Interviewed by Irina Malkova
WITH MAXIM ARTSINOVICH, PRESIDENT OF THE ENGLISH JEWELRY HOUSE MAXIMILIAN - LONDON, OUR MAGAZINE IS CONNECTED BY AN EXTERNAL FRIENDSHIP. EVERY TIME IN HIS INTERVIEW, HE TELLS SUCH THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN DISCUSSED FOR LONG TIME AT RECEPTIONS OR TRANSMITTED FROM MOUTH TO LAST DURING LONG FLIGHTS THROUGH THE ATLANTIC. TAKE A RELAX - THIS TIME YOU ARE WAITING FOR A HISTORY NOW OTHER THAN FROM THE SERIES OF ADVENTURES OF INDIANA JONES.
Treasure hunter
Maxim, it’s no secret that in jewelry, it all starts with the purchase of stones. How and where do you get such large stones for your jewelry?
M. A .: Well, first of all, several times a year we go to jewelry exhibitions in Hong Kong, Italy, France, Japan, Las Vegas, Germany, Tusson, New York, Istanbul and Dubai. Sometimes you wonder! Digging everywhere - in the mountains and underground, digging everything - children, women, old people. People of all races and nationalities, all ages and social castes. The thirst for profit does not leave anyone. And this is not bad - this is what drives our industry! But besides this, we, jewelers, have a life characteristic that can only be seen in adventure films.
In search of gems we travel around the world, we really look for them, fly for this to the island of Madagascar, to Brazil, to Sri Lanka, to Colombia, to Myanmar, which was formerly called Burma, we meet with military generals, with African dictators, the heads of the criminal clans that control this business are friends with Yakuza, we meet such international swindlers and scammers that sometimes you no longer understand where the truth is and where the fiction! Super gemologists with professional equipment travel with us on an expedition. They locally determine the color, purity and quality of stones. When we form a certain lot, there are long exhausting negotiations on the price - to the point of insanity and sometimes very emotional. But the most important thing is that when we go, for example, to Colombia, we take with us 20 guards from the special forces of the local army. We pay them a lot of money so that they protect us.
Our business is very dangerous, and those travelers with money who travel the world in search of treasures often become victims of abductions. Because people who sell stones understand that if you are kidnapped, you can safely ask for a ransom of $ 5-10 million, and not sell you stones for years and save money for a better life. Having stolen you, they can call your relatives, send them cut off ears or fingers. Such cases occur every year. I know jewelers who have cut off fingers and scars from cigarettes on their hands and face, and at the same time they continue to work in our business, no one leaves here. Unless in the next world. This is a business of dynasties, fathers and children! And of course, grandfathers are always at the head of family clans. Today, Count is already well over 70, Madame Mussaeff is already 85, and in New York there is one Jewish family where the head of the family and the founder of the business comes to work every day - at 95.
After all, a stone, from the moment it was extracted from the bowels of the earth, when it was cleaned, washed, sawn, cut, polished and certified in the gemology laboratory, before it enters the finished jewelry, it passes through a huge number of different people - good and bad, honest and vile, good and evil, professionals and crooks, talented and not so; it's like flying through thorns to the stars. Therefore, when you come, for example, to the same Colombia or Africa, where human life costs $ 10, where 13-year-old children have Kalashnikovs and, in principle, they do not cost anything to shoot a man for Snickers, you need to be very careful, you need to know the culture of this country, local customs, understand who and what to say and how to look at whom. It is here that you understand the meaning of the words of the great Pushkin: “Ah, evil tongues are worse than a pistol!” One incorrectly spoken word in Latin America kills on the spot. And you always need to have armed guards with you, trusted people. At the same time, he did everything to ensure that the security itself did not abduct you. Therefore, the most reliable people are local special services, as elsewhere in principle. As a professional officer, it’s easy with me and everything is clear to them.
Is such a purchase of stones legal?
M. A .: I will answer a question with a question: what are legal stones?
Maybe those that sell at auctions?
M. A .: And how and where do they get to the auction? Just think, how do stones from the earth get to auctions and jewelry exhibitions? Various government organizations are now trying to control this process and impose their own rules of the game. Remember how in the film "Blood Diamond" in Africa, diamonds were mined at gunpoints of a Kalashnikov assault rifle, how poor peasants washed stones in a river and exploiters mocked them? But the fact is that 90% of the stones are mined in this way. And African children are often forced to earn hard labor for a piece of bread. Another thing is that if a ten-year-old boy finds a good diamond or ruby in Mozambique, his father will take him to the capital and sell him to a reseller for the amount by which the whole family will buy two huts and a dozen cows! And this kid will be in his village and his family in authority! Incidentally, I began my career at the age of six in the central market of the city of Grozny in 1976 with the unloading of trucks with watermelons. He earned 25-30 rubles a day, and he also had to return home with yards so that Chechens would not take money away from another school or yard on the way. This was the real yard school of life!
And if you think that all precious stones are mined only through companies that have received official licenses and which have modern 
equipment, then it is not. Yes, ALROSA or Rio Tinto have equipment, Graff Diamonds have their own deposits in which they dig rocks in mines at a depth of 1.5 km with machines. No one, however, ever talks about how the local employees who work there steal the extracted stones. But in 90% of cases in the world, stones are mined by black diggers who dig mines themselves.
The question is different - how to buy gems safely. The answer is simple - never, under any circumstances, bring cash with you to the country where you buy raw materials. Otherwise, you will be kidnapped with money. And it’s your wrong guards who can steal money in the first place, because why should they protect you if you can get a jackpot of several million dollars and suddenly become a super-rich person by their standards? They all argue like that, all to one - and the guards, and bodyguards, and the military. Therefore, we insure ourselves in every sense - both on paper in insurance companies and in business. We always tell them: “Guys, bring the raw materials to our office in New York on 5th Avenue, to where we are protected by law and the police, where we have video cameras, armored doors, specialists with equipment, etc.” . Because if you came to Colombia and took some first-class raw materials there, sealed it in a bag and put a seal on it, this still does not guarantee that it will not be substituted for you. Therefore, today we have perfected the process of buying stones. We only buy them in New York, Dubai, London or Geneva. Our gemologist experts work for several days in our laboratory, determine the purity of the stones, and then lay them out by color, quality and weight. Then the stones are cut and cut. Colored gemstones are best cut in New York and Bangkok. They also do it perfectly in one small village, Idar-Oberstein in Germany, where they have been doing this craft for more than 600 years. After cutting, the stones are given for certification to an independent gemological laboratory. For large and expensive stones, I always make three certificates from different independent laboratories - in order to have an alternative opinion from different gemologists. And only after that I sell stones to large Jewelry houses - this is my main business. My clients are all the famous Jewelry houses in Place Vendome, in London, in Geneva and in New York.
Why do they themselves prefer not to mine stones?
M. A .: Everything is simple. Because the French are very conservative, the British are snobs, and the Americans are reinsurers. And none of them wants to work with crime and cartels. This is scary and dangerous, you can stay without a head! And I understand what kind of people they are and how I can work with them. I’m not doing anything illegal. They bring me the goods, I select, evaluate, bargain and buy. For example, they bring me excellent Afghan emeralds from the Panjshir Gorge. It is traditionally believed that Colombian emeralds are the best, but emeralds of small size and weight (2, 3, 4 carats) from Afghanistan are better - they have a more saturated color and a lot of inner game, glow, life. Why aren't there large emeralds? Because in Afghanistan the rock is blown up with TNT in the old fashioned way, and then they go and collect these colored glass. And since the emerald is beryl and its hardness according to the Mohs table is only 7.5 (for ruby and sapphire it is 9.5 and for diamond it is 10), it is very fragile. The stone has an internal tension, from which cracks can form and it can burst, so the emerald must be treated very scrupulously and delicately, and the Afghans do not understand this. So it turns out that the stones from Afghanistan are always brought to us small. But, one way or another, we are the first hand, the first dealers, those people who buy directly from the miners. And here the most interesting begins.
