The Hidden Gem Podcast – Episode #3 with Joanna Hardy: On gems and being custodians of what the earth provides

Joanna Hardy: Gems have their own stories, but it is the journey through the hands of humans where the stories start, continue, and will continue. And we are just, humans are just custodians of these minerals that the earth provides.

Show Opener: SSEF presents the Hidden Gem Podcast, conversations with the world’s leading people behind the journey of gems and jewels from the source to the finished piece.

Laurent: Cartier: Today on Hidden Gems, I’m speaking with Joanna Hardy, one of Britain’s best-known jewellery experts and a familiar face from the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow. We met in London at Goldsmiths Hall during Goldsmith’s Fair. Joanna trained as a goldsmith and began her career in diamonds, but her true passion lies in coloured gemstones, rubies, sapphires, emeralds and the remarkable stories they carry across cultures and generations. In this episode, we talk about curiosity, craft, Trust in the trade and why for Joanna understanding a gemstone means going all the way back to its source.

Laurent: Joanna Hardy, you’re one of Britain’s best known jewellery experts, BBC Antiques Roadshow for example. You trained as a goldsmith, you worked as a rough diamond valuer for De Beers and later you were a senior specialist at auction houses and today you run an independent consultancy and you teach and publish widely. Now, you’ve written incredible books and lectures all over the world, Joanna. Why is it that storytelling is so important in gems and fine jewellery?

Joanna: Well, I think it is, first of all, it’s very nice to see you, Laurent. Thank you for inviting me to talk.

Laurent: And we are here in the Goldsmith’s Hall.

Joanna: We are here in the Goldsmiths Hall which at the moment which is in the City of London by St Paul’s Cathedral and it’s like my second home at the moment as I’m third warden of the Goldsmiths Company. So going to your question, your question well gems and people you’ve got to have the gems and the people the two are interlinked so you know gems have their own stories but it is the journey through the hands of humans where the stories start, continue and will continue and we are just, humans are just custodians of these minerals that the earth provides. Which in fact I was reading the of the day that… You know, that diamonds, correct me if I’m wrong, can be formed in space, but wood can’t, you know? So suddenly, or pearls, or I don’t think can be found in space. Not yet, we haven’t found any, or have we found pearls in space?

Laurent: Not that I know of yet, I mean, but in vitro pearls may come in the very near future. So I don’t, you know, don’t want to exclude any.

Joanna: No, but I think we still don’t fully appreciate the marvels of these materials that the Earth provides. And there is that fascination and I have always been fascinated and it’s fascinating to see how people react to them too, good and bad.

Laurent: And in very different ways, I imagine.

Joanna: Oh gosh, I mean yes, I think vanity and greed and gemstones and metals seem to go a bit hand-in-hand. But you know, it’s not all about the money and I think we must discount that. Because that side is very much a modern, a modern thinking behind gemstones and materials like that, because they weren’t sort of money-fied.

Laurent: And that’s one of the reasons actually for doing this podcast series and speaking to all these different people is that to go beyond that money is that there is passion, there’s enthusiasm. You’ve been interested in gems and jewellery for many decades. What got you into this or what, what, what keeps you kind of motivated and curious and still looking at different gems.

Joanna: I think, well I have an awful lot to thank the industry for and gemstones for because when I was a young kid my godmother was the first woman to pass her FGA with distinction in 1932 and she was Margaret Biggs and she and her sister they were two spinsters that lived in a Georgian house in Farnham in Surrey, and they had a jewellery shop, Biggs of Farnam. And in fact, there was also Biggs’ of Maidenhead. And she was my godmother. She was quite a bit older. I mean, she was almost like a mother to my father. But I remember going there for afternoon tea sometimes with my parents. And… She she was quite a formidable lady but very very kind and my parents held her in very high regard in terms of her integrity and she she always was very smartly dressed and she would have big gold bracelets and big gold chains and she had in her drawing room at home these wonderful Georgian glass vitrines full of minerals just all the sort of like a cabinet of curiosity but beautifully clean you know it wasn’t a wasn’t hiddledy-piggledy. And her sister Mary used to paint those minerals like abstract paintings so she was almost sort of ahead of her time in terms of It’s rather like, you know, we looking through a microscope at… inclusions in gemstones and you can see abstract, you know, abstract work, she did that with oil paintings and so you had these vibrant oil paintings around this Georgian house of minerals and then you had the specimens in the cabinets, in these Georgian cabinets. And for a young girl, I mean, that was just mesmerising and I, but I didn’t really understand what was going on but I think it was osmosis that was a that possibly sowed a seed without me knowing and so that was my sort of first introduction to that and I suppose you know as a child like most most children you know if you’re on the beach or in the woods you like picking up small things and I remember having at home a lot of -I don’t know children’s science kits where you’d have these sort of very rudimentary microscopes where you can put your acorn underneath or something and look at it. So then when I went to Beedales, I went to be Beedales which is a school in Petersfield in Hampshire, which very much focused on the craft and the craft was seen as the same importance as sciences and music. So I, and at 14 we had jewellery classes, so I just thought, well this is, you know, I just felt like the school was like a holiday. So I made, started to make jewellery when I was 14, and I loved it, and I absolutely loved it. And of course it was, we were using all kinds of materials, I mean from 14 to 16 to 17. Yeah, I just, that’s what I continued doing. And rather than being in a chemistry lab, at the time, I would spend my time in the workshops. And I’ve still got those pieces that I made out of the perspex and gilding metal. And there was some silver and acrylic and, and it was very abstract. And in fact, when I look back, I think, oh, that was quite imaginative for a- 15, 16 year olds. I didn’t know much about the world of jewellery at all. So it was coming from a young person’s imagination really and I had a great teacher. It’s always about the teachers, isn’t it? And you know, I wasn’t focusing on what I probably should be doing academically and but he allowed, you know the school allowed the opportunity to work weekends there because it was a boarding school. So I would work weekends there and in the workshop, making, creating jewellery.

Laurent: Wow. And here you are many, many years later, Goldsmiths Hall. It’s Goldsmith’s Fair in London. Yes. We’ve got emerging young new designers or established designers that are being exhibited here. And you are supporting the future of the British kind of jewellery scene.

Joanna: Yes, it’s sort of a…

Laurent: Who would have thought? I tell you. Dare I say.

Joanna: Who would have thought? I think there was, I think the teacher at the time said, what are we going to do with Joey? Because I was a bit sort of, you know, didn’t follow normal procedures in school. And so when I, you now, when I came up to Sir John Cass College, I did a foundation course at Farnham and then I went to Sir John Cass College. So, and I, but then the kind of the creativity He went out the window because it was all about… Making bar brooches and claw settings and obviously learning the trade. And I just, that didn’t really, I wasn’t very good at it, quite honestly, but it was fantastic to understand the complexities and the skill needed to make a good quality piece of jewellery, which has held me in good stead for either valuing or for when, you know, now, as you say, we’re here at the Goldsmiths company and the whole, and we’ve got… Over two weeks, like 170 silversmiths and goldsmiths, all who have made their own pieces, designed and made their pieces. And I have that complete sort of understanding and synergy with them because I know what it’s like and really appreciate the creativity and being able to express yourself. To be able to express yourself with any form of art, I think, is wonderful. And I do sort of miss that. I would like to have, well, I wasn’t any good at it, but I appreciate the value in it.

Laurent: Do you still have a bench at home?

Joanna: No, that’s long gone. Long gone. No, no, no.

Laurent: Did you ever think of getting into or have you tried cutting gemstones as well, given that you’re…

Joanna: Yeah, no, I haven’t. I haven’t done that. I think because then, you know, I then was working in Hatton Garden as a Saturday girl while I was at Sir John Cass College and selling sort of rubbish, I’m afraid. It was just, it was gold chains with a bolt ring on the end that was about it but though but I was there was Holts across the road and Mr. Holt I remember going into that shop in my lunch break and just going through all these, he would just let me rummage through all these stones and I maybe might be able to afford an amethyst for 5p or something. In fact I’ve got the stone collection that I started to collect, I’ve still got it, when I was, well I was about 17, 18 years old. I couldn’t afford anything at all, but just a tiny bit of fragment of coral or something was just so exciting. But I left school with very few qualifications, so if any, well no, I had a couple. So that’s when I just thought, when I went into Mr. Holt’s shop, I just though, my goodness, I’d love to learn more about this. And that was the gemology side.

Laurent: So how did you end up then afterwards with the De Beers and then the auction houses?

Joanna: So I did my gemology in the evenings at Aldgate East, and then what did I do? Oh, yes, well, I left college and then I worked full-time in Hatton Garden. And I was walking down Leather Lane, the fruit and veg market, which was a fruit and vegetable market at the time. This was in the 80s. And I just thought there’s got to be more than just selling gold chains in Hatton Garden and I remember, and somebody, I was talking to somebody in, down the other lane, and they said, well, De Beers are looking for people. And I’d never heard of De Beers. I was, who, who are they? And they said well, it’s the mining company, of course, you know, there weren’t any shops or anything, like there are now. And I had, I had I think I’d just started my diamond, no, I’d had just finished my diamond diploma, so, so, so I went and applied at the CSO to be a valuer and sorter for De Beers in Charterhouse Street in the 80s. And gosh, that was, that was quite a thing. I didn’t know what I was getting into at all. But it was, but anyway, I sort of got the job. Then it was sort of, it was a bit of a learning curve, a bit of a disappointment, bit of a shocking thing in that, you know, suddenly I was in the Bort department. I just thought I’d learn all about these gems in my gemology and now I’m sitting in front of piles of Bort and near gem and I just thought, oh my goodness, but they train you for about six months beforehand.

Laurent: You were sorting quality and then preparing parcels for sightholders who would then bid on

Joanna: Yes yeah so it was it was very much I mean you know the 12 000 categories or whatever there was in rough diamonds so they you did have a training and the training was good because you had to make sure that you didn’t get eye strain so you had those you know visors that you would put down whatever the magnifying visors and the desks were very high so that made you sit up so that you didn’t slouch because you were really a factory. You were just going, you know, white one, brown one, not quite like that, but almost like that. And they also showed you their new super duper security cameras. I remember that. I remember going down into the security and they just showed you what they can see.

Laurent: So.

Joanna: So if you had any thoughts of doing anything, they would see first, but it was still pretty advanced stuff. It was amazing. And there were no corners on each of the floors, everything was curved, so if you dropped a crystal, it wouldn’t get stuck in a corner, so all these things. So, I mean, it was an incredible time because… It was, it was like big brother. I mean, you didn’t have to buy your chicken for Christmas. They’d give you one of those or a capon, or everybody, all the staff would be queuing around the building before Christmas to get your turkey or a capon, depending on how long you had been there. If you were a senior, you got a turkey, and if you were junior you got a capon.

