Louis Kornitzer's book, Gem Trader, is partly autobiographical and partly woven round the lore of pearls. It's educational + explains the distribution chain of gems, as they pass from hand to hand, from miner to cutter, from merchant to millionaire, from courtesan to receiver of stolen goods, shaping human lives as they go + the unique characters in the industry.
(via Gem Trader) Louis Kornitzer writes:
Anyone can peddle shoelaces, but it will be obvious to any layman that there must be considerable amount of cash in hand before one can hope to be a diamond merchant. On the face of it it looks like one of those mysterious occupations that you cannot work up to. There are no correspondence courses for learning to be a president or a diamond merchant, and no ‘assisted passages’.
Nevertheless, you do not need much money, despite appearances, to be a diamond merchant—provided you have the necessary credit. Ever since the first struggling days when I first established myself I have enjoyed two vital things: good health and good credit. Nevertheless, it was not through any effort on my part that I first handled diamonds. It was in the days when I was still handling amethysts, peridots, opals, sapphires, anything, in fact, that came along, but was already deep in my lifelong attachment to pearls. A man named Brodnik came to see me.
I knew him by name. He was a dabbler in many things, considered a well-to-do man. This would-be diamond merchant was a short stocky figure with waxed moustache and a fund of good stories. He said to me at once: ‘I have watched you for a long time. I believe you are the man for me. Money talks. I am prepared to trust you. I want you to buy diamonds with my money and split profits fifty-fifty.’
Well, it was not all quite so simple as all that, but in the end I agreed to some such arrangement. I wanted the money put into my own bank, but he insisted on a bank in the City where he had certain discounting facilities. After all, it was his money, I thought, and so what he said went. Unfortunately, after I had bought a few parcels of diamonds and sold them at a good profit, and was beginning to think that the word ‘diamond’ had a musical sound, the unforseen happened.
One day Brodnik turned up at the office looking worried. ‘Trouble for you,’ he said sadly.
‘What trouble?’ said I.
‘Your bank has closed its doors this morning.’ He mentioned the establishment where he had deposited my diamond working capital.
‘Your bank, you mean,’ I corrected him.
‘Not mine,’ he said even more sadly. ‘My account there don’t matter a peapod. I’m overdrawn at that bank for forty pounds. Don’t you worry about me. Well, what are you going to do about it? I’m looking to you for my money.’
Brodnik was my old man of the sea for some time, until I was lucky enough to get out of his clutches. I did not touch diamond again for years.
My second venture into the brilliants market came when I was associated with a prominent French pearl dealer for the purpose of tapping new sources of pearl supplies in the South Seas. Wherever I went on that trip I was asked whether I had anything to offer in diamonds. I accordingly and optimistically drew my Paris associate’s attention to the possibilities of increasing our profit, and asked him to ship some diamonds of the right sort.
He had a first class brain, had my friend Jacques. Nevertheless, he envisaged my South Seas customers as a series of native rajahs and dusky chiefs, and he shipped to me as his first consignment a golden elephant with turquoise eyes and diamond-spattered trunk. The next week he sent me an ivory cane carved at the top into the semblance of an Indian god with diamonds set in eyes, nostrils and ears. There was no third consignment, or he might have sent me a meerschaum studded with brilliants or something even more hopeless than he did send. I gave diamonds a wide berth for another eight years.
Then one day in New York I was introduced to a prominent Antwerp diamond cutter who had risen from poverty to possession of the biggest diamond factory in Belgium and had unlimited credit. This man again broached diamonds to me. ‘I’m surprised that you should be content with pearls when you could, with your connections, build up a diamond business in the Far East second to none.’
I told him dryly of my first two experiences with diamonds. He laughed. ‘Third time lucky,’ he said. ‘This time you are going to hit the sky.’ But that is a story I must reserve for a later chapter.
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