The Economist writes about Russian art collected by two great exiled Russian musicians, Mstislav “Slava” Rostropovich and Galina Vishnevskaya + the trend of rising prices at auction sales when Russian Oligarchs and their acolytes are likely to be the dominant buyers + other viewpoints @ http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/artview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9821091
(via BBC) Billionaire buys entire auction
Alisher Usmanov, the Russian billionaire pays £20m, for an art collection owned by late cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, days before it was due to be auctioned.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6999330.stm
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Artful Traveler
Robin Cembalest writes about the mystery of Pariti + researchers findings + other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1940
Argyle Pink Diamond Tender
It has been reported that the 23rd annual Rio Tinto Diamonds Argyle Pink Diamond Tender will be held in New York from Oct. 1 – 12, 2007, followed by two other sales in Perth (recently completed) and in Hong Kong (Sept. 18 – 28, 2007). The event will feature 65 of the world's rarest pink diamonds from the Argyle mine in Australia--the reliable source of pink diamonds. The colors range from vivid purplish reds, deep pinks, and grey violets of different intensity.
The rarity factor does play a role in Argyle Signature Stone's popularity. From its annual production (30 million +/- carats of rough) only about 8000-10000 carats of polished pink diamonds are produced. The experts select the best (65 carats) that are suitable for the Pink Diamond Tender. It is believed that the mine will run out by 2018. Here lies the investment option + rarity factor. The attendance is restricted to approximately 100 or so key clients from around the world who will have the opportunity to view diamonds in secret locations in Hong Kong, New York or Perth. There will be high security + the exact locations will be revealed to bidders only in the last minute. It will be very difficult to know the exact values of the pink diamonds due to confidentiality + other factors. But it's intriguing and this adds extra luster to Pink Diamond Tender.
The rarity factor does play a role in Argyle Signature Stone's popularity. From its annual production (30 million +/- carats of rough) only about 8000-10000 carats of polished pink diamonds are produced. The experts select the best (65 carats) that are suitable for the Pink Diamond Tender. It is believed that the mine will run out by 2018. Here lies the investment option + rarity factor. The attendance is restricted to approximately 100 or so key clients from around the world who will have the opportunity to view diamonds in secret locations in Hong Kong, New York or Perth. There will be high security + the exact locations will be revealed to bidders only in the last minute. It will be very difficult to know the exact values of the pink diamonds due to confidentiality + other factors. But it's intriguing and this adds extra luster to Pink Diamond Tender.
How To Profit From Scarcity
I found 'How to Profit from Scarcity' via http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5776.html interesting and insightful.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Ted Turner
To be happy in this world, first you need a cell phone and then you need an airplane. Then you're truly wireless.
I liked this one.
I liked this one.
The Art Of Profitability
Good Books/New Business Models: (via Emergic) I enjoyed reading Adrian Slywotzky’s The Art of Profitability. It's the pocket Bible on how to grow profits. Adrian shows 23 business models. I liked the conversational format (between an extraordinary teacher (David Zhao) and a senior executive (Steve, from a company called Delmore) ); it was fun reading + it packs a lot of thought into its chapters. Like the Bible concept, the author recommends to read one chapter a month, and then play with the ideas discussed. It's theory + practice + if executed/delivered properly = near success to success. It's a good book + fun tweaking with the concept (s).
From the book’s description:
What do Barbie dolls, Nokia phones, and American Express credit cards have in common? They all represent a powerful business model called pyramid profit. How about Intel, Microsoft, and Stephen King? They all exploit another model called value chain position profit. The Art of Profitability reveals the invisible but important governing principles that can mean the difference between business failure and success. Writing with wit and provocative insight, bestselling author Adrian Slywotzy tells the story of eccentric strategy teacher David Zhao and his young student. Each of the book's twenty-three chapters presents a lesson from the exuberant and always challenging master-and a profit paradigm that will open your mind to the many ways to make profit happen. You'll understand-from a different perspective-how your company and your competitors generate profit...which business models can be best applied to your profit-making strategy...what specific actions your organization can take in the next ninety days to improve its bottom line...and more. With scores of examples from today's global marketplace, a weekly assignment, and an eclectic business reading list ranging from Obvious Adams to Einstein's Dreams, THE ART OF PROFITABILITY invites anyone in business to engage in the lively exchange between mentor and protege. Enter the classroom. Discover the art. And learn which form of profitability will help your company succeed today and grow tomorrow.
Slywotzky was interviewed by the CEO Fresher about the book. Here are some excerpts from the interview:
What exactly is a profit model?
Wherever there is profit, you can find the essential forces that cause it to happen in a particular situation. Ohno at Toyota always said, "Ask 'Why?'" five times. By the fifth time, you'll start getting close to the real answer." You have to treat profitability as a puzzle and find out how it can happen for your business. I've chosen 23 profit models for this book and used illustrations and stories to show readers how they work.
What's the biggest mistake that companies are making that is preventing them from making a profit?
Profitability has to be understood by each company on its own terms. They can't just copy a profit model that worked for another company. They have to choose the right model after carefully analyzing their business, their customers, and their competitors.
How can a company stay profitable if their competitors keep coming in with copies of its products at lower prices?
Several ways. Intel uses a "time profit" model. When they are first to market with a new product, profits happen in the first four or five quarters and then drop down very quickly to almost zero after that. To make a profit, Intel must work hard to maintain a two to three-year lead over its competitors. Diffusing the product as instantly as possible helps extend their period of profitability.
Why does a company like SMH, makers of Swatch, bother selling all those low-profit margin plastic watches when the majority of their profit comes from their luxury lines of watches? Isn't that keeping the company less profitable?
You're right that the plastic Swatches made by the parent company SMH have low profit margins, but actually they are just as important to SMH's profitability as the high-margin watches. By producing the plastic watches, SMH builds a firewall against competitors who may try to produce cheaper imitations. They won't be able to develop the economics to move up the pyramid. This is called a Pyramid Profit Model because the profit-generating watches are at the top of the pyramid and the defensive plastic watches at the bottom. It turns out that 70% to 80% of SMH's profit is from the top of the pyramid, but the base of the pyramid is just as important.
I can see how you can sell the same product to different levels of customers at different prices, but can you sell the same product to the same customer at different prices?
It happens all the time. Coca-Cola, for example, sells you a soda for 8 to 10 cents per ounce in a vending machine, 10 or more cents per ounce at a restaurant, but only 2 cents per ounce at a grocery store. All of us as customers behave differently in different situations; therefore, to maintain profitability, prices should reflect different price sensitivities in different environments.