Laurent: These were the old days where they still dominated quite a large share of the international diamond trade. Oh, the whole thing?

Joanna: Absolutely. We weren’t allowed to go to America because it was a monopoly that they had at the time which if you were in America it was a criminal offense but it wasn’t over in the UK. And you had amazing insurance, you had boxes at Covent Garden, Royal Opera House. And no one went to them, so myself and a girlfriend who at the time who also worked at De Beers, we went to all these amazing shows at the Albert Hall and Covent Garden in these boxes. And I think we had to pay like two pounds or something for a ticket. So we went and saw everything in London. It was just, it was amazing. You could live and breathe De Beers. You didn’t need to go… Anywhere else.

Laurent: Did you get the travel or all the goods just came to London?

Joanna: No, you see, this is what I thought. I thought, oh, I can go off to Africa in my khaki outfit, you know, I just thought, because that really appealed. Well, I was so far from that. I mean, I was a woman to start with, so I wasn’t getting anywhere as a woman.

Laurent: Well, you did that later on in going to Zambia, Mozambique.

Joanna: Oh, you must. Oh you’re much much later my gosh yes it’s like 40 years later but at the time so that’s why I wanted to go to yeah I wanted to go to Africa I wanted to you know go on adventures but that clearly wasn’t going to happen at De Beers and so when I saw in the retail jeweller an advert to be a polished diamond an assistant polished diamond dealer in Antwerp, I thought, well, I’ll apply. I got the job. I don’t know. I mean, it was actually, it’s with J.C. Jinder. And I just thought, and I was like 22, 23, I think now. And he was very clever, in fact, to hire me because, I mean I’m not Jewish, and I was a young girl and he was a diamond merchant, meaning then that they would buy from sightholders that had, that through brokers and with polished goods, and you’d be selling to wholesalers, then the wholesalers would make the jewellery and sell to retailers. So there was a very methodical line of track of business, you know, not like now, and it’s completely, completely changed. But I think because I had worked for De Beers he thought well you know she’s been in the diamond world that’s that’s a great sort of name to have behind you and so I got the job and so I went in my my Ford Fiesta with my futon that I had bought and I drove over to Antwerp and I found this flat in Provinciestraat by the zoo. And that was, I remember thinking, oh my goodness, I knew absolutely no one. Went into the office, I was the assistant to Nico Van Gendt, who had been running the Antwerp office for years and years. And the first day he showed me a parcel of diamonds, melee, and he told me to sort them into various categories. I had absolutely no clue what he was talking about. And he went off and he came back 20 minutes later and he said, have they sent me someone that doesn’t know anything? I just went, yes. And he said well, you’re here now, I better train you. So he trained me and, but you see, what was interesting was that, so my patch was Scandinavia and London, and I got commission. So I had a basic pay, but I had commission. And if ever there was an incentive that was an incentive for me. And I only lived in Antwerp for a year, but I would travel with Henry Jinder to Ramat Gan three times a year. Buying we’re buying in the obviously in the well in the ship’s truck we had our offices so the brokers would come to us but I very soon realised that you know sometimes they would be shouting down the phone and we’d given a bad offer and you know there would be no one on the other end of the phone anyway that’s all a bit all big game.

Laurent: It’s a very male world as well, a very masculine world.

Joanna: Very very masculine I mean when I walked out on the street and I would at first I’d say hello to the brokers they’d just almost ignore me so and offices in Israel in Ramat Gan there were some I couldn’t walk into so it it was yeah it was a very very um male world and the people that I was selling to were all male I didn’t meet any women at all the only women I would meet if brokers they had died and their widows would take over the business but that would be the only time and that I would meet another woman in the business. So it was it was very tough and in fact and in fact it was yeah but Henry was Henry Jinder I think he he thought well how going to get my goods in front of buyers when there’s a whole you know, a whole line of guys, you know Orthodox Jews and, you know, just all sitting there. So he thought, I’ll have a young girl. And it worked because I would be asked into an office first, I think from an entertainment point of view, as far as they were concerned, they just thought, well, she knows nothing. It’s just what is she doing here? And of course, there’s no mobile phones as you know, nothing like that. And And I very, and they were very rude most of the time. And I just thought, it was all survival, I’d left home at 16 and I just, this was my job and I’m gonna be good at my job. And I knew that through knowledge, that in the end, knowledge was power. And so, yeah, and then in the end those same people that were rude to me gave me the best business ever, because also I was so diligent in, I would, you know, they’d ask for, there was, um, you’d ask for I don’t know, 10 carats or four per carat or whatever, and I would measure the tables, I mean I would literally, you wouldn’t have any fish eyes in any of it, you would, I’d make sure that if the stones were matching, ten pointers, 2.95 to 3.01, you know, I would absolutely measure the diameters, I’d measure the tables and so they liked that because I went that extra bit.

Laurent: I’m sure you get that question often from students or people who are looking, young people who are trying to get into the trade or getting into getting into gemology is just try and get as much as experience as you can and be as diligent as you can. I mean this is a great example of how you were curious and you tried to collect all these different kinds of experience to bring your career to where it is now.

