The main attraction of any diamond is its eye-catching sparkle. Or is it? Some designers have been turning that notion on its head by focusing on diamonds largely devoid of the brilliance and fire commonly expected of the stones. Portrait-cut diamonds — thin, flat stones that are minimally faceted along their perimeters and have a…
Queens do it. First ladies do it. Even Madeleine Albright and Elizabeth Taylor did it: Wear Ciner jewels. And for good reason: Ciner makes what the jewelry historian Melinda L. Lewis called “the equivalent of the crown jewels” of costume jewelry — pieces made with semiprecious stones, simulated gems, crystal and silver or other metals,…
LONDON — The Royal Mint can trace its roots back to a coin with the portrait of Alfred the Great that was struck in the ninth century. And the business, owned by the British government, has been striking coins for currency and collectors, and trading in investment metals like gold bullion ever since. But as…
Some of the projects that Mr. Armstrong promoted were small-time, experimental crypto ventures that eventually encountered problems. In those cases, he said, he considered himself a victim, too. “They’re preying on the novice crypto influencer who just got popular and is trying to figure out what they should and shouldn’t be doing,” he said. “It’s…
Jewelry collectors with minimum six-figure budgets have been clearing their calendars on June 8. Christie’s Magnificent Jewels auction scheduled on that date in New York City is to include 12 pieces by Joel Arthur Rosenthal, better known as JAR. They come from the estate of Ann Getty, a publisher, author, interior designer and philanthropist who…
In amusement park parlance, Leah Koch’s world had become a merry-go-round of disappointing dates when she met Matthew Blumhardt in 2018 at Holiday World, the theme park in Santa Claus, Ind., that her family has owned and operated for almost 76 years. “By the time I met Matt, I had pretty much become a homebody…
Warren Braxton Luckett was working as a wholesale wine distributor when he first encountered Karinn Andrea Chavarria in April 2016, at the Menu of Menus culinary event held at Silver Street Studios in Houston. “I should have been focused on promoting my wines, but this amazing woman had an aura about her,” Mr. Luckett, 37,…
Before the end of 2017, she had relocated. Three days after her arrival, Ms. Flores was spending New Year’s Eve with Mr. Morris, whose relationship had ended. They toasted to the start of 2018 with champagne at a now-closed bar in Brooklyn and started dating soon after. By March 2018, the two had become exclusive.…
Sarah Elizabeth Weiner was working as a law clerk when she matched with David Samuel Schulman, who was in business school, on the dating app Bumble in September 2017. Setting a first date required a process by then familiar to both: negotiation. “He originally proposed going to the Cloisters,” Ms. Weiner said, referring to the…
There’s a picture of us meeting in person for the first time on the second floor of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, taken via self-timer on Snapchat. It was September 2020. You can sense the awkward nervousness we felt, with his arm carefully placed behind my lower back and me giving the camera a big…