In an interview with the Wharton Journal, Slywotzky said:
Someone recently told me that if you want to understand leadership and you are in an organization, don't look up. Look in the mirror. And so, I think the first step is to understand that anybody with the right ideas can play a leadership role. I think the second thing is to have the right content and the right agenda. And I think a fantastic way to begin is to start asking the series of questions that are posed in The Art of Profitability. 1. How does profit happen? 2. How do we get everybody in our organization to understand it and act on it? 3. What's our next profit model? No profit model is forever. And no. 4 is the greatest achievement doesn't happen very often but it is phenomenally valuable. It is to ask the question, can we create a unique way of being profitable? Dell has done it. Starbucks has done it. Toyota has done it. It is most important to understand how profit happens and get everybody aligned behind it. But it is exceptionally valuable to ask the question; can we develop a unique profit model in our industry, so that we can compete differently from the others? And the rewards of that are just phenomenally high.
From the book’s description:
What do Barbie dolls, Nokia phones, and American Express credit cards have in common? They all represent a powerful business model called pyramid profit. How about Intel, Microsoft, and Stephen King? They all exploit another model called value chain position profit. The Art of Profitability reveals the invisible but important governing principles that can mean the difference between business failure and success. Writing with wit and provocative insight, bestselling author Adrian Slywotzy tells the story of eccentric strategy teacher David Zhao and his young student. Each of the book's twenty-three chapters presents a lesson from the exuberant and always challenging master-and a profit paradigm that will open your mind to the many ways to make profit happen. You'll understand-from a different perspective-how your company and your competitors generate profit...which business models can be best applied to your profit-making strategy...what specific actions your organization can take in the next ninety days to improve its bottom line...and more. With scores of examples from today's global marketplace, a weekly assignment, and an eclectic business reading list ranging from Obvious Adams to Einstein's Dreams, THE ART OF PROFITABILITY invites anyone in business to engage in the lively exchange between mentor and protege. Enter the classroom. Discover the art. And learn which form of profitability will help your company succeed today and grow tomorrow.
Slywotzky was interviewed by the CEO Fresher about the book. Here are some excerpts from the interview:
What exactly is a profit model?
Wherever there is profit, you can find the essential forces that cause it to happen in a particular situation. Ohno at Toyota always said, "Ask 'Why?'" five times. By the fifth time, you'll start getting close to the real answer." You have to treat profitability as a puzzle and find out how it can happen for your business. I've chosen 23 profit models for this book and used illustrations and stories to show readers how they work.
What's the biggest mistake that companies are making that is preventing them from making a profit?
Profitability has to be understood by each company on its own terms. They can't just copy a profit model that worked for another company. They have to choose the right model after carefully analyzing their business, their customers, and their competitors.
How can a company stay profitable if their competitors keep coming in with copies of its products at lower prices?
Several ways. Intel uses a "time profit" model. When they are first to market with a new product, profits happen in the first four or five quarters and then drop down very quickly to almost zero after that. To make a profit, Intel must work hard to maintain a two to three-year lead over its competitors. Diffusing the product as instantly as possible helps extend their period of profitability.
Why does a company like SMH, makers of Swatch, bother selling all those low-profit margin plastic watches when the majority of their profit comes from their luxury lines of watches? Isn't that keeping the company less profitable?
You're right that the plastic Swatches made by the parent company SMH have low profit margins, but actually they are just as important to SMH's profitability as the high-margin watches. By producing the plastic watches, SMH builds a firewall against competitors who may try to produce cheaper imitations. They won't be able to develop the economics to move up the pyramid. This is called a Pyramid Profit Model because the profit-generating watches are at the top of the pyramid and the defensive plastic watches at the bottom. It turns out that 70% to 80% of SMH's profit is from the top of the pyramid, but the base of the pyramid is just as important.
I can see how you can sell the same product to different levels of customers at different prices, but can you sell the same product to the same customer at different prices?
It happens all the time. Coca-Cola, for example, sells you a soda for 8 to 10 cents per ounce in a vending machine, 10 or more cents per ounce at a restaurant, but only 2 cents per ounce at a grocery store. All of us as customers behave differently in different situations; therefore, to maintain profitability, prices should reflect different price sensitivities in different environments.
In an interview with the Wharton Journal, Slywotzky said:
Someone recently told me that if you want to understand leadership and you are in an organization, don't look up. Look in the mirror. And so, I think the first step is to understand that anybody with the right ideas can play a leadership role. I think the second thing is to have the right content and the right agenda. And I think a fantastic way to begin is to start asking the series of questions that are posed in The Art of Profitability. 1. How does profit happen? 2. How do we get everybody in our organization to understand it and act on it? 3. What's our next profit model? No profit model is forever. And no. 4 is the greatest achievement doesn't happen very often but it is phenomenally valuable. It is to ask the question, can we create a unique way of being profitable? Dell has done it. Starbucks has done it. Toyota has done it. It is most important to understand how profit happens and get everybody aligned behind it. But it is exceptionally valuable to ask the question; can we develop a unique profit model in our industry, so that we can compete differently from the others? And the rewards of that are just phenomenally high.
Wyeth’s World
Deidre Stein Greben profiles Andrew Wyeth + the artfulness and the ability to connect with familiar subjects + other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1904
You Must Meet Goldfinger
2007: Joseph Goldfinger is from a different generation + an iconic figure in the diamond industry. I can imagine what was it like running a diamond business in the good old days. There are lessons to learn from the old fashioned diamond dealers because they had the intuition + special skills to be quiet international superstars of the diamond world. They knew how to mix and match the magic combination of relationship + transaction concept + luck in every deal. It's an art + gift from the gods.
(via International Diamond Annual, Vol.1, 1971) A N Wilson writes:
Tel Aviv, London, New York, Tokyo—or somewhere else
“But you must meet Goldfinger,” they told me in London, when I said I was going to New York.
“But you must meet Goldfinger,” they told me in New York, when I said I was going to Israel.
“But you must meet Goldfinger,” they said in Antwerp, when I told them I was on my way to Tel Aviv.
Frankly, I thought they were all pulling my leg. For I had met Goldfinger through Ian Fleming some years ago: and Ian Fleming and I had had a bit of an encounter when he was writing his book about diamonds—but that’s another story. Anyhow I thought all my advisers were confused about the Ian Fleming books and that somehow Goldfinger had got mixed up with diamonds.
When I arrived in Tel Aviv I told my friend, Jona Hatsor, about Goldfinger, and Ian Fleming. “Of course, you must meet Goldfinger,” said Jona, “and he’s thoroughly mixed up with diamonds.” Quietly and patiently Jona explained that Mr Goldfinger was Israel’s Mr Diamond—a real, live Goldfinger who got a lot of fun out of the probability that when Ian Fleming wrote his book about diamonds he heard about Joseph Goldfinger and noted the name for yet another James Bond story. All this means that the real Joseph Goldfinger has a high sense of humor: for he is certainly not a prototype for a Fleming villain. He is different sort of person altogether.