Tears of the gods
But in the world now there are a huge number of stones that were mined much earlier, hundreds of years ago ...
M. A .: Here you need to understand that the earth "gave birth" to all the stones 10-15 million years ago. Any stone was formed by chemical processes even at the time when tectonic plates moved, fires raged on the ground and lava flowed. And at inaccessible depths, at certain temperatures and tremendous pressure, precious stones formed.
But a stone is not a mushroom. If it was mined in the ground or cut off from rock, it will no longer grow. Of course, it can grow in other places, because chemical processes on the earth occur constantly and new stones form at certain depths, although this issue has not been fully studied and I am working on it. But what we get today was created by mother nature from 5 to 15 million years ago. And the man who first removes the stone from the rock, takes his virginity and condemns him to eternal wanderings on the Earth. After all, our human life on the scale of stone’s life is an instant, a flash! Stones live thousands of human lives. Changing owners and cities, homes and continents, frames and brands. They have seen this! I believe that they are living organisms - the guardians of the secrets and secrets of mankind! In this case, the stone, in turn, either takes away energy from a person or gives him strength. It’s different for everyone. Because the first person who extracts the stone dooms it to long life and eternal torment. After all, after this, the gem will be a matter of contention: it will be given as a sign of eternal love, then during a divorce the unfortunate abandoned women will take it to a pawnshop or sell it to buyers. These stones on scooter boys will be pulled out of the ears of Bentley passengers at Cape Antibes. Criminals will go into a restaurant with “trunks” and delicately ask visitors to remove all jewelry and watches, as it was this summer in Saint-Tropez in the famous restaurant “Villa Romano”. These stones will be confiscated at Russian customs by the wives of the oligarchs and then sold at private auctions "for their own", they will be killed because of them, they will be stolen from safes in hotels in Monte Carlo; fraudsters will pour powder-sleeping pills into their victims' glasses in order to then steal these stones. Because of precious stones, wars started earlier, they were given in exchange for life, just as for the life of Lermontov the Russian tsar was given a diamond, which, if I am not mistaken, is in the Diamond Fund in Moscow. And all because stones are the most expensive and compact financial instrument on Earth, which can also be easily transported across all borders. And to stop this process, to standardize or legalize it is impossible. For example, pink, blue or red diamonds, Burmese rubies and Kashmir sapphires worth $ 5, 10, 20 million dollars quite easily cross all the borders of the world just on people who wear jewelry.
In any country in the world there will always be professional dealers who buy your jewelry not for the sake of the brand, but for the sake of a rare stone. So the gem is the most compact asset on Earth, created by nature itself. A pebble the size of a nail, with a five-pence coin, is tens of millions of dollars. On Earth there is and never will be anything like stones, no other alternative.
Why do you think people at the very beginning of time decided that stones have such a value? Just because of beauty?
M. A .: This is a completely incomprehensible thing for me. Now I began to write the third book on the life of precious stones. For many years I was preparing for this, collecting materials. There I set forth my thoughts, conjectures and conjectures just in relation to the value of stones. Few have done such global historical research. But once upon a time, as soon as people had their first financial instruments: dice or coins, and they began to exchange one product for another (and this was back in the era of the Sumerian civilization), someone told them that you can use this gems are "tears of the earth." Perhaps it was a "divine insight." It’s still a mystery to me why in ancient times people chose this “sacred four” for exchange: ruby, sapphire, emerald and diamond. Why exactly four is a magic number, and not five and not six? Why are the same tourmalines that are sold on a par with diamonds today not precious? Or alexandrites, aquamarines, citrines and all other stones? They are considered semiprecious, and only this magical four are truly precious.
Are there really no geological criteria?
