A collection of 25 rings by London-based Boodles pays homage to founder Anthony Wainwright’s whirlwind 1962 gem-buying trip.
Today, pandemic notwithstanding, it would be quite an achievement to circumnavigate the world on a gem-guying trip in 16 days. Yet Anthony Wainwright, the former chairman of London jeweler Boodles, successfully accomplished this in 1962. At record speed, he hopped from Colombo to Delhi, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Hawaii, San Francisco and New York.
His family recently discovered his scrapbook diary of this adventure, prompting a nostalgic journey in diamonds and precious gemstones to his destinations, and a few others favored by his descendants who now run Boodles. The new high-jewelry collection is a story retold in 25 rings, featuring vibrantly colored diamonds. An astonishing orange pays tribute to Havana, Cuba; pinks (a house signature) for South Africa and French Polynesia, and an Argyle pink diamond for Australia; yellows for Capri, Italy, and St. Petersburg, Russia; and a number of exceptional white diamonds. Most of the gemstones were specially sought out for this collection.
“The choice of destination was inspired by the stone. In each case either the cut, the color or the origin of the stone suggested a particular location,” explains the jeweler’s head of design, Rebecca Hawkins. “The rich green of the emerald, for example, immediately recalled the wonderful gardens of Kyoto, [Japan,] and Patagonia sprung to mind from the glacial quality of the 10-carat, step-cut diamond, the square shape making it a perfect fit to the geometric patterns unique to decorative arts of the region.”
Tribute to travel
New York heralds two Ashoka-cut diamond rings, a 10- and a 14-carat; London’s Tower Bridge, neighboring the Tower of London — home of the Crown Jewels — is reproduced with an Asscher-cut Cullinan diamond on swoops of blue enamel; and a marquise-cut, yellow diamond captures the rococo spirit of the Czar’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg. The collection features every cut imaginable, from lozenge to pear, oval, cushion, trillion and carré.
Hawkins’s hero ring is the Sintra, “because it features a rare 16.79-carat, fancy-intense-yellow diamond, and the design, inspired by the color, captures the romantic magnificence of the Royal Palaces that stand above Lisbon,” she says. Technically, the most difficult to set was the orange diamond of the Havana ring, nestling in layers of rock crystal and orange ceramic.
“It was lovely to be able to look again at the places Anthony visited,” says Hawkins. “I thought the album rather magical. There was something so romantic and at the same time, slightly poignant, about Anthony Wainwright plotting his way around the world in order to meet sapphire merchants and dealers in South Pacific pearls, always with one eye on the clock.”
Main image: Patagonia ring in platinum set with a step-cut, 10-carat diamond, white diamonds, and pink diamonds.
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