In the end I did not meet Joseph Goldfinger. He’d gone off on one of his many peregrinations—from Tel Aviv to London, from London to New York, from New York to Tokyo and goodness knows where else. And so I had to ask somebody else to write and tell me something about Joseph Goldfinger of Tel Aviv, London, New York and the other places. This proved far more difficult than one would think, for when my special writer was in Tel Aviv, Joseph Goldfinger was in Tokyo or somewhere else. And so the pen-picture of this modern Gulliver, which I had so much wanted, reached the International Diamond Annual as the last article it was possible to include before the printing press started rolling: and even then, Mr Theodore Loevy, editor of ‘Israel Diamonds’, to whom we are indebted for this profile, wrote to say: “It has been rather difficult to write this article because….Mr Goldfinger was not in Israel when I returned from my trip.”
Joseph Goldfinger is a busy man (writes Theodore Loevy). And he shuns publicity. But that is not the reason why he has been rushing around the world since that day in early May when you asked for ‘a piece’ about him. It is his business that takes him round the world several times a year.
For Goldfinger is one of the truly international diamantaires of Israel. He’s got an astonishing brain. It can think on several different levels at one and the same time. For Joseph Goldfinger’s diamond business is on several different levels—and he has the truly wonderful capacity of being able to think about all these different levels simultaneously in relation to making overall dispositions and detailed orders for coordinated activities in several different parts of the world.
As an importer and dealer in rough diamonds—he is the third biggest customer of the ‘syndicate’—he has to assess the general market position and the state of the diamond industry as a whole; as the owner of polishing plants in Israel and in America, he must view these circumstances also from the manufacturing viewpoint; and as an exporter—with the whole world as his market place—he must balance trends and tendencies and fluctuations and bring them into a coordinated business strategy. And within that strategy he makes tactical dispositions at each level of his business.
Joseph Goldfinger is a businessman par excellence. He will work from morning to late evening in his offices—spacious and luxuriously furnished—on the thirteenth floor of Diamond Exchange in Ramat Gan. Cables, telephone calls and visitors stream into him from all over the world. Managers of his different enterprises come frequently to talk over specific problems. And almost ceaselessly he is examining parcels of polished diamonds with his quick, expert, appraising eye, while another level of his mind applies itself dictating letters or issuing instructions.
After a full day Joseph Goldfinger will seek his rather modest home—for essentially he is a modest man—and there his other personality emerges. He sips his glass of after-dinner tea while his visitor he serves with something ‘stronger’, as preferred. He will have glanced through the evening paper and will be ready to discuss the current issues of Israel and the world. He brings a benevolent but not uncritical viewpoint to such matters, for he has a keen sense of tradition and an appreciation of the eternal values derived from his religious upbringing. These strongly influence his actions and his thoughts.
As a young man Joseph Goldfinger studied at Yoshiva in Lithuania. When a little later he came to Palestine, he continued to attend religious institutions while earning a living as a teacher. In 1944, when the diamond industry came to Palestine, he found work in the trade. Two years later he became one of the first diamond industrialists in the country but his initial operations were on a very small through lack of adequate raw material. But vigor, courage and optimism won through and in 1949 he was able to obtain his first sight. He continued to expand his business with hard work and ingenuity: he started importing rough from a variety of sources—not merely for his own manufacturing operations but also for reassortment and sale to other manufacturers.
With the development of this side of his business he came to be included in the list of syndicate’s dealers. This was in 1962—the real turning point in his career. Now his interests extended to every phase of the diamond industry and trade—from the import of rough to polishing to exporting. Progressively his business developed its many-sided character: and, of course, its strength lies in this very ‘spread’, which is an effective insulation against the fluctuations that do arise in different sectors from time to time.
At the same time—and this is another aspect of his strength as a businessman—he is always looking for new business ventures, for new opportunities , for new outlets—maybe, off the beaten track. He likes facing challenges, especially new challenges.
“There are no bad times in the diamond business,” he stresses. “There are always new possibilities. But you have to look for them. You have to try new ways. You have always to balance possible risks against prospective gains.”
When he talks about his business policy, Joseph Goldfinger becomes animated. His face lights up, his eyes shine—and he is the essence of the venturesome pioneer to whom success come naturally.
“In this business one has to be cautious and yet enthusiastic—innovative and imaginative,” says Goldfinger. “Cautious, yes; but not in the conventional way.”
Joseph Goldfinger believes strongly in his own assessments. Much of the diamond business involves credit. Where credits are involved, Goldfinger relies on his own personal impressions of the man or the company he is dealing with. He sizes people up. He recalls that there have been not a few cases of his having given credit to people who had been refused credit by others. And he says, he has never been disappointed. “Bad debts in my business are practically non-existent. I’m a cautious risk taker.” What Goldfinger finds out is not only whether the man is honest and knows his trade, but also something about his personal life, his family life, even about his customer’s wife. Mr Goldfinger wisely comments that a man’s wife is certainly a dominant factor in the business behavior of Mr Everyman.
Goldfinger extends his spirit of ‘cautious risk-taking’ to his activities as a buyer. Diversification has enabled him, for instance, to purchase the whole output of one supplier without having to adapt such purchases to his immediate needs. He is able to take calculated risks.
At least once a month Joseph Goldfinger is ‘on the road’. The DTC offices in London are as familiar to him as his own offices in New York, where his business is in very good hands. With the growing importance of the Far East, Goldfinger travels frequently to the Orient. This is, he says, ‘the new and coming America.’
(via International Diamond Annual, Vol.1, 1971) A N Wilson writes:
Tel Aviv, London, New York, Tokyo—or somewhere else
“But you must meet Goldfinger,” they told me in London, when I said I was going to New York.
“But you must meet Goldfinger,” they told me in New York, when I said I was going to Israel.
“But you must meet Goldfinger,” they said in Antwerp, when I told them I was on my way to Tel Aviv.
Frankly, I thought they were all pulling my leg. For I had met Goldfinger through Ian Fleming some years ago: and Ian Fleming and I had had a bit of an encounter when he was writing his book about diamonds—but that’s another story. Anyhow I thought all my advisers were confused about the Ian Fleming books and that somehow Goldfinger had got mixed up with diamonds.
