London’s most talented artist-jewelers showed off state-of-the-art designs using innovative materials and the latest technologies last week as they adapted to soaring and volatile gold prices.
As London Jewellery Week kicked off on Monday, emerging brand PureJewels revealed platinum couture pieces by rising stars such as Anthony Roussel, who used a ground-breaking combination of wood with platinum and diamonds.
Many of Britain’s jewelry design stars packed into a glitzy champagne reception at the Mayfair Hotel, including Sarah Ho, Katie Rowland, Rachel Galley and Jessica de Lotz.
Photo: AFP
At a catwalk event at the Royal Exchange, David Marshall showed off his new “Beach Rocks” collection — bold and daring pieces, featuring large stones in bright summer colors.
Designer-jewelers spoke of their concerns over surging gold prices, now trading at near record highs, and said they increasingly used silver, gold plate and nine-carat gold rather than 18-carat to keep prices affordable to mainstream shoppers.
Old Etonian designer Alexander Davis and TV star, model and entrepreneur Amber Atherton staged a high society launch for their Monsoon Palace collection, inspired by the architecture and jungles of the East, featuring silver and gold plate.
Photo: Reuters
Paparazzi cameras zoomed in on actresses Mischa Barton and Margo Stilley who joined the crush at entertainment spot Sketch.
At an event organized by retailer Charles Fish in the Canary Wharf financial district of London, designer Alexis Dove said, “There is a shift to gold plate and nine-carat gold in many new designs to keep prices accessible to people.”
More than 120 jewelers and designer-makers — well above last year’s number — showed off their latest work at Treasure, an event staged in a huge historic house in central London.
Treasure hosted a Goldsmiths’ Company Pavilion for the first time, featuring new technologies such as laser welded platinum jewels by Tom Rucker, and a zipped chain by Jesper Velling.
Other standouts included architecture-inspired pieces by Daphne Krinos and nature-themed jewels with eye-catching opals by Ornella Iannuzzi, inspired by a field trip to Ethiopia.
On Friday, Fairtrade Foundation held a VIP reception to celebrate the recent launch of Fairtrade Gold, which aims to drag miners out of poverty.
Yesterday, at the Hatton Garden Festival in the diamond jewelry quarter of east London, craftsmen demonstrated diamond jewelry manufacturing techniques to the public.
In the chic Burlington Arcade in central London, jewelers invited the public to bring in jewels for free valuations.
Solitaire Gemmological Laboratories, a gem-testing lab, invited retailers, manufacturers and the public to bring studded diamond jewelry to its stand to be certified for free.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained