Antique jewellery

She might not be in the same category as Liz Taylor, who famously owned diamonds almost as big as the Ritz, but the aptly-named Bernadette
Jewell has been a lifelong fan of beautifully-crafted antique and vintage jewellery.

The Home Counties-based teacher has spent £12,000-£14,000 on her collection, amassed over the past 15 years. “I had some lovely pieces before then,” she explains, “but lost them in a burglary. Now I keep it all in a safe – and we’ve got a burglar alarm.”

She has always preferred traditional, “old-style” jewellery to contemporary designs. “I’m attracted by unusual designs – I don’t like mass-produced pieces. My favourite period of design is late-Victorian to the 1930s, but I also have a few Georgian pieces and some from the 1950s. They must have the right style, shape, colour and weight – I go for chunkier items, as I like to feel their weight when I wear them.”

Her items are almost all British-made, and were acquired from an eclectic mix of sources, including London’s Portobello Road market and Alexandra Palace Antique Fair, Bath Antique Centre and specialist antique jewellery dealers, such as her favourite, Georgian Gems, of Swanage in Dorset. “I’m always on the look-out wherever I go,” she says.

The 60-odd items in her collection are primarily bracelets – her real passion – plus a variety of rings and earrings. She favours gold over silver, and much of her collection features her gemstone of choice, the ruby. She has no interest in emeralds or sapphires – “I don’t do green or blue; they don’t suit me” – but is partial to a well-cut diamond.

The good news in all this, in investment terms, is that the contents of her jewellery box have appreciated impressively. This would not have been the case with jewellery bought new, which loses value from the moment you take it home. One reason why antique jewellery holds its value so well is that their old, natural gemstones are generally superior to the artificially-treated stones used nowadays. The quality of the craftsmanship is higher, too.

Her rubies, in particular, will prove an excellent long-term investment for Jewell. Their value has been shooting up because of their growing scarcity: the best rubies come from Burma, but most of the country’s mines are now worked out and political turmoil has disrupted supply. Diamonds are a trickier proposition: they are in plentiful supply, so only the large, unusually-coloured or rare, fancy ones will increase in value. Jewell’s investment will also benefit from the
dramatic rise in the value of gold over recent years – currently just over $600 an ounce – driven partly by increased demand for gold jewellery in the booming Chinese and Indian markets.

One of her favourite pieces is a 1930s “brilliant cut” diamond ring containing five diamonds, which she bought in the late 1990s for £1,150 and is now valued at £1,700. She bought a 15-carat rose-gold charm bracelet, circa 1900, at about the same time for £400 – now worth £900. And a 1920s nine-carat gold link bracelet acquired for £300 in 2001 has doubled in value since then.

“So it’s all been money well spent, and I’ve had the pleasure of wearing my investments too. I feel strongly that they need to be seen, not just kept locked in a safe,” says Jewell.

She occasionally sells “bits and pieces” from her collection, to put the money towards something else that has caught her eye. “Each time I sell something (usually to the dealer I originally bought it from) I get 5 per cent to 10 per cent more back than I paid.” Now she’s saving up for something with a really special provenance: a piece from one of the master jewel-houses, such as Cartier, Chaumet, Boucheron or Fabergé.

She plans one day to leave her jewellery to her daughter, aged 17. “It’ll be part of her inheritance. And she can either wear it or sell it and use the money for something else. In any case, it’s a much better form of investment than savings accounts, with their uncertain interest rates, or the risky stock market, for which you have to understand numbers. I’m not a numbers person; I’m very visual. And I know that beautiful jewellery will always be of value to people, and especially the quality antique jewellery which I buy. The scarcer it becomes, the more it will be worth to those who want it.”