When I arrived in Tel Aviv I told my friend, Jona Hatsor, about Goldfinger, and Ian Fleming. “Of course, you must meet Goldfinger,” said Jona, “and he’s thoroughly mixed up with diamonds.” Quietly and patiently Jona explained that Mr Goldfinger was Israel’s Mr Diamond—a real, live Goldfinger who got a lot of fun out of the probability that when Ian Fleming wrote his book about diamonds he heard about Joseph Goldfinger and noted the name for yet another James Bond story. All this means that the real Joseph Goldfinger has a high sense of humor: for he is certainly not a prototype for a Fleming villain. He is different sort of person altogether.
In the end I did not meet Joseph Goldfinger. He’d gone off on one of his many peregrinations—from Tel Aviv to London, from London to New York, from New York to Tokyo and goodness knows where else. And so I had to ask somebody else to write and tell me something about Joseph Goldfinger of Tel Aviv, London, New York and the other places. This proved far more difficult than one would think, for when my special writer was in Tel Aviv, Joseph Goldfinger was in Tokyo or somewhere else. And so the pen-picture of this modern Gulliver, which I had so much wanted, reached the International Diamond Annual as the last article it was possible to include before the printing press started rolling: and even then, Mr Theodore Loevy, editor of ‘Israel Diamonds’, to whom we are indebted for this profile, wrote to say: “It has been rather difficult to write this article because….Mr Goldfinger was not in Israel when I returned from my trip.”
Joseph Goldfinger is a busy man (writes Theodore Loevy). And he shuns publicity. But that is not the reason why he has been rushing around the world since that day in early May when you asked for ‘a piece’ about him. It is his business that takes him round the world several times a year.
For Goldfinger is one of the truly international diamantaires of Israel. He’s got an astonishing brain. It can think on several different levels at one and the same time. For Joseph Goldfinger’s diamond business is on several different levels—and he has the truly wonderful capacity of being able to think about all these different levels simultaneously in relation to making overall dispositions and detailed orders for coordinated activities in several different parts of the world.
As an importer and dealer in rough diamonds—he is the third biggest customer of the ‘syndicate’—he has to assess the general market position and the state of the diamond industry as a whole; as the owner of polishing plants in Israel and in America, he must view these circumstances also from the manufacturing viewpoint; and as an exporter—with the whole world as his market place—he must balance trends and tendencies and fluctuations and bring them into a coordinated business strategy. And within that strategy he makes tactical dispositions at each level of his business.
Joseph Goldfinger is a businessman par excellence. He will work from morning to late evening in his offices—spacious and luxuriously furnished—on the thirteenth floor of Diamond Exchange in Ramat Gan. Cables, telephone calls and visitors stream into him from all over the world. Managers of his different enterprises come frequently to talk over specific problems. And almost ceaselessly he is examining parcels of polished diamonds with his quick, expert, appraising eye, while another level of his mind applies itself dictating letters or issuing instructions.
After a full day Joseph Goldfinger will seek his rather modest home—for essentially he is a modest man—and there his other personality emerges. He sips his glass of after-dinner tea while his visitor he serves with something ‘stronger’, as preferred. He will have glanced through the evening paper and will be ready to discuss the current issues of Israel and the world. He brings a benevolent but not uncritical viewpoint to such matters, for he has a keen sense of tradition and an appreciation of the eternal values derived from his religious upbringing. These strongly influence his actions and his thoughts.
As a young man Joseph Goldfinger studied at Yoshiva in Lithuania. When a little later he came to Palestine, he continued to attend religious institutions while earning a living as a teacher. In 1944, when the diamond industry came to Palestine, he found work in the trade. Two years later he became one of the first diamond industrialists in the country but his initial operations were on a very small through lack of adequate raw material. But vigor, courage and optimism won through and in 1949 he was able to obtain his first sight. He continued to expand his business with hard work and ingenuity: he started importing rough from a variety of sources—not merely for his own manufacturing operations but also for reassortment and sale to other manufacturers.
With the development of this side of his business he came to be included in the list of syndicate’s dealers. This was in 1962—the real turning point in his career. Now his interests extended to every phase of the diamond industry and trade—from the import of rough to polishing to exporting. Progressively his business developed its many-sided character: and, of course, its strength lies in this very ‘spread’, which is an effective insulation against the fluctuations that do arise in different sectors from time to time.
At the same time—and this is another aspect of his strength as a businessman—he is always looking for new business ventures, for new opportunities , for new outlets—maybe, off the beaten track. He likes facing challenges, especially new challenges.
“There are no bad times in the diamond business,” he stresses. “There are always new possibilities. But you have to look for them. You have to try new ways. You have always to balance possible risks against prospective gains.”
When he talks about his business policy, Joseph Goldfinger becomes animated. His face lights up, his eyes shine—and he is the essence of the venturesome pioneer to whom success come naturally.
“In this business one has to be cautious and yet enthusiastic—innovative and imaginative,” says Goldfinger. “Cautious, yes; but not in the conventional way.”
Joseph Goldfinger believes strongly in his own assessments. Much of the diamond business involves credit. Where credits are involved, Goldfinger relies on his own personal impressions of the man or the company he is dealing with. He sizes people up. He recalls that there have been not a few cases of his having given credit to people who had been refused credit by others. And he says, he has never been disappointed. “Bad debts in my business are practically non-existent. I’m a cautious risk taker.” What Goldfinger finds out is not only whether the man is honest and knows his trade, but also something about his personal life, his family life, even about his customer’s wife. Mr Goldfinger wisely comments that a man’s wife is certainly a dominant factor in the business behavior of Mr Everyman.
Goldfinger extends his spirit of ‘cautious risk-taking’ to his activities as a buyer. Diversification has enabled him, for instance, to purchase the whole output of one supplier without having to adapt such purchases to his immediate needs. He is able to take calculated risks.
At least once a month Joseph Goldfinger is ‘on the road’. The DTC offices in London are as familiar to him as his own offices in New York, where his business is in very good hands. With the growing importance of the Far East, Goldfinger travels frequently to the Orient. This is, he says, ‘the new and coming America.’
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Gold Diggers Of 1933
Greatest Opening Film Lines (Gold Diggers of 1933 - 1933):
Gone are my blues and gone are my tears. I've got good news to shout in your ears. The long-lost dollar has come back to the fold. With silver you can turn your dreams to gold. So...
Gone are my blues and gone are my tears. I've got good news to shout in your ears. The long-lost dollar has come back to the fold. With silver you can turn your dreams to gold. So...
