Most children understand the magic of the jewellery box. In fanciful games of pirates and treasure hunters, the imaginary booty is often composed of a parent’s necklaces and rings. They may be oversized on little necks and fingers, but children are quickly enthralled by the mystery and beauty of these sparkly precious objects.
While this is all a game of make-believe to most children, to gemologist Helen Molesworth, those games marked the start of an extraordinary journey and a lifelong career of seeking out treasure.
As she recounts in her new book, Precious: The History and Mystery of Gems Across Time, one of Molesworth’s childhood encounters with the spellbinding power of gems saw her undertake a perilous climb up a garden wall to reach an amethyst, placed beyond her reach by a concerned adult.
She never reached her precious treasure, as the wall tumbled on top of her, resulting in her first broken bone. But Molesworth was not deterred and, as Precious goes on to recount, this was only the first of many hazardous and exhilarating encounters with gems.
Most of us encounter precious gems in the most glamorous of settings. Rubies, emeralds and diamonds sit behind the polished glass windows of magnificent but intimidating jewellery stores. When there is a royal wedding or great state occasion, royal watchers’ eyes widen as they eagerly identify which of the crown jewels or famous tiaras have made an appearance.
But Molesworth’s relationship with these gems is far more intimate. Having worked at Sotheby’s, Christies and the Victoria and Albert Museum, she has had unparalleled opportunity to hold those precious jewels in her own hands.
When Princess Margaret passed away in 2002, it was Molesworth who oversaw the sale of her extensive and exquisite collection of jewellery. Although, as Molesworth begrudgingly recalls, she was not allowed to try on the princess’s tiara from her infamous bath portrait.
Molesworth’s encounters do not only take place in palaces, museums and auctions houses. She reminds us that gems are products mined from the earth all over the world. The trade in gems has been exploitative and brutal. A shared human love of gems has led to the creation of some of the world’s most beautiful objects, but it has also caused people to do horrific things.
The Cheapside Hoard was buried in 17th-century London, possibly as a panicked response to the Great Fire of London. Its discovery 300 years later helped to reveal the massive and complex global trade routes which connected Tudor England with the wider world.
A watch set in a large emerald, enamelled in translucent green, is one of the treasures of the hoard. The huge emerald had been mined in Colombia and was likely plundered as part of the bloody Spanish conquest and colonisation of the so-called New World. It is beautiful, but it is also the product of colonial violence.
Inside the Columbian mines where such emeralds are uncovered today, conditions are intense. When Molesworth undertook the hazardous journey from Bogotá to the depths of one such mine, she encountered a subterranean factory. Temperatures surpassed 40°C, and the humidity was 80%. Oxygen was piped into the space and the constant hum of drills was only interrupted by the boom of dynamite. A far cry from a Mayfair jewellery store.
Elsewhere Molesworth takes us high into Russian mountains, to Myanmar in Burma, and deep into rural East Anglia. As Molesworth states: “Gemstones are the earth’s creation, but they are a human fascination.” Structured around varieties of gemstone, from diamonds and pearls to spinel and jade, Molesworth’s book traces gems from geological metamorphosis to the hands of miners and traders, and from the skilful workshops of master craftspeople to the bodies of the wealthy and the elite.
Precious is part history, part travel memoir, and part declaration of love towards gems. Like an overflowing jewellery box, its pages are bursting with stories of the sumptuous and luxurious, as well the perilous and arduous.
Yet the humanity of all these stories is what shines through. The peregrina pearl is one of the most precious pearls in the world. But when Richard Burton gifted the precious stone to Elizabeth Taylor in 1969, she promptly lost it. Desperate to find it, she started crawling around the floor of their Las Vegas penthouse, only to find that her Pekinese was enthusiastically chewing on the precious gem. Luckily, Taylor retrieved the pearl unscathed, and it went on to sell at auction for $11.8 million (£9.3m) in 2011.
It is the stories which these gems carry with them, as well as the stones themselves, which are precious.