Joanna: Yes, I think that’s, I mean I’m just a curious person, so I wasn’t happy, you know, I’m not happy to write a book on sapphires without going to see where sapphires come from, and emeralds, rubies, everything like that, but also I want to see what really is going on, you know. I don’t want to hear from other people, I want to see it for myself. I love travelling, you know, I don’t mind roughing it, I love camping. I ride motorbikes, so for me, that’s a privilege to be able to go off to countries where most people wouldn’t go to A, and B, see what I see and the people I meet. Because it’s certainly off the beaten track and off the tourist track, and that I love. I feel very lucky to have done that. So I do say to people, they always say what… Get into the trade you know well there’s so many different aspects of the trade and then I feel it’s not until you’ve worked in all very aspects a) do you know which bit you like and which bit you don’t like and that takes time to understand it you know the auction world oh my goodness that was a whole whole other world.

Laurent: So you came back to London, then, to work at an auction house?

Joanna: So that was yes if after after Antwerp and then I came back and I was back in the office the Jinder office in London. But I will tell you one I’ll just tell you one story which um there was so there it was Garrard and Mappin & Webb they owned Mappin & Webb at the time as well and the guy that I that was the buyer for them he he had put a tender out to, you know, he was going to… Diamonds to fill all these three, you know, three stone rings, five stone rings, ear studs, I mean it was a huge order, it’s a massive order for the whole of Mappin & Webb and this time you know this guy who had been rude to me originally but now wasn’t and we had a we had a good working relationship and he said well in the end he said I’ll give you this order. The order was enormous, absolutely enormous. And I thought, oh my goodness, I remember rushing back to Henry Jinder and I said, look at, this is, this is the order that we’ve got. And he went, right. But there was no upfront money. We had to fund it. I mean, it was a lot of money. It was, oh gosh. So we, so Henry got very much involved and of course he only wanted, you know, 10 mils, 10 pointers, he would only want sort of three millimetres and absolutely exact. So you’re also having a big order but you were having to parcel pick. And then, you know, to parcel pick and get a competitive price per carat was very, very difficult, almost impossible, because everyone wants those, you, they don’t want those. So you select out of the best stones, exactly. So you’d have parcels and say, say you’ve got 20 carats of melee and then you’d say, well, okay, I’ll buy this but I’ll have a 50% rejection. And you would do the rejection and then parcel it up and wrap it up and sign it and seal it and see if, and say well, I only pay this price and I’ll only pay so many days. And there was all that going on. So we were doing that with all different sizes and we were going from Antwerp, we were going to Israel. It took about six months to get this parcel together, this order together and I used to always just go on the tube but I lashed out and went by cab this time because I had the whole entire order in this briefcase. All, I had measured all the tables, all the diametres of the stones everything was a VS VS 1 FG and I remember going up, this was when Garrard were on the corner of Regent Street, and it had a telephone box outside the entrance, the tradesmen of course would go the back entrance, and I went up to see the guy, and I just put this briefcase down on the table, and I just sat down and he just turned the briefcase round, he opened it, just grabbed one brifka out of it, diamond paper out of it where I had… Put the pairs of stones, and he louped two diamonds, then he put that back, got another brifka, and there was hundreds of brifkas in there, so I mean he just sort of like randomly just picked out two brifkas and looked at the stones through his loupe, and then he put them back, he shut the suitcase, locked it, and he said, invoice the lot. Oh my goodness I can’t tell you I was that that was just amazing it was like it was better than winning the lottery because I had put so much time and effort into it too and Henry Jinder had too and yet we we had the biggest the biggest deal ever and I just thought you know it was this guy at the very beginning a few years ago had been really dismissive of me had given me the best order. And it was just brilliant.

Laurent: So how important are trust and integrity in this trade?

Joanna: Oh, it’s huge.

Laurent: It’s incredible, right? Compared to other businesses or industries. Absolutely.

Laurent: And it’s been around for centuries, it still fascinates me today.

Joanna: No money had been exchanged, no invoice. I hadn’t given him an invoice. I hadn’t given him anything.

Laurent: So he didn’t even know what it would cost him.

Joanna: No, well, I think he’d roughly, but I mean, I hadn’t produced the invoice because I didn’t know if he wanted them. Goodness knows what we would have done if he’d said, oh, I don’t like this, or he starts picking at it. And so that’s what I just really wanted to make sure that he didn’t start. Saying well that’s good, that’s not good. I didn’t want him to find a fault and he didn’t find a fault and it was for the whole chain of Mappin & Webb. I mean it was just and the commission that I got well I was just I think I paid for some horse riding in Hyde Park. I said oh that’s because it was quite expensive horse riding in Hyde Park and I went to New York as well because I just thought oh this is it was amazing. That was amazing. So I will always, yeah. That was a great lesson. That was great lesson as well. And I’ve got so much to thank the guy at Garrard at the time, you know, even now to this day. He showed me what, you know hard work and it wasn’t about male or female. It was just being good at your job. And that’s what people want at the end of the day. They want your trust, they want your honesty, reputation, and be good.

Laurent: And it takes years to build that up.