Shooting The Messenger
Chaim Even-Zohar writes about the emerging national debate between diamond manufacturers and unions in Botswana + the media reactions + other viewpoints @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp
A House Without Right Angles
Aleksandra Shatskikh writes about Konstantin Melnikov + the way he translated his innovations of the visual artist (s) into architecture + Russian art tradition + other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1903
When You're Famous You Run Into Human Nature In A Raw Kind Of Way
(via The Guardian) I found the article on Marilyn Monroe by Richard Meryman @ http://www.guardian.co.uk/greatinterviews/story/0,,2155615,00.html interesting and insightful.
Jewelers Are Drawn To An Already Gilded Avenue
Jane L Levere writes about the new trend among high-end retailers to be at Madison Avenue (the perception: the best location for a jeweler is right next to a jeweler + clustering tends to focus consumers on the category + it leads to commercial success for everyone) + other viewpoints @ http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/12/realestate/commercial/12jewel.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Dumbfounded
2007: This Harry Winston story is brilliant.
(via International Diamond Annual, Vol.1, 1971) A N Wilson writes:
There is one story Harry Winston enjoys telling more than others, because he is a great believer in fate.
It concerns the Hope Diamond, which has a fascinating history and has acquired notoriety for bringing bad luck to its private owners. Harry Winston defied the Hope Diamond legend and trusted his own fate by buying the diamond from the estate of the late Mrs Evelyn McLean for one million dollars. This was in 1947.
Let Harry tell his story here:
“A little later I was in Lisbon with my wife, Edna. As our two sons were still quite young, Edna and I decided to return home on separate planes, as people with children often do. So Edna took off for New York on schedule on the Friday evening and I booked to follow the next day.
“Edna’s plane landed at Santa Maria, in the Azores for the usual refueling. Some slight engine trouble was discovered and there was a delay of some hours. The passengers chatted amongst themselves and it soon got around the lounge that Mrs Harry Winston was a passenger. One man refused to continue the journey and asked to be booked on the next plane.
“On my way to the airport the next evening I was handed a cablegram from Edna announcing her safe arrival. I put it in my pocket. On the plane I took a sedative and had a pleasant nap, with nobody in the adjoining seat to disturb me. On reboarding the plane at Santa Maria, after refueling , I found a very talkative man in the seat next to me. He told me how he had escaped from traveling on the same plane as the wife of the owner of Hope Diamond.
“I’m not superstitious, he claimed, ‘but why should I tempt fate? I decided to change planes and here I am. Besides, there was engine trouble on that plane.’
“He talked and talked for quite a time but eventually grew quite enough for me to begin to drop off to sleep again. Then his voice broke through to me: ‘I wonder if that plane arrived safely.’
“I could not resist it. I fished the cable out of my pocket and passed it across to him to read. The he gazed dumbly at me. He never opened his mouth again that night. I slept well.”
(via International Diamond Annual, Vol.1, 1971) A N Wilson writes:
There is one story Harry Winston enjoys telling more than others, because he is a great believer in fate.
It concerns the Hope Diamond, which has a fascinating history and has acquired notoriety for bringing bad luck to its private owners. Harry Winston defied the Hope Diamond legend and trusted his own fate by buying the diamond from the estate of the late Mrs Evelyn McLean for one million dollars. This was in 1947.
Let Harry tell his story here:
“A little later I was in Lisbon with my wife, Edna. As our two sons were still quite young, Edna and I decided to return home on separate planes, as people with children often do. So Edna took off for New York on schedule on the Friday evening and I booked to follow the next day.
“Edna’s plane landed at Santa Maria, in the Azores for the usual refueling. Some slight engine trouble was discovered and there was a delay of some hours. The passengers chatted amongst themselves and it soon got around the lounge that Mrs Harry Winston was a passenger. One man refused to continue the journey and asked to be booked on the next plane.
“On my way to the airport the next evening I was handed a cablegram from Edna announcing her safe arrival. I put it in my pocket. On the plane I took a sedative and had a pleasant nap, with nobody in the adjoining seat to disturb me. On reboarding the plane at Santa Maria, after refueling , I found a very talkative man in the seat next to me. He told me how he had escaped from traveling on the same plane as the wife of the owner of Hope Diamond.
“I’m not superstitious, he claimed, ‘but why should I tempt fate? I decided to change planes and here I am. Besides, there was engine trouble on that plane.’
“He talked and talked for quite a time but eventually grew quite enough for me to begin to drop off to sleep again. Then his voice broke through to me: ‘I wonder if that plane arrived safely.’
“I could not resist it. I fished the cable out of my pocket and passed it across to him to read. The he gazed dumbly at me. He never opened his mouth again that night. I slept well.”
First Japanese Diamond Unearthed
(via Kyodo News) Japan Times writes about recent discovery of diamond (s) by researchers in Ehime Prefecture, Japan + other viewpoints @ http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070911a4.html
Friday, September 14, 2007
Crimes And Misdemeanors
Greatest Opening Film Lines (Crimes and Misdemeanors - 1989):
We're all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions, moral choices. Some are on a grand scale, most of these choices are on lesser points. But we define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are, in fact, the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly. Human happiness does not seem to have been included in the design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity to love, that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying and even to find joy from simple things, like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more.
I liked this one.
We're all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions, moral choices. Some are on a grand scale, most of these choices are on lesser points. But we define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are, in fact, the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly. Human happiness does not seem to have been included in the design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity to love, that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying and even to find joy from simple things, like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more.
I liked this one.
Pearl S Buck
You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea.
Subodh Gupta: Cow Dung, Curry Pots, And A Hungry God
Pernilla Holmes writes about Indian contemporary artist (s) + the Indian perspective + the way the artist (s) connect with the world (via gentle humor and provocation) + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=2325¤t=True
Smaller Houses Can Win Big
Kelly Devine Thomas about smaller auction houses + the way they do business + other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1898
King Of Raconteurs
2007: I am a Harry Winston fan. I collect articles written on Harry Winston because they are truly priceless. He has a remarkable way of telling real stories + he is one of a kind jeweler who had the fortune and good luck to meet interesting people from around the world. He is the king of diamonds. It's educational and entertaining.
(via International Diamond Annual, Vol.1, 1971) A N Wilson writes:
Prince Of Diamonds
Some anecdotes of Harry Winston
Harry Winston is not merely the prince of diamond merchants. He is a king amongst raconteurs. His repertoire of anecdotes about diamonds is imperial. Prince and potentate, with diamonds in their crowns, have been his clients and his confidantes. Both the crowned and uncrowned heads of Europe and of Asia wear the jewels that Harry Winston found and sold to them. And a great sparkle of joy, as brilliant as the gleam from his latest tiara, shines in Harry’s eyes as he turns to tell you his next story of how he sold a whopping big diamond t o the King of Siam. The great thing about Harry Winston is that he enjoys himself. When he recalls an anecdote, he lives again every moment of it and he enjoys the fun of it all over again.
