This new publication showcases the inspirations and influences exemplified in the jewelry of the Geneva-based maison.
With a 150-year family heritage in the jewelry business, the Swiss-based high-jewelry house Boghossian has a global pedigree that began in Mardin, an ancient Anatolian city, and now encompasses boutiques worldwide, including Geneva, London, Hong Kong, Monaco and Gstaad.
In the book, Boghossian: Expertise, Craftsmanship, Innovation, author and jewelry historian Vivienne Becker explores how that trifecta of talents has enabled the family-based firm to create jewels whose beautiful designs push technical boundaries.
Lavishingly punctuated with color photos of the gems under discussion, the book presents a fascinating look at the company’s heritage that has inspired the meeting of cultural cues — East and West, past and present — that inform the gems bearing the Boghossian name.
Like their Armenian forebears who traded along the famed Silk Road, six generations of Boghossians have sought out the best of precious stones, pearls and diamonds. The current CEO, Albert Boghossian, working alongside the firm’s creative director, Edmond Chin, has used the foundation of family traditions to forge the future of the company.
Pushing boundaries
The book highlights a quartet of ingenious techniques that have become synonymous with the Boghossian name. The Art of Inlay, developed in 2008, seamlessly inserts one gem within another stone, each, Becker relates in the book, “meticulously curved and shaped to fit perfectly, as in the art of marquetry. With no metal settings to hold the gems, their complementary tones and translucencies meld together harmoniously.” Kissing, introduced in 2009, is a stone-in-stone technique where two gems, she writes, “seem to float one over the over” so each can “scintillate with flirtatious brilliance.” Merveilles is a patented technique Boghossian debuted in 2016, where stones are held closely together “seemingly with no visible means of support,” the diamonds “fitted onto a hidden internal gold skeleton and held in place by the tension of one stone next to another like the tesserae of a mosaic.” Diaphane is a woven gemstone mesh introduced in 2021 offering the flexibility to flow with the wearer’s movements.
From their first high-jewelry collection, “Le Ballet Oriental” launched in 2015, Boghossian has produced distinctive collections, including the company’s collaboration with fashion designer Stéphane Rolland in 2018, where Boghossian jewels were wore as body ornaments at Paris Couture Week, and gems that have sold at auction-record-breaking prices at Christie’s Hong Kong. Two of which are the Crimson Flame Ruby Ring, record price-per-carat for a colored stone, 2015, and Palmetto Necklace, record for a non-oiled emerald necklace, 2017.
“Boghossian,” writes Becker, “creates jewels that perfectly balance a rich trove of themes and inspirations, in a sublime synergy of daring design and technical virtuosity.”
Main image: Model wearing a ring of 18-karat white gold set with diamonds and a rubellite, Kissing collection, 2019. (Léonard Méchineau/Marlowe Paris)
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