Joanna: And it takes years to build it up, exactly. So he had given me the impetus to carry on, because I was still very young in my career. I mean, I’d have absolutely no idea what I would be doing next month, let alone where I’m sitting now. It didn’t even occur to me where my career was going to go or take me. And it was then that, and then afterwards, someone phoned me up and said, Phillips the auctioneers which are now Bonhams so this they were looking for a diamond expert at the time I don’t like the word expert specialist and so I and I just and I remember thinking auction what is auction and I thought antique jewellery I went oh my goodness I know absolutely nothing about antique jewellery then as for coloured gemstones I hadn’t seen a sapphire or anything with colour since I did my gemology because I’d been in the diamond, you know, rough and polished for a good five years. So I just thought, wow. So, I remember I was still living in Antwerp and I so I went would go before the interview to Phillips. I just thought, well I better go to the V&A and the British Museum to the jewellery galleries. And I remember sitting there weekends trying to work out what all these styles and periods were called because I had absolutely no art training at all. So I hadn’t got a clue about Art Nouveau or any of this. I had no idea.

Laurent: And now you’re on the BBC on what, a weekly or a monthly basis, an antiques road show.

Joanna: Valuing it.

Laurent: People show you a piece and you don’t only need to identify it, you also need to put a value on it.

Joanna: Yes, and you know that it’s real and it’s true.

Laurent: How is that? How is it engaging with the trade compared to engaging with a…

Joanna: Oh the public.

Laurent: The public.

Joanna: Yeah I think that was a good question because having been with the trade and all the diamond dealers at the time who were buying from auction because at that time in the 80s everyone was re-cutting old cuts so you had few of the diamond guys with their microscopes and come with their microscopes when they were viewing the sale of the auctions. And all they were going to do was pop out the big stones and recut them into modern brilliants. But because they knew that I had spent you know a number of years grading polished and rough, so I was inundated with with dealers wanting my um grades on you know they were just phoning me give me a list and just say just what are your thoughts on um on these stones so that’s what I did. So I was very comfortable with them because I was used to dealers, that’s all who I had worked with. So general public, oh my goodness, oh, my goodness. That was a whole other world because suddenly I realised that it was 70% counselling and 30% knowledge.

Laurent: It’s the expectations of people.

Joanna: Oh my gosh, yes, well, you’re dealing with emotions. I wasn’t really dealing with people’s emotions other than, you know, you got a deal, didn’t get a deal. I mean, that’s about it, of the emotions. But when you suddenly, my mother’s left me this, and my husband’s done that, and oh my gosh. I just, it blew me away. I just thought. And I thought, they’ve got an estimate of 3,000 to 5,000, I mean like, it doesn’t sell, it doesn’t sell. I just thought, what is this business, you know, and you put a low reserve on it, and I thought no one’s putting their money where their mouth is, and I just thought, well that makes it a bit easy, you know, and so it was, I thought it was a bizarre world. And then finding out that people had really wanted, I’d never heard of Sotheby’s or Christie’s. I had no idea who these people were or these firms were. And people went to art school and universities and had art history degrees, you know, because they wanted to work in auction houses. I just, it was just a complete different world. And it, but Phillips, working for Phillips, which was great because it was a great learning curve and it wasn’t too scary. A place so you could cut your teeth on it and it was a very fun place you know in fact people on the Antiques Roadshow now I’ve been doing the Antique Roadshow for 20 years now and I’m and I am working with people that I worked with back in those days and this is like we’re nearly talking 40 years ago you know 35 years ago at Phillips so there was a huge camaraderie has grown from that as well. As well as some of the diamond dealers, I still work with them, or they phone me up out of the blue and there’s that instant connection. And that’s the same with Phillips, it was great. Phillips was great fun.

Laurent: It’s changed so much over the years, hasn’t it? Because this was a period of time with no mobile phones, people weren’t taking 360 degree videos of diamonds to figure out, you know, this or that, how can it be recut? It was so different. How do you see this evolution? People are WhatsApping videos of million dollar stones.

Joanna: Yeah gosh it’s changed it’s changed it’s changed so much What would I say? I think what, I think what really has changed is that your world was quite small. It didn’t matter where you travelled, you’d bump into the same people. It still is today, but with the internet and with the amount of people that are talking about influences and trends and goodness knows all of that stuff. It really, you’ve lost that person, that sort of closeness, that kind of one-to-one with someone, that kind relationship that you’ve built up over the years. Now everything seems so transient. And with that, I think it’s very difficult for people in that sense. But I think relationships are even more important today. Because there’s so many pitfalls if you don’t know who you’re dealing with, and the trust.

Laurent: We talked about this before this element of trust is so important and it’s going to continue to be important because there’s also so much money involved and that is a human-to-human connection in the end. You can go as virtual as you want on these things but in the end that’s kind of what this business is about so

Joanna: Yeah, no, it is. And it’s, yes, I mean, you know, the relationships, I work now by myself and I have been doing for the last 20 years now. It’s nearly 20 years since I left Sotheby’s, which is just extraordinary. But I don’t feel I’m working alone because I have my colleagues almost, I feel like I just pick up the phone or I WhatsApp them or text them and we speak quickly and there is still that camaraderie and trust. And I think maybe because it is so wide, the web and the internet and it’s even more important to have that close connection with someone. I think the trust is even more, even more important. I mean, it’s always important. But, but it is, I value, I really value the people that I deal with, really value them. I value their friendship and I value that trust. And you know, it still, you know if someone steps out of line – well, that’s it, you’re never back in again. I mean, there’s a couple of people I walk across the road and I’ll cross over the other side and I will never entertain them.

Laurent: Well, it still is a small world, so if there’s issues with your reputation, news travels fast.

Joanna: Yeah, it does. It still does, yes.