I sat entranced in his secluded office in New York’s Fifth Avenue as Harry Winston responded to my request for some of his best stories.
“You know,” he said. “I sometimes feel I’m a bit of a fool. When I get up in the morning and shave and look in the mirror, I often say to myself ‘What sort of a crass idiot are you? Here is a crass idiot if ever there were one! Why do you do this? Why do you go on doing this? Why do you fret yourself employing three hundred people in that building of yours and another whole floor of them across the way and something like 3000 cutters in several different countries—why do you do it? Harry, there’s a sickness in you.’
“And, of course, it is so, it is a sickness. But it does not need any medicine. It is in the blood.”
You can sense that sly humor and the fun in this man as he talks like that. But you can also recognize the enjoyment he gets out of diamonds and out of what he has done and still does with them.
“There it is—it’s in the blood. I rejoice in this. I love diamonds. They are my life. And this is how I live still—a little bit of madman, no doubt, as some people will say: but I’m quite content to be like this, so long as I am enjoying my life as much as I do.”
Whisper has it that Harry has turned seventy. Nobody really knows and he would not let me into the secret. But whatever his age, he’s still a dynamic man. He still does a great deal of selling himself, dealing personally with clients of long standing. He likes to go on exercising the long-range judgment, the experience and the intuition which, together, have made him the greatest diamond merchant in the world.
“You’ve got to have ‘guts’ and you’ve got have ‘wits’ in this damned business,” he says. And he always returns to the point in the conversations I have had with him, that it is no use dealing in this diamond business unless you have a love of diamonds and of gems as a whole. Farouk of Egypt was one of Harry Winston’s clients. Farouk was always a great purchaser of diamonds, occasionally for cash, more often on credit.
“Farouk was an interesting man himself. We had many amusing and exciting conversations together,” recalls Harry. “As a king and a client I thought he must be reliable, for the he had the wealth of Egypt at his command.”
On one occasion—in 1951—Winston made a deal with Farouk, who bought a 700000 dollar emerald. It was for Farouk’s new bride, Queen Narriman. Soon afterwards Harry and his wife, Edna, went with their children to the south of France for their usual holiday. Farouk and Queen Narriman were at Cannes and they invited the Winstons to dinner. The beautiful Narriman wore the emerald. It was a very pleasant and happy occasion. Then the Winstons reciprocated by inviting the royal couple to dinner at their lovely home on a promontory looking out over the Mediterranean. Farouk sent his bodyguards to surround the residence and his coffeemaker to superintend the production of the meal.
“It was all great success and, as things do on such occasions, proceedings continued well into the wee small hours. Sometime about four in the morning, the early dawn was coming and Farouk and I walked out on to the terrace. The morning star was there in the east—in glowing brilliance. At that time I happened to have a magnificent diamond, which I had called ‘The Star of the East’. It was a great gem—a pear-shape of great beauty, of the finest color and finest quality. Eighty-three carats! I loved it dearly. I told Farouk about it. And one thing led to another—the stars in Narriman’s eyes—and Farouk said he would like to buy the diamond. We settled on $1,125,000.”
As Harry Winston described the romantic scene, you could just see and hear it all happening.
“I had no reason to doubt the man,” continued Harry Winston. “After all, he was a king—and I had done business with him before. So I agreed to sell and Farouk was delighted. The diamond was delivered to him. I’d said to Farouk ‘I understand your circumstances at the moment—you can pay me at your convenience.’
“A year went by—and the king’s convenience had not turned up. One day in July 1052, I was at my country home outside New York. A call came through. It was from Alexandria. Farouk was on the line. He said he had a 55-carat emerald which had belonged to Catherine the Great. In view of his debt to me of nearly two million dollars, he wondered whether I would have arbitration about the value of this emerald and accept it in part payment of his debt to me. And then the line went dead.”
Later on Winston heard the story of what had happened. The American Ambassador to Egypt, Mr Jefferson Cafferey, had gone to Alexandria to say farewell to Farouk on his abdication and departure from Egypt in the royal yacht. As Mr Cafferey took his leave, Farouk pressed into the Ambassador’s hand the Catherine the Great emerald. It came to America in the diplomatic pouch, with the message from Farouk that “rest will follow”. But “The Star of the East” did not follow—nor did its equivalent in cash.
In due course, Farouk set up his court in exile in the Isle of Capri. He left Harry Winston know that ‘The Star of the East’ had been left behind in the palace safe in Cairo. Winston took legal action, which led to a search of the safe deposits in the palace. But the diamond was missing. Then legal action was taken against the Egyptian government and Winston won his case. But Colonel Nasser ignored the court’s injunction and not a sou was paid. Some time later Harry was at a party in the south of France where he met a cousin of Farouk’s, who had been Minister of Finance during Farouk’s regime. The cousin said that Farouk, in exile, had nevertheless been getting a lot of gold out of Egypt, shipping out his assets quite freely. This alerted Winston to the possibility of recouping some of the debt Farouk owed.
“I have since employed a very smart investigator,” remarked Harry Winston, ‘and the story is not ended.”
One immediately understands from the way Harry says this that some quite remarkable development can be expected to happen in the quite near future.
But what a setting all this is for one of the greatest best sellers of all time! There are all the ingredients—a king, a beautiful queen, a great world famous merchant, a royal honeymoon at Cannes, a mansion on a promontory overlooking the Mediterranean, the royal coffeemaker, the royal yacht at Alexandria, the American ambassador, the diplomatic pouch, the Isle of Capri, beautiful and historic emeralds, special agents—and, at the center of them all, this lovely 83 carat pear-shaped gem, ‘The Star of the East’. I had always thought these things were the figments of an imagination as lively as the late Ian Fleming’s—but no, here they are in a real life drama. Stories like this bubble out of Harry Winston, if you can get him in the mood and with the time to tell them. I egged him on.
“Yes,” he said, “there was also a certain king of Saudi Arabia—a man of very, very great wealth—from oil, you know. He had a very large court—four wives and something like eighty concubines. He was a considerable exponent of the art of love. They were all young girls. A connoisseur he was. The king became a client of mine—he needed many jewels.
“I told the king at one of our meetings that I had a diamond of perfect quality—a 62-carat pear-shape—but it was not for sale. I loved it so much I’d done something I’d never done before—I’d called it ‘the Harry Winston Diamond’. The king became excited. He said:
“Harry, I must have it’ and he went on insisting. And, anxious lest I should change my mind, after I had been persuaded to sell, he asked that the diamond be wrapped up there and then and handed over to him.”
Eighteen months later the king visited Boston from Saudi Arabia for treatment to the retina of an eye.
