Victoria and Albert Museum Curator on the History and Mystery of Jewelry

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Victoria and Albert Museum Curator on the History and Mystery of Jewelry

Helen Molesworth fell in love with gems at age 6 when her godfather showed her an amethyst geode, what she recently described as “a hemisphere full of perfect sparkling purple crystals.”

Now, at 47, she is the senior jewelry curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Her career has led her to travel the world, exploring mines in Sri Lanka and Colombia and handling a sparkling array of jewels, including pieces from the Cheapside Hoard, discovered in the early 1900s; the diamond, silver and gold Poltimore Tiara that Princess Margaret was photographed wearing in a bathtub; and a sapphire and diamond

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Ms. Molesworth included several anecdotes on those gems and others in “Precious: The History and Mystery of Gems Across Time.” Her book, which was published in May in Britain and is scheduled for release in September in the ******* States, was organized into chapters named for gemstones (such as Emerald, Ruby and *****) and includes maps of ancient and modern sites where the raw materials may be found.

Her comments by phone and email have been edited and condensed.

You have had a long relationship with gems.

I was born in Kenya and apparently as a small child in Mombasa I used to potter around “tupu tupu” — Swahili for ****** — in nothing but my mother’s high heels and all her necklaces and beads.

We came to England when I was 2½. When I was 6, my parents dug up the back garden and I started having repeated dreams that I would find gem-set jewels in the garden.

It was always the same dream: I would dig up a gold cross embedded with flat red polished surfaces, and many years later I discovered I had been dreaming about Anglo Saxon “Dark Age” garnet crosses. I must have seen a picture of one somewhere.

You write about jewels and mines all over the world, but Sri Lanka is practically a character all its own.

I fell in love with Sri Lanka, also known as the Island of Gems, when I first started visiting 10 years ago. I have made such good friends there and love visiting the mines — they often are just shafts sunk into the ground, near rivers, with bamboo poles shoring up the sides — and following an industry there that is mine-to-market with wonderful community and sustainability values.

Once I was underground exploring a cramped and tiny tunnel, when one of the miners started scrabbling toward me shouting in Sinhalese. I was terrified that something had happened, but apparently he had recognized me. After a previous visit they had discovered some of the biggest sapphires they had ever found, and so they thought I brought good luck.

Sri Lanka is famed for its sapphires, but you also write about sapphires from the ******* States.

Sapphires were discovered in Montana in the 1860s as a byproduct of the Gold Rush. Early prospectors searching for gold in the gravel of the Missouri River discarded the blue pebbles that clogged their sluices.

The discovery that these stones had value was made when samples were sent to Tiffany and they were examined by their brilliant in-house gemologist, George Frederick Kunz. Tiffany purchased the lot for $3,750 and Kunz declared that the stones were “the finest precious gemstones ever found in the ******* States.”

I visited Montana in 2018 to see the sapphire mining first hand and help with the sapphire sorting. It’s very beautiful, up in the Rocky Mountains, but quite remote. At the end of the day I would stay on my own in a small wooden cabin in the mine site, but had to be careful since there were elk, bobcats and bears in the region.

Your book’s subtitle refers to history and mystery. On history, for example, you detail why diamonds weren’t always a symbol of eternal love. But what do you mean by mystery?

The first story I start with is that of the Cheapside Hoard, the most incredible Elizabethan and Jacobean stash of jewels ever to survive, found under the floorboards of a house in London being knocked down in 1912.

The workmen were putting a pickax through the floor and hit a box containing incredible jewels, including an amazing hexagonal emerald with a ********* watch movement from circa 1600 set inside it. This is something that, had it not been ******* for centuries, would never have survived it its original form.

We know that the emerald was from Colombia and is one of the earliest “New World” emeralds brought over by the conquistadores and worked in Europe, but we don’t know for whom — and probably never will. We don’t even know why the hoard was ******* or by whom.

Many chapters detail gems in relation to royalty. Is there a gem for the rest of us?

Garnets, spinels and tourmalines are now being found in many different colors and many different price ranges, among which are some fabulous gemstones, so I would definitely look at these. They’re not only beautiful, but I’m sure the prices are going to go up in the years to come as they become better known and appreciated.

Do you have a favorite personal jewel?

I tend to have go-to diamonds as they go with everything, but I do also wear a tsavorite garnet bracelet, set with green gems that came from Kenya.

Tsavorite was discovered in East ******* in the 1960s, its most important ******** near Tsavo National Park — hence the name.

My mother was also born in Kenya and misses it greatly so when I found two matching tsavorite garnet bracelets at a gem show recently, I gave one to her.

It’s a personal proof for me of how much gems can carry great meaning.

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