York after touring around visiting friends in Hollywood and Palm Beach. He was taken up by Diana Vreeland, one of Chanel's best clients, who went on to become Vogue magazine's most legendary editor. His whimsical, nature-inspired jewels and the American penchant for European titles, no matter how impoverished, together made Verdura's fortune. His client list was a who's who of Hollywood's biggest stars...actresses like Garbo, Dietrich, Hepburn and Crawford along with society dames like the Duchess of Windsor, Doris Duke and the Cushman sisters, one of whom, Babe Paley, became his muse long after Chanel.

Verdura retired in 1973 and Ward Landrigan, the former head of Sotheby's USA jewelry division and a great admirer of Verdura ever since he'd first seen and appraised a tabletop full of his jewelry at the home of retired opera diva Lily Pons, tried to buy the company. He finally succeeded twelve years later and received, along with the firm, an archive of nearly 10,000 of Verdura's original sketches, most of them stored haphazardly in black plastic garbage bags. Verdura had been a very private resource with an A-list clientele and a distinct aversion to the new-money crowd, no less the public. When Landrigan took over, Verdura clients were still a roll call of assorted Mellons, Vanderbilts, Whitneys and Agnellis. Jewelry was sold by appointment only and the mega-rich dropped in and vacuumed up every jewel in sight but Landrigan's experience at Sotheby's had convinced him that a whole new generation of Verdura fans was out there. "Because Verdura's jewelry was so witty and wearable" says Landrigan, "it appealed to younger people. At estate sales, they'd sell off the big ballroom stuff and keep the Verdura for themselves. Greta Garbo wore her Verdura gold curb bracelet and watch bracelet every day and when her estate was auctioned off, those were the pieces that stayed in the family".

Many of Verdura's most iconic pieces have been carried forward in faithful reproduction. The jeweled Maltese Cross cuffs appear in limited edition variations, like the beauties shown here. His faceted or cabochon stones wrapped and bow-tied in diamond pave ribbons and Garbo's watch and bracelet are standards. I've been mooning over his caged ring, a domed gold wire cage filled with captive stones that tinkle as you move your hand. In fact, there isn't any piece in the collection I'd turn my nose up at. The appeal of Verdura's jewels is not simply style and elegance...it's the fact that a version of the very jewel you're wearing could have adorned a Hollywood legend or a Jazz Age Bright Young Thing dancing the Charleston in 1920's Paris. I find that very appealing.

The Great Ghost Ride...

I must admit that I haven't been very kind to Rolls Royce. When the Rolls Royce/Bentley company was split in two and sold off to BMW and Volkswagen respectively, I prophesied it might well signal the demise of the marques that had been le dernier cri of automotive luxury for generations. The Brits have a genius for designing big, graceful cars, a talent honed over many years, while the Germans were demons of technology but weak on the design front.
Of course, Volkswagen romped off with a lot more than just the Bentley label. They also got the factory, the archives and the design staff, so they had a big leg up on BMW and they surged ahead developing Bentley into the uncontested darling of America's privileged elite. Meanwhile, BMW started from scratch, introducing a new Rolls Royce Phantom that looked and handled like a Panzer tank. By the time the Phantom coupe debuted several years later, it seemed clear that the design folks recognized that there was a sharply limited market for stately chariots with Parthenon grilles in today's overcrowded and heavily trafficked world. It could not have been easy to decide to make a fairly radical change, but the entirely new 2010 Ghost is the car that's going to get them back in the game.
Since so many of my regular readers are women (and I firmly believe that in the majority of cases it's a woman who decides which car to buy for the family if not for herself) I must tell you that the Ghost is a car any woman would take great pleasure in driving. Yes it's big; longer, wider and heavier than BMW's 750Li (which is no slouch for size) but the Ghost's drivability is superb. Anyone who's been wrestling an SUV or Van around will think they're in heaven even when parallel parking and trust me, the kids will prefer the Rolls.
The folks at BMW have piled on all the latest gadgets and hi-tech goodies and it goes without saying that the interior appointments are lavish beyond imagining. I'm not going into the usual reports on 0-60MPH sprints, top speeds or engine specs because I think no one who buys a Rolls Royce really cares about beating out a sports car. The Rolls owner has gotten where he/she is going in life and is perfectly content to relax behind the Spirit of Ecstasy icon ( a woman after all)
and follow it down the road. So, if you're a mega-rich mama who likes her creature comforts, this is the Rolls Royce for you, particularly in the new Sable color, the glorious brown of a really good mink coat.