“I was summoned to Boston to see the king. He needed more diamonds and I sold him two million dollars worth of jewelry. And when we had concluded our deals, the king passed over the table a small parcel. It was in the familiar wrapping of our house. It had not been opened. I recognized it.
“Harry,” said the king. “I hope you will credit me with this against the jewels I’ve just bought from you.” I was astonished. “But you can’t give this back,” I said in my amazement, “It’s the most beautiful diamond.” The king looked at me quizzically.
“Harry,” he said, “I’m fond of living, just as you are. I want to go on living. If I gave this stone to one of my four wives, well, my life would not be worth a moment’s purchase.”
“As I was taking my leave, the king asked: “By the way, Harry, if you have three other gems just like that, let me know.”
Harry Winston knows a good story when he has one, and he would certainly not paint the lily.
“But Shakespeare also says, ‘tis very silly
To gild refined gold, or paint the lily.”
But there is a sequel to the story of the king of Saudi Arabia that I think justifies its being added here.
“I always believe in fate,” said Harry Winston. “There’s a great deal of luck in this world of ours. But it’s not all luck. Foresight and a lot of other things go into it too.”
“Anyhow, about three weeks later, in the normal course of business, I was asked to value some estate jewelry. It had belonged to the late Mary Byron Foy, a daughter of Jack Chrysler, the motor car tycoon. I opened the parcel and, to my amazement, I found what appeared to be an exact replica of ‘the Harry Winston Diamond’, the 62-carat pear-shape the King of Saudi Arabia had handed back to me. I rubbed my eyes. But it was a diamond all right—not a replica. It was a perfect match. I called for my diamond to compare the two. They were perfectly matched. But mine was 62 carats and this was 60 carats. The difference was so infinitesimal—it was negligible. They had to be a pair of earrings—they were made for each other. I bought the Foy diamond and made a pair of earrings. “In due course some old clients of mine got to hear that I had something special. They were Mr and Mrs Killam, of Canada. When Mrs Killam came to see them, she burst out: ‘These are mine’. And so they were—immediately.
“If you believe in fate, here’s a perfect example of how it can work to your advantage most unexpectedly.”
And then Harry began philosophizing a bit. “It’s not just fate or luck. You have to work hard—and work hard following your fate, pursuing your luck and taking advantage of what comes your way. You need imagination, perception, intelligence, perseverance—and luck. And you must know what you are doing.
“There’s something about jewels—they grow on you. You get to love diamonds, you get to love jewels—emeralds, rubies too. You love them for themselves. You life wraps itself round them. And, although it sometimes breaks my heart to do so, I enjoy selling diamonds. I find it a very absorbing and entertaining pastime.”
When I remarked that Harry Winston shared with the late Sir Ernest Oppenheimer a love of diamonds for themselves, Harry Winston’s personal assistant, Jill Ciraldo, chimed in: “You know, Mr Winston plays with diamonds as if they were toys.” And Harry nodded—delighted.
(via International Diamond Annual, Vol.1, 1971) A N Wilson writes:
Prince Of Diamonds
Some anecdotes of Harry Winston
Harry Winston is not merely the prince of diamond merchants. He is a king amongst raconteurs. His repertoire of anecdotes about diamonds is imperial. Prince and potentate, with diamonds in their crowns, have been his clients and his confidantes. Both the crowned and uncrowned heads of Europe and of Asia wear the jewels that Harry Winston found and sold to them. And a great sparkle of joy, as brilliant as the gleam from his latest tiara, shines in Harry’s eyes as he turns to tell you his next story of how he sold a whopping big diamond t o the King of Siam. The great thing about Harry Winston is that he enjoys himself. When he recalls an anecdote, he lives again every moment of it and he enjoys the fun of it all over again.
I sat entranced in his secluded office in New York’s Fifth Avenue as Harry Winston responded to my request for some of his best stories.
“You know,” he said. “I sometimes feel I’m a bit of a fool. When I get up in the morning and shave and look in the mirror, I often say to myself ‘What sort of a crass idiot are you? Here is a crass idiot if ever there were one! Why do you do this? Why do you go on doing this? Why do you fret yourself employing three hundred people in that building of yours and another whole floor of them across the way and something like 3000 cutters in several different countries—why do you do it? Harry, there’s a sickness in you.’
“And, of course, it is so, it is a sickness. But it does not need any medicine. It is in the blood.”
You can sense that sly humor and the fun in this man as he talks like that. But you can also recognize the enjoyment he gets out of diamonds and out of what he has done and still does with them.
“There it is—it’s in the blood. I rejoice in this. I love diamonds. They are my life. And this is how I live still—a little bit of madman, no doubt, as some people will say: but I’m quite content to be like this, so long as I am enjoying my life as much as I do.”
Whisper has it that Harry has turned seventy. Nobody really knows and he would not let me into the secret. But whatever his age, he’s still a dynamic man. He still does a great deal of selling himself, dealing personally with clients of long standing. He likes to go on exercising the long-range judgment, the experience and the intuition which, together, have made him the greatest diamond merchant in the world.
“You’ve got to have ‘guts’ and you’ve got have ‘wits’ in this damned business,” he says. And he always returns to the point in the conversations I have had with him, that it is no use dealing in this diamond business unless you have a love of diamonds and of gems as a whole. Farouk of Egypt was one of Harry Winston’s clients. Farouk was always a great purchaser of diamonds, occasionally for cash, more often on credit.
“Farouk was an interesting man himself. We had many amusing and exciting conversations together,” recalls Harry. “As a king and a client I thought he must be reliable, for the he had the wealth of Egypt at his command.”
On one occasion—in 1951—Winston made a deal with Farouk, who bought a 700000 dollar emerald. It was for Farouk’s new bride, Queen Narriman. Soon afterwards Harry and his wife, Edna, went with their children to the south of France for their usual holiday. Farouk and Queen Narriman were at Cannes and they invited the Winstons to dinner. The beautiful Narriman wore the emerald. It was a very pleasant and happy occasion. Then the Winstons reciprocated by inviting the royal couple to dinner at their lovely home on a promontory looking out over the Mediterranean. Farouk sent his bodyguards to surround the residence and his coffeemaker to superintend the production of the meal.
“It was all great success and, as things do on such occasions, proceedings continued well into the wee small hours. Sometime about four in the morning, the early dawn was coming and Farouk and I walked out on to the terrace. The morning star was there in the east—in glowing brilliance. At that time I happened to have a magnificent diamond, which I had called ‘The Star of the East’. It was a great gem—a pear-shape of great beauty, of the finest color and finest quality. Eighty-three carats! I loved it dearly. I told Farouk about it. And one thing led to another—the stars in Narriman’s eyes—and Farouk said he would like to buy the diamond. We settled on $1,125,000.”