Laurent: And coming back just to the general public and you’re also involved with Gem-A and the Goldsmiths company etc. Education is very important. How educated is the general public? Some of the questions that you get when you do this Antiques Roadshow, are people, where are they getting their information? Are you sometimes confronted with people thinking that they’ve got a million dollar piece and then it’s just worth, you know, five pounds or… What is the public’s perception of jewellery or gemstones?

Joanna: Well, I think, uh… I think, well, first of all, I think insurance valuations in the past have always been so different to what they could sell a piece for and so there is always that big discrepancy which needs explaining and sometimes you can explain it and sometimes you can’t explain it because it shouldn’t be that wide and that you know that different from the sale price to the insurance replacement value and I think you know the marketing is quite powerful and I am amazed how the public how marketing can stick in a person’s mind and I suppose you know diamonds is an example of how you know De Beers you know Diamonds are a girl’s best friend and diamonds are forever and… You know, you spend two months salary on a diamond or, you know all of these people can still recite now because of the power of advertising, the power of marketing. And De Beers will always go down in history as the best marketeers, I should think. And yeah, I mean, you know we’re sitting at the Goldsmiths Hall, It’s celebrating its 700th year in 2027, it had its charter in 1327 when it hallmarked goods to make sure that gold and silver that was bought and sold within the city walls of London were of a standard that was consistent to protect the consumer and to protect the buyers. And the dealers and that was first so that you could trade within the city walls of London and then it expanded obviously to Great Britain and that protection is still there to this day and is the hallmarking the assaying your metal is there to protect the consumer And yet… And for British hallmarks, there is a series of marks, and each one represents the finest of the gold or the finest or the silver, the year that it was hallmarked, which assay office hallmarked it, and the maker’s mark of the person who made it or the person retailed it. So there’s quite a story, a significant story in those marks on your piece. And people will still, they don’t really understand it. And yet it’s been going on for 700 years. And it is your best form of protection for the consumer. And the British Hallmarking Council commissioned a survey which was done to see how much was sold on the internet that said it was nine carat or 18 carat and it wasn’t. And it was like 40%. It’s a very, very high.

Laurent: I imagine that for gems it wouldn’t be all too different.

Joanna: I should think not. If not more so. So I am amazed that people think 18CT or 18K stamped on a shank is good enough to say that it is 18 karat gold. It’s not.

Laurent: We need to keep educating, educating.

Joanna: So yes, so you need to, so I love being part of educating, educating people from the Goldsmiths Company is a form of education for sure and you know with the Goldsmith’s Centre that the Goldsmith’s Company supports and set up in 2012 where I think there’s about 130 different jewellers and businesses and silversmiths reside there, they’ve got workshops there, you’ve got apprentices, you’ve got bursaries, you’ve got foundation classes, there are all types of talks going on, it’s an amazing hub to support the trade in the industry. So for me it’s just a, it is wonderful to be involved in that. And also from my own personal perspective, you know, it was through knowledge how I got on. So if I don’t have the knowledge then I wouldn’t I wouldn’t have been able to have done what I’ve done. But you learn on the job, you know, you learn on the job.

Laurent: So, you learn on the job. So have you ever made any mistakes? I mean, have you valued something, for example, and then it turned out to be much more expensive than that?

Joanna: I’ve got personal indemnity against that.

Laurent: You’re just giving people this information of value, I mean, it’s purely informational.

Joanna: Yeah, I mean, yeah, there’s just information. Yeah, there is just information that I have, that it’s my opinion, you know, it’s my opinion sometimes. I mean not everything is my opinion. Obviously some things are what they are. But I think, I think if you, you’ve got to get your hands dirty. You know, you, when you go to places and see where places, where things are made you know, that I find fascinating. I love being able to see different trades and to see how they. I haven’t cut stones but I’ve watched them being cut and you know enamelling or all these different trades is so magical to see how these trades and the craft and the skills can come together to create a beautiful piece. We commissioned, with my Goldsmith’s Company hat on, we commissioned the Coronation Cup for King Charles III to have at mansion house for his first banquet as as king and the coronation cup is an amazing beautiful object that 11 crafts people helped to make and 11 different crafts were involved in this one coronation cup. So I’ve just written an article for a magazine that it was about the value of craft against the digital, in the digital era. And I interviewed lots of different craftsmen and what was really a surprise and wonderful to hear was that they were not all, they weren’t worried about AI because they see it as just another tool. You know, one person said, you know, well, we had drills, we have hand drills, then we had electric drills, then we have laser drills, and then we add CAD, and you know but he said these have all been tools. They haven’t replaced the craft, they haven’t replace the hand skills. That take years and years to make, you know, to learn. And so that was really, that was great. And I think, yeah, I think the craft and the hand skills will probably, hopefully we’ll have a renaissance or have an appreciation from the consumer because it’s a two-way thing. The consumer, going back to education, you’ve got to educate the consumer about the complexities and the skills and the soul that has gone into these pieces do you know you can you can see a CAD piece because it has no soul you know you can tell if it’s um being made totally by machine but as yet AI cannot put the soul into a piece and um and that’s what all these craftspeople said they said you know they That AI does not have my brain at the moment. So that was very reassuring and so the people downstairs that we you know that it’s week two of Goldsmith’s Fair and to see all the wonderful talent that is there and to think that just just need to get as many people to see it and to buy it for them to continue. Because we, you know, human beings without creativity, I mean, to me that’s a lost, you end up being a machine. I mean you, we are human beings, human beings are about emotion, it’s about creativity. And going back to your first original question, then that’s when the stones and the jewellery and all of the human emotion will be played into those stones or those pieces of jewellery or silver.