Even More Brilliance...

At the same April Christies sale, the even more magnificent emerald and diamond brooch that belonged to Catherine the Great, the notoriously oversexed Empress of Russia shown all tarted up on the right, will go on the block at a mere estimated $1 to $1.5 million. Based on provenance alone, it's likely bring a whole lot more. With a 60-70 carat hexagonal cut Columbian

emerald of exceptional quality and rare size set with rows of rose and old mine-cut diamonds, the Imperial gem is one of the outstanding jewels of the world. Empress Catherine amassed one of the greatest jewelry collections of all time and in 1776, upon the marriage of Sophie Dorothea, princess of Wurttemberg to her son Tsar Paul I, she presented her huge emerald to her new daughter-in-law as a wedding gift. The brooch remained the property of the Hollenzollern nobles for three generations. In 1972, it was sold to an American collector and remained hidden away in his vault for nearly forty years.

Earlier this month, Sotheby's Hong Kong sold off an extremely rare 5.18 carat vivid blue, internally flawless pear-shaped diamond from the De Beers Millenium collection for the princely sum of $6.4 million. That's about a million more than the top estimated price so as I said, the Great Recession has left some people still standing tall. Blue diamonds are amongst the rarest of all gems and the Millennium collection featured some of the largest and most vivid blues ever to reach the market. It included the 203 carat D- Flawless Millennium Star and the 27 carat fancy vivid blue internally flawless Heart of Eternity but neither of those gems has hit the block...yet.

Brilliance on the Block

The Great Recession it seems, hasn't been a downer for everyone. Jewelry and gem collectors are ecstatic at the sheer number of world-class jewels that have lately shaken loose from private vaults and gone on the block.

I've already told you about a few notables but on April 22nd, Christies New York will be flogging off the 39.55 carat Emperor Maximilian diamond, a stone with a fascinating provenance, estimated to sell at $1-$1.5 million.

The Archduke Maximilian, that dandy gentleman on the left, acquired two very large diamonds in 1860 while in Brazil, years before Napoleon named him the Emperor of Mexico. When Napoleon ran into his own problems in France, he

abandoned the hapless Archduke (who had reluctantly taken the job in the first place) to his fate. He was captured, court-martialled and executed by the republican forces.

Legend has it that poor Max was wearing a small satchel holding this diamond around his neck when he faced the firing squad. The diamond was returned to his wife, Princess Charlotte of Belgium, who later sold the stone which, as great diamonds so often do, disappeared. It finally re-surfaced in 1919 and was subsequently sold and re-sold but hasn't been in public view since 1982.

The Ninja-mobile

I met a friend for lunch recently, a woman well past the first flush of youth. The last time I saw her, she was still driving a "mommy-wagon" even though her kids had long-ago flown the nest. So when an all-black Mercedes E550 with dark tinted windows roared up to the restaurant patio and my friend slithered out of the driver's seat, I was astonished enough to mis-swallow my wine and cough for a full five minutes.
Over lunch she told me that this was her first Mercedes. Her husband, who tools around town in his beloved Aston Martin DB9, had suggested checking out Mercedes when she announced that she needed new wheels. "I loved the design of the car" she said, "but I just wasn't sure I'd feel comfortable driving something that snazzy. We started to leave the showroom and I saw someone else trying on the car and realized that I really wanted it so I ran back in and bought it on the spot."
Who can blame her? Mercedes hit the mark straight on with their new E series, particularly the $55,525 sporty-looking E550 coupe with it's 382 HP V8 that sprints from 0-60 MPH in a mere five seconds and a seven-speed adaptive automatic transmission which provides a ride as smooth as cream. A frequent complaint, that coupes feel cramped and visually inadequate, is blown away by the lavish use of glass in pillar-less windows and a fish bowl-sized panoramic sun roof. The rear seats lack a lot of leg room but they are honest-to-goodness real seats and comfortable enough to tote some friends along for a shopping expedition or even those grown-up kids when they come home to visit.
In addition to the racy design, a new high-tech safety feature called Attention Assist has been added to Mercedes usual array of engineering marvels. After twenty minutes of driving, more than seventy parameters will be continually monitored and evaluated in order to recognize a loss of driver attention, at which point a bell chimes and a coffee cup symbol with the message "Time for a rest?" appears on the dashboard.
"Now that you have the E550, what do you think? I asked. "I saw the model when it debuted and I must admit I was very taken with it myself."
"I feel ten years younger and very sexy." my friend replied with a grin, "Why should guys have all the fun?" and dressed head-to-toe in black to match her car, she zoomed off looking like a ninja on a mission. As for me, I'm waiting for the 2011 new E550 convertible... in flaming red, I think.

