The Rarest Emerald - Gilded Lily Jewellery at Grays Antiques Market

It's so good to be in Grey's because it is the most intense concentration of serious jewellery in any position in London, if not the world. Everybody you speak to here is an expert on their subject, they've bought this jewellery themselves so they know when they've made mistakes down the years and how they've refined it to get it right. But the people who come here are international, they're travellers, they're people with a great curiosity in what they're looking at and we know that they can be from China or they can be from Germany or they can be from the United States. This is a place, this is a centre of knowledge, centre of seriously good jewellery and those are the kind of people we enjoy meeting here. I started off as a manufacturing jeweller actually in Brazil so when I got into my 30s I decided to go and look at other countries in the world and I settled down in Rio de Janeiro for a few years and I was involved with jewellery manufacturing there because of course Brazil's a great centre of fabulous gemstones and I started to make a business manufacturing jewellery there and exporting it to New York and London. In fact my children grew up there and I think when we got to a secondary school stage I thought I'd better get back to England again and I was introduced to Corin Harvey who is the owner of this business and we've been together now working together for I think 27 or 28 years and built this business between us always based in Grey's but of course we've been exhibition jewellers as well we've exhibited all over the world in Hong Kong, New York, Palm Beach and we manufacture jewellery and design it for people or redesign it for people and repair things so all of these good reasons to be at the centre of the trade and the trade is centred in central London. The funny thing is that Grey's it's thought of as a market I think of it as a gallery it's not as prestigious as going into Cartier or Tiffany where the internal environment is absolutely magically luxurious but that doesn't put off the world's famous people everybody walks through Grey's. Sir Mick Jagger has been here at this very position, Rod Stewart, the list is pretty much endless. My favourite item in our stock at the moment is this quite exceptional emerald I'm going to take it out this is one in a million because emeralds are known for having inclusions in fact French don't necessarily think they're a defect but they can detract from light passing through the stone very rarely you'll find an emerald which doesn't have inclusions and this is just such an emerald because it is not spoiled by anything inside the crystal which prevents light from passing through it it achieves this magical velvety intense colour and this stone weighs over five carats it comes from the Panjshir valley which is in northeast Afghanistan about 150 miles north of Kabul and this valley resisted Russian occupation for 15 years but succumbed to the Taliban when the allies withdrew from Afghanistan and so the supply of emeralds at least for the time being has dried up there are many sources of emeralds in the Panjshir valley it's in the Hindu Kush there's a river passing through it and there are high mountain walls on either side in that valley there are lots of sources but only one which produces emeralds of this quality when we saw this emerald it was a loose stone and we snapped it up straight away and in our own workshops we produced this platinum ring and we didn't want to embellish it with huge diamonds on either side we didn't think it needed it when we've sold this and it is a lot of money but when we've sold it we probably never will find another emerald as good as that again do we want to sell it well we live to sell that's our business we'd love to be a museum and hang on to everything and all the extraordinary jewels we've had down the years but of course it must go and we want to hope that it goes to somebody who loves it and takes enormous care of it emeralds are quite soft stone and who buys this has got to treat it like an exquisite Dior gown so that when it's worn it's worn with great care you don't spill the wine on it you don't throw it into the back of the cupboard when you brought it back you take it straight to the cleaners and make sure it's immaculate for the next time you wear it and I think this sort of gem is a huge investment it's so rare I do know that one of exactly the same quality of this but half the size was on sale in our jewelers last year for twice the price that we're selling this one for