Laurent: I think that’s the beauty of jewellery is that we don’t need it, we don t eat it, we don’t do anything with it. So this element of craft, will it be a renaissance or is it already a renaissance or kind of a two tiered street where you have jewellery which is generically branded and rather low cost and then you have not necessarily high end but you have things that are really crafted and where people consume less but they consume better and that’s perhaps where I find some optimism with gemstones or pearls or just jewellery that is beautifully crafted is that if you train the public well enough to really have a trained eye to see what is beautiful or not, or for them to really get a feeling for that, they do seem, you know, open to that.

Joanna: But that’s why the Antiques Roadshow is such a wonderful platform for me to be able to say look at the back, look at this. I try to educate people on the show that why something has caught my eye and why is it that price and the craftsmanship that’s gone into either the cutting of the stone or whatever it is. But yes, that is so important. And to have a platform like that is… Is great I mean you know six million people still watch it and it’s been going for like 47 years uh so for on the night on a Sunday night

Laurent: You often get stopped on the street and people say, here’s my ring or something.

Joanna: They usually say, weren’t we at a party last night? I’m going, no, probably I was on, I was in your lounge at the time. But virtually, through the telly.

Laurent: And you wrote three books, Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald. So you moved a little bit away from diamonds. Yes. Is there one you prefer? Is it hard to choose? Is it like children where you can’t say which one’s your favourite?

Joanna: No, um, each, no, each one was, um…

Laurent: Nnot necessarily the book, but the stone or the story about why certain people prefer certain stones.

Joanna: Oh, I think that’s just a personal intuition, a personal feeling. I don’t think you can… Put that into words, actually. It’s beyond words. I’ve, out of those three, I’ve never had much dealings with or feelings with emeralds. They’ve never really, they’ve never really spoken to me. Rubies, rubies, that’s, some things happen in your life and you think later on, you actually happen or have I just made that up? As you get older thinking that’s why I’m writing everything down because just to make sure it did happen and i didn’t make it up but uh I remember I was just had put. So those three books emerald, ruby and sapphire took me a total of 10 years to write um and you know going and visiting a lot of the gem deposits as well and which was amazing I mean that for me those three books. It’s more than like the deal with Garrards at all. It’s up there, it’s up in what I, you know as a period of time that I’m proud of so with Ruby and I had just finished the book and I was at home and there was this old lady was walking across the front of my house in the front garden and she was peering through the hedges and I just, I thought, what is she doing? So I went out to see her. I said, oh, she said, you know. I was just wanting to see what these houses were like from the gardens from the back because you can’t see them from the front. So I said, oh, she said, my son is thinking of buying one of these. I went, oh okay, it’s fine, carry on. And I said well, I’m going to be, I’m gonna be moving house myself for a while. And, and I said well come in, come in to, I said I can give you some information about the area. So she came in, she came into my office at home. And there was all these kind of pages of Ruby, which was all sort of scattered over my desk. It hadn’t quite gone to print, but it was about to go to print. And I had all the proofs all over my desks. And she said, oh, she said you’ve written a book, what’s all this about Ruby? I said, oh, I’ve, um… Yes, I’ve actually just put it to bed. It’s at the printer’s, because she asked for a copy. And I said, well, I don’t have a copy, and then she, I feel very weird saying this, but it did happen. And she pulled out of her pocket this biggest ruby in her hand, and it was sort of like, more like a corundum, rather than a ruby ruby, it was a sort of matrix in corundums. She pulled out this ruby and she said I’m the keeper of the ruby this is my I’m the I’ve forgotten the exact word I wrote it down and she said I have been destined to look after rubies or something or the elders have given me the responsibility to look after rubies and I’m just thinking I went, what? And she said, yes, I’ve written some books and I’ve written her name down and she wrote some books on mysticism, what have you, sort of like paperback type things and I wrote it down. And then she said, and I said, well, you better, I said that’s from, I said that’s an old Indian stone. She said, yes, yes you’re right. I said oh, that’s very nice. I said well, make sure you look after it. She said oh yes, I will. She said I won’t, I won’t lose it. And I said you know, I’m going to be putting a ruby in the four corners of my house because that’s what they do in Mogok when, to protect the house. She said, oh yes, you must do that. I said, no, no I will, I will do that, because I’d just come back from Burma, so that I had heard of this story of how you protect your house by putting a ruby crystal in the four corners of your house. And then, which is why I must go now, I said oh okay. Off she went with this ruby in her pocket. It was bizarre. Totally bizarre. And then I had just finished Sapphire and I had a sapphire crystal another time a few years later when I finished Sapphire and I was doing this show and tell at dinner and I brought this sapphire Crystal out and handed it, so we’ve got to be careful with this and I handed it to somebody. And they put it down next to their crystal glass and the glass shattered. Just shattered. Other people have seen this, just to make sure it wasn’t me or I hadn’t made it up. So when people say to me, you know, stones and energy and all this, I certainly don’t poo poo it and I have certainly had more than those two occasions when things have happened with stones. So I have a lot of respect for stones. And I like that. I like that because we’re little humans. I mean, there’s a whole other world out there we know nothing about, and I like that and I think.