The Fabulous Padparadscha...

There was a time when the word sapphire was synonymous with the color blue because the only gems one saw in jewelry were a variation of that hue. In more recent times, we've become a lot more adventurous and use sapphires in just about every color imaginable so I assumed, since I've been covering fine jewelry and gems for such a long time, that I was familiar with all of them. Hubris!
The world of gem stones is vast and it wasn't until I read John Burdett's latest off-beat mystery (set in Bangkok as usual) that I ran across the incredibly colored padparadscha sapphire. Pads, as they are known to the cognoscenti, are transparent rocks whose color falls between the luscious pink of a lotus blossom and the vibrant orange of a tropical sunset. The true and rarest Pads exhibit delicate shades of both colors in the same stone and are the most expensive, running as high as $30,000 per carat.
Should you set off on a padparadscha hunt, don't be swayed by stones ranging in color from pale yellow to orange or pink. There's a lot of doctored stones about, many heat-treated to bring out their color and there's even a long-running argument among jewelers as to what really deserves the designation padparadscha. What you want is a Pad from a Sri Lankan mine with flashes of both pink and orange that looks like a candy as much as a gem.
Try checking out your friendly neighborhood Cartier shop since they did several pieces using padparadschas in a 2008 collection, such as the stunning 22.4 carat ring shown below. If wearing this beauty doesn't blow away your friends, nothing will... plus you'll have the evil pleasure of explaining what kind of gem you're wearing.
Photo: Katel Riou...Cartier 2008

The Diamond Vandal....

Sorry for the long lapse between posts but real life, in the fo

rm of trying to sell off an estate, has kept me very occupied. The whole process has only reinforced my belief that buying quality is a wise investment while anything less is just "stuff" which in the end has no value at all.

As any luxury diva should, I do have my pet diamonds. Among them is the fabled Wittelsbach Blue, the impeccably provenanced stone that resurfaced from obscurity at a Christies auction and sold for the highest price per carat ever achieved at auction.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit that the Wittelsbach Blue exists in a price galaxy far, far away from mine own.

Nevertheless, I've taken a fond interest in it and when it was bought by billionaire diamond dealer Lawrence Graff, I assumed he was going to ultimately flog it off to some filthy rich guy in a burnoose sitting on a lake of sand-covered crude. Instead, the poor Wittelsbach has been vandalized by a nouveau riche jeweler who thought he had the right to mess with it.

The Wittelsbach Blue, as I related in my very first post (check it out for the whole history) was not only rare because of it's gray/blue color and it's great 35.52 carat size, but because of it's royal lineage. It was the most historically important diamond in the world. Still, Mr. Graff decided to "refurbish" it by cutting away the chips and "bruises" the stone had acquired over the centuries since it's discovery in the 1600's. In the process, he reduced the diamond to a tad over 31 carats, claiming to have also enhanced the clarity and brilliance. He then added his own name to those of Spain and Bavaria's royal families and worked out a deal to display the recut, renamed stone at the Smithsonian as a companion to that other great blue, the spooky Hope diamond.

According to a disgruntled museum expert on the gem's history, Mr Graff's shameful diamond is no longer the Wittelsbach...it is nothing but a big grayish blue stone...the Wittelsbach is gone forever. So what, my fellow luxury lovers, do you think? Should the great blue diamond have been left in it's historical form, chipped edges and all, or modernized? Post your comments and let's discuss it...

Photo shows the Wittelsbach Blue in it's Bavarian royal period.