As Harry Winston described the romantic scene, you could just see and hear it all happening.
“I had no reason to doubt the man,” continued Harry Winston. “After all, he was a king—and I had done business with him before. So I agreed to sell and Farouk was delighted. The diamond was delivered to him. I’d said to Farouk ‘I understand your circumstances at the moment—you can pay me at your convenience.’
“A year went by—and the king’s convenience had not turned up. One day in July 1052, I was at my country home outside New York. A call came through. It was from Alexandria. Farouk was on the line. He said he had a 55-carat emerald which had belonged to Catherine the Great. In view of his debt to me of nearly two million dollars, he wondered whether I would have arbitration about the value of this emerald and accept it in part payment of his debt to me. And then the line went dead.”
Later on Winston heard the story of what had happened. The American Ambassador to Egypt, Mr Jefferson Cafferey, had gone to Alexandria to say farewell to Farouk on his abdication and departure from Egypt in the royal yacht. As Mr Cafferey took his leave, Farouk pressed into the Ambassador’s hand the Catherine the Great emerald. It came to America in the diplomatic pouch, with the message from Farouk that “rest will follow”. But “The Star of the East” did not follow—nor did its equivalent in cash.
In due course, Farouk set up his court in exile in the Isle of Capri. He left Harry Winston know that ‘The Star of the East’ had been left behind in the palace safe in Cairo. Winston took legal action, which led to a search of the safe deposits in the palace. But the diamond was missing. Then legal action was taken against the Egyptian government and Winston won his case. But Colonel Nasser ignored the court’s injunction and not a sou was paid. Some time later Harry was at a party in the south of France where he met a cousin of Farouk’s, who had been Minister of Finance during Farouk’s regime. The cousin said that Farouk, in exile, had nevertheless been getting a lot of gold out of Egypt, shipping out his assets quite freely. This alerted Winston to the possibility of recouping some of the debt Farouk owed.
“I have since employed a very smart investigator,” remarked Harry Winston, ‘and the story is not ended.”
One immediately understands from the way Harry says this that some quite remarkable development can be expected to happen in the quite near future.
But what a setting all this is for one of the greatest best sellers of all time! There are all the ingredients—a king, a beautiful queen, a great world famous merchant, a royal honeymoon at Cannes, a mansion on a promontory overlooking the Mediterranean, the royal coffeemaker, the royal yacht at Alexandria, the American ambassador, the diplomatic pouch, the Isle of Capri, beautiful and historic emeralds, special agents—and, at the center of them all, this lovely 83 carat pear-shaped gem, ‘The Star of the East’. I had always thought these things were the figments of an imagination as lively as the late Ian Fleming’s—but no, here they are in a real life drama. Stories like this bubble out of Harry Winston, if you can get him in the mood and with the time to tell them. I egged him on.
“Yes,” he said, “there was also a certain king of Saudi Arabia—a man of very, very great wealth—from oil, you know. He had a very large court—four wives and something like eighty concubines. He was a considerable exponent of the art of love. They were all young girls. A connoisseur he was. The king became a client of mine—he needed many jewels.
“I told the king at one of our meetings that I had a diamond of perfect quality—a 62-carat pear-shape—but it was not for sale. I loved it so much I’d done something I’d never done before—I’d called it ‘the Harry Winston Diamond’. The king became excited. He said:
“Harry, I must have it’ and he went on insisting. And, anxious lest I should change my mind, after I had been persuaded to sell, he asked that the diamond be wrapped up there and then and handed over to him.”
Eighteen months later the king visited Boston from Saudi Arabia for treatment to the retina of an eye.
“I was summoned to Boston to see the king. He needed more diamonds and I sold him two million dollars worth of jewelry. And when we had concluded our deals, the king passed over the table a small parcel. It was in the familiar wrapping of our house. It had not been opened. I recognized it.
“Harry,” said the king. “I hope you will credit me with this against the jewels I’ve just bought from you.” I was astonished. “But you can’t give this back,” I said in my amazement, “It’s the most beautiful diamond.” The king looked at me quizzically.
“Harry,” he said, “I’m fond of living, just as you are. I want to go on living. If I gave this stone to one of my four wives, well, my life would not be worth a moment’s purchase.”
“As I was taking my leave, the king asked: “By the way, Harry, if you have three other gems just like that, let me know.”
Harry Winston knows a good story when he has one, and he would certainly not paint the lily.
“But Shakespeare also says, ‘tis very silly
To gild refined gold, or paint the lily.”
But there is a sequel to the story of the king of Saudi Arabia that I think justifies its being added here.
“I always believe in fate,” said Harry Winston. “There’s a great deal of luck in this world of ours. But it’s not all luck. Foresight and a lot of other things go into it too.”
“Anyhow, about three weeks later, in the normal course of business, I was asked to value some estate jewelry. It had belonged to the late Mary Byron Foy, a daughter of Jack Chrysler, the motor car tycoon. I opened the parcel and, to my amazement, I found what appeared to be an exact replica of ‘the Harry Winston Diamond’, the 62-carat pear-shape the King of Saudi Arabia had handed back to me. I rubbed my eyes. But it was a diamond all right—not a replica. It was a perfect match. I called for my diamond to compare the two. They were perfectly matched. But mine was 62 carats and this was 60 carats. The difference was so infinitesimal—it was negligible. They had to be a pair of earrings—they were made for each other. I bought the Foy diamond and made a pair of earrings. “In due course some old clients of mine got to hear that I had something special. They were Mr and Mrs Killam, of Canada. When Mrs Killam came to see them, she burst out: ‘These are mine’. And so they were—immediately.
“If you believe in fate, here’s a perfect example of how it can work to your advantage most unexpectedly.”
And then Harry began philosophizing a bit. “It’s not just fate or luck. You have to work hard—and work hard following your fate, pursuing your luck and taking advantage of what comes your way. You need imagination, perception, intelligence, perseverance—and luck. And you must know what you are doing.
“There’s something about jewels—they grow on you. You get to love diamonds, you get to love jewels—emeralds, rubies too. You love them for themselves. You life wraps itself round them. And, although it sometimes breaks my heart to do so, I enjoy selling diamonds. I find it a very absorbing and entertaining pastime.”
When I remarked that Harry Winston shared with the late Sir Ernest Oppenheimer a love of diamonds for themselves, Harry Winston’s personal assistant, Jill Ciraldo, chimed in: “You know, Mr Winston plays with diamonds as if they were toys.” And Harry nodded—delighted.
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