Joanna: Stones and gemstones as a little tiny window into that other world which we are not really receptive to or we think we are or you think something’s there or but um yeah i mean it’s all very, you can’t explain it, and I quite like the fact that you can’t explain it.

Laurent: Well, and there’s still there’s still a mystery around gemstones. It’s going to be a different mystery for every single person, but that’s what probably keeps us curious as well. Yeah.

Joanna: Oh yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

Laurent: In research or in teaching or in trade or in history or whatever it is, but there’s this element of fascination that also comes from mystery I think.

Joanna: And that, you know, what you do at SSEF with all your science and how that’s changed and evolved and what you can now tell about gemstones is unbelievable. Just to see that 50 years ago, you couldn’t even really, no one really understood the difference between a stone from Sri Lanka or a stone form Kashmir or whatever. I mean, what they’d get very confused over those two anyway. They wouldn’t be able to tell the difference so yeah I mean it’s extraordinary and you know and I find I did an article about synthetic diamonds and natural diamonds for the Goldsmiths review just recently and just talking to people about the synthetic diamond from the technology side oh my goodness do you know it’s fascinating quantum sensors and all this business. I mean, it’s a whole, whole other dimension.

Laurent: The future of synthetic diamonds is not jewellery, the future of synthetic diamonds goes elsewhere, it was just good press or whatever.

Joanna: Yeah, exactly. No, exactly

Laurent: And it’s really interesting, I’ve been digging a little bit deeper in literature to see how when culture pearls first arrived in the market and very nice synthetic rubies arrived in the market, you know, late, late 1800s, early 1900s, just the kind of the discourse, the language that was used, how the trade felt. There is so many parallels to what is happening with synthetic diamonds today, even though there was no TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, whatever back then. It’s so interesting. Something comes and kind of rattles the trade, this way how emotional people get and the reactions that people have to it.

Joanna: As a gemologist, jewellery specialist, I am so pleased that I am living in this period because I felt like I’d missed out on the Verneuils, the synthetics, the cultured pearls, all of that. Suddenly we’ve got this game changer and to be living through it having started off the tail end of conventional diamond dealing and diamonds were king and you know no one questioned it and no one questions the investment and all this business oh my gosh to actually see and hear what’s going on I find absolutely fascinating absolutely fascinating and it’s and it is not the end of anything it’s just it’s changing it’s just changing

Laurent: And so where do you see it changing to? I mean, perhaps as a final question, I’d like to ask you why do humans or why have humans collected gems and made jewellery for millennia? And where are we going with all this?

Joanna: Well, I think going back to my two instances of rubies and sapphires and how gems were, you know, they have an energy. So we are drawn to that and we always will be drawn to that. And you can, people will say, even if a wedding ring, you know try and for some people, they would never take their wedding ring off. You know, they would feel naked. They would feel that they didn’t have a partner. They’d feel, and that’s just a band of gold. So the connotations associated with just a simple band of gold is enormous and that’s never going to change and that will, those feelings will still need, they’ll still need feeding, those needs and those emotions will still be fed by something and that something is still going to be something that we can wear. Something we can hold, something that’s tangible. And durable and durable. So whether you know gold at the moment you know it gets too expensive for people to be able to make as much gold jewellery but the craft and you’ll see you know downstairs the craft of what they’ve been able to use with niobium and titanium and you know all these other aluminium all these other materials the craft is still there and the association with it we’ll still be there. I think the materials will change, and the materials would develop. And the same with stones. I think it’s, you know, diamonds are now allowing other stones to come into people’s minds a bit more, which is, I think, is great, because actually it gives people the opportunity to, you know it doesn’t matter if it’s an agate, it doesn’t matter what it is, if it is beautiful to you, and it’s durable. You know, that will have meaning and it will have a significance for you and something. Everyone loves passing things down to other people and it’s a part of you that’s passed down. You know, I wear my mother’s jewellery and it reminds me of her and I do. I literally, sometimes when I go out somewhere I think, oh, I think I’d like mum to come with me. And literally, it’s by putting something on will make me feel that mum is with me and so that will that will never ever change. I mean one of the people that I interviewed for the digital article she which I had never heard she has a meta human that wears her jewellery I said what is a meta-human which is a digital human who wears her jewellery in the in the space of where meta-humans live which is on the internet somewhere but she said well that’s just advertising my jewellery but I will physically make it so she said you know I still want to physically make it but I just advertise it on a meta human so I just thought well there we go you know but it’s still the same it’s just how things are going to be utilised and marketed and the technology. But the fundamental emotions and feelings, it will still be there, and so jewellery will still be there and silversmithing will still be there. And gemstones will still be there which is lovely. And therefore there will be jobs for people in the future to still educate people, to still make, to still want to wear it, to still buy it, to still collect it. So I don’t see anything changing. In terms of the jobs are are still there to to and that is great so it’s not a dying profession at all it’s just a changing one which is and I’m very pleased to still be part of it and see the change.

Laurent: Well, to many more years, Joanna.

Joanna: Yes, definitely. Definitely.

Laurent: Thank you so much for this conversation.

Joanna: Pleasure.

Laurent: I think let’s go downstairs to see the fair.

Joanna: Great, love to show you.

Laurent: Our guest was Joanna: on curiosity, colour gemstones, and why trust and craftsmanship still matter. That was another Hidden Gem by SSEF, the Swiss Gemological Institute. Thank you for listening.