SHIMA, Japan — It was raining hard, with blustery winds roiling the sea — unusual conditions on the spring day when I visited the Mikimoto Tatoku Pearl Farm in this coastal city on Japan’s main island of Honshu. But as the farm workers say, there is always strong wind right before the weather begins to…
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LONDON — On an upper floor in Romilly Saumarez Smith’s 18th-century house in the Stepney neighborhood of east London is a small closet that the Smiths understand was used to powder the wigs of the home’s original owners. Now the 30-square-foot space is packed with a jeweler’s bench and other equipment, racks full of tools,…
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When Alyx Carson’s father was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2020, she left her nursing job in Austin, Texas, and flew to California to be with him. Soon after her arrival, they talked about what was ahead: She told him she would like to have his ashes made into a diamond. He began to cry,…
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On a recent vacation in Careyes, Mexico, Sara Beltrán scoured the beach looking for beautiful seashells for her Dezso jewelry line. And finding an unusual one, she thinks, is like discovering a great diamond. “Amazing shells are hard to find,” Ms. Beltrán, a New York-based designer, said. “You can’t buy them or create them; it’s…
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During this centennial year of her birth, the opera star Maria Callas’s life of high drama and high fashion — and the jewelry that accessorized it all — are back in the public spotlight. A photo of Callas in the 1958 “La Traviata” at the Royal Opera House in London, suitably anguished and with fabulous…
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Threads Styling, an online personal-shopping service based in London with a presence on both WhatsApp and WeChat, said the communication tools have helped its fine jewelry business increase in recent years. And while its average fine jewelry sale online is 3,000 to 4,000 pounds ($3,734 to $4,978), Alyse Chirumbole, the company’s director of fine jewelry…
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On June 2, Van Cleef & Arpels is to unveil “A New Art: Metamorphoses of Jewelry, 1880-1914,” an exhibition in Paris focusing on almost 100 items from a period that included the Art Nouveau era, many designed by the foremost artisans of the age, like René Lalique, Georges Fouquet and Henri Vever. “Art Nouveau is…
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Hundreds of thousands of low-income Americans have lost Medicaid coverage in recent weeks as part of a sprawling unwinding of a pandemic-era policy that prohibited states from removing people from the program. Early data shows that many people lost coverage for procedural reasons, such as when Medicaid recipients did not return paperwork to verify their…
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PARIS — An 18-karat gold ring looked like a crown of thorns, studded with diamonds and cradling a 49-carat citrine. Another ring resembled skeletal fingers, in gold and rubies, holding a 48.16-carat amethyst. And a third ring had sharply pointed gold and diamond teeth, biting into a large shimmering gray pearl. The jewelry came from…
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LONDON — Gems are often refreshed with new settings. But in the case of the British crown jewels, an update in the Tower of London is focusing on their historyrather than changes to the storied gems themselves. The renovation, which was to open Friday and is the first in a decade, uses existing exhibition space…
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