Blog
Spring is here so lets move on now ….
Hatton Garden – once described by The Independent newspaper as the most romantic road in the world – is open for business. It cannot have escaped your attention that a tragedy hit Hatton Garden over the Easter/Passover holiday. The Safe Deposit Company, a reliable and well-managed business established over 60 years ago, suffered a spectacular […]
Mothers Day
Mothers Day – traditionally known as Mothering Sunday – is a festival of motherhood celebrated across Europe. The origins are thought to have been in the 16th century, when children who had gone to work away from their home returned to the Mother Church on the fourth Sunday of the Christian Festival of Lent, to honour their mothers and celebrate […]
Diamonds for Christmas Gifts
Christmas is the time for reflection, time to spend with families and those we love, and here in the UK it is also the time for many couples to make that vow of commitment – to tie the knot, to get married. This is the moment choose an engagement ring. Traditionally, the engagement ring – and the ring of choice for […]
Kickstart comes to Leather Lane – Hatton Garden
KickStart – the initiative set up by the British Jewellers Association and International Jewellery, London – is displaying the work of the 10 winners for this year at London Rocks in Leather Lane, Hatton Garden. The exhibition will be open to the public from 31st October to 31st January 2015. KickStart was first launched in 2011 by the BJA as a […]
Charles Dickens in Hatton Garden
Walk through the streets of Hatton Garden at this time of year, as the leaves turn to red and gold and the light fades in the late afternoon, and you cannot fail to be aware of the history of this little part of London. Down the narrow alley ways and streets winding between the tall buildings strode many famous figures, including Charles Dickens. The Charles Dickens Museum in […]
The Autumn Essential Display Course
The autumn Essential Display course had a real buzz about it this year. As we move out of recession, as confidence grows, so that feeling of optimism is reflected in the mood of the people who come to these courses and the debate about how to design-out display problems within individual stores had begun before they […]
The Goldsmiths’ Fair 2014
The Goldsmiths’ Fair is over for another year but the fresh new look, coupled with lots of new exhibitors, made it an exciting show. As this show displays the work of designers-makers – artists who are making wearable sculpture and extraordinary, functional silverware themselves, by hand – it is a different experience to visiting a […]
The New Intellectual Property Act becomes Law
A historic moment. The new Intellectual Property Act became law today after years of campaigning by ACID. It is now a criminal offence to steal the work of a designer and if found guilty, the offender could receive a sentence of up to 10 years! ACID – Anti Copying in Design – was started […]
Take 5 Talks – Tatty Devine
Take 5 Talks at the Design Council this Thursday evening featured Harriet Vine of Tatty Devine. The Take 5 format – 5 insights followed by 5 questions and costing £5 – ensures a quick and focussed presentation and enabled Harriet to present some of the more unusual and perhaps more personal aspects of the brand. The […]
Learn the Art and Craft of Displaying Fine Jewellery
Learn the art and craft of displaying fine jewellery through a course run by the National Association of Goldsmiths called Essential Display. The consumer of the 21st century is a very sophisticated creature – and very busy! Reaching potential buyers of fine jewellery with traditional methods of display and marketing is not enough to entice them […]
Starting your Own Jewellery Business.
Live the dream – starting your own jewellery business. For recent graduates and and post graduates, leaving the warm, safe world of university to face the shock of reality in the cold, harsh world of commerce is a challenging experience to say the least! To start with, you are alone. It is not quite as easy to share experiences with your fellow […]
This Business of Trust
This business of trust: buying a peice of jewellery – no matter whether it is a big and important fine quality gemstone or a tiny pair of silver earrings – is all about trust. The retailer must trust his wholesaler, his gemstone dealer, his bullion supplier, his goldsmith; the jewellery designers and manufacturers must trust their suppliers and […]
The Beauty of a Hand-made Piece of Jewellery
The beauty of a hand-made piece of jewellery is that it feels as well as looks uniquely different. All the tiny imperfections that are part of the creative process not only give it character but also enable the jeweller to allow for individual requirements. For example, incorporating elements to balance a ring, bracelet or brooch that features a large […]
The Threat is from Within …
The threat is from within … Hatton Garden, an area that was heavily bombed during WWII but escaped much of the brutalist re-developmentof the ’60’s and ’70’s – until now! Despite conservation orders on this area, designed to protect the numerous small studios and workshops, work has begun to knock down a building in Baldwins […]
Diamond Geezers & Gold Dealers – a review
When you know an area such as Hatton Garden very well – the industry, its people and how they do business – it is always difficult to try to have an objective view of it. It is very easy to be cynical or negative, or feel that the makers of the programme had missed a really important point. But despite the […]
Diamond Geezers and Gold Dealers on ITV
On Thursday evening, the 24th July, ITV are broadcasting a documentary featuring the fine jewellery business and the expertise of the people who work in Hatton Garden. In the past, such documentaries have been the cause of much heated debate and discussion as to whether the presentation style – dwelling as it generally did on the secretive nature of the industry and […]
All about certificates…
Over the last decade or so it has become customary to provide certificates for precious gemstones. But there is some confusion over what the certificates actually are, and so in this blog I aim to try to clarify some of the issues. Certificates are produced by independent laboratories, staffed by experienced and highly qualified gemmologists […]
Focus on Workshops
Hatton Garden is unique. In an area less than one square mile, you can purchase a rough stone, have it polished, buy precious metals and the services of a designer, commission the craftsmen and women in the workshops, and your dream jewel will be turned into 3-dimensional reality. The workshops are the heart of Hatton […]
But is it an investment diamond …?
I received a phone call a couple of weeks ago from someone who claimed to be a partner in a company selling investment diamonds. He wanted to put an advert on www.hattongarden.com and hoped I would promote these stones, which, he informed me, were coloured diamonds of considerable value, each placed in a nice little […]
The Economic Value of the Jewellery Quarter of London
The economic value of clusters of activity – for example, the car industry in Coventry, computer technology in Cambridge, the fine art galleries in Cork Street in London – are now recognised as playing a major part in the recovery of the economy of the UK. Research conducted in the US demonstrates the value of […]