M. A .: As such, geological criteria do not exist. People just decided that ruby, sapphire, emerald and diamond would be precious. We decided all! The magic of color! See how beautiful they are and how they fit together. It was for these stones that cattle, women, cities were bought, it was because of them that wars began and the empire perished. If we watch films about three musketeers, Cherokee Indians, pirates of the Caribbean, we will see that knights and musketeers, pirates and Indians always have leather bags on their belts with precious stones, as they were called “gems”, along with bags with silver and gold. To know in ancient Rome, and in later times, she always removed a ring with a stone from her finger and paid them in gratitude for what she had done or simply as a keepsake. Then there were no diamond cutting tools (modern cutting only appeared at the end of the 19th century, with the advent of electricity), in ancient times it was done differently: a leather bag was attached to the rider under the saddle, in which sand was poured and gems were placed, and when the horseman galloped, abrasive treatment took place: sand crystals rubbed against stones, and stones - against each other, gradually acquiring a semicircular or oval shape. Therefore, in ancient times, all the stones had the shape of cabochons. But they were never even - when they were taken out of this bag, they were polished with animal skin or various pastes - ash or clay. So beautiful gems appeared in which light was magically refracted.And in ancient times, people believed in magic, believed that precious stones carry power, protect from the evil eye, from enemies; the stones demonized and attributed to them supernatural properties.
Do you yourself believe in these properties of stones?
M. A .: I feel the energy of stones, they fascinate me. Therefore, I work in this business. Stones attract me, and to some extent I belong to them. You buy raw materials for 20-30 million dollars, then you see how a gem from natural raw materials comes out from under the hands of a cutter. After that, we - jewelers, designers and creative people - begin to come up with the design of future jewelry. My jewelry is born only in my sore head and always in a dream, at night. I make pencil sketches, put stones on a white sheet of paper, draw in color and give sketches to professional artists. Then - 3D modeling on a computer, a lot of master models, metal casting, fixing, polishing, ultrasonic cleaning ... And so every piece of jewelry is born in the hands of the master.
Flying high
What are the criteria for high jewelry and how does it differ from, say, simple, solidly made jewelry?
M. A .: Here it is important to understand how Jewelry houses are arranged. I believe that the Mecca for people who love and understand jewelry is Place Vendome in Paris. And for jewelers, artists and designers, this is also a place of worship. No one in the last 300 years has created better jewelry than in Paris. This is my opinion as a jeweler, art critic, art collector and gem expert. All the greatest that happens in the jewelry world on our planet is born on Place Vendome - in Van Cleef & Arpels, Boucheron, Cartier and about ten more private jewelry ateliers in neighboring streets. This is a whole culture, industry, traditions ... All together it is the spirit of Paris, freedom, the spirit of revolution. And why did someone say that Italians are the best jewelers on earth? It is not true. Indeed, at some point, in the XVII-XVIII century, the Italian jewelers from Florence and Venice, who served the royal court, were good. But the present, high jewelry art has always been imbued with the spirit of Paris. Never, under any circumstances, nor Harry Winston - the House that I really love and respect - neither the Tiffany company, which I value for their excellent marketing, nor Bulgari - the most expensive jewelry company on earth, sold for 3.5 billion euros to mine friend Bernard Arnault, does not compare for me with the real French.
It's like a kitchen: there is delicious and healthy Italian, which is close to us in culture, but there is a high, incomprehensible and very expensive - French! And she, of course, with three Michelin stars! Place Vandome is a dream, it is the highest achievement, it is the Order of the Legion of Honor, if you like!
When, in your opinion, was the heyday of jewelry art in a historical context?
M. A .: The end of the XIX - the beginning of the XX century: the era of Art Deco before the First World War. All the finest in handmade metal work came to us from distant Japan, when the production and carrying of traditional weapons was banned there. Masters quickly switched to products with the finest inlay on metal. But in fact, the roots lie much deeper - 5000 years ago.
Ancient Egypt - this is where it all began. I’m even afraid to mention the Inca and Mayan gold - so we will completely go into the jungle of history. Today, in the XXI century, rather, there is a decline in jewelry. Why do I think so? Because the designers who are currently working at Van Cleef & Arpels, Boucheron, MaximiliaN - London, Tiffani, Graff, are mostly around 40-50-60 years old and we are still a generation, not Pepsi, as I call them. We grew up on the books and classics of theater and cinema, without gadgets and Facebook. We still love life like in the Fellini films, and we listen to Sinatra.
I’m doing creative work myself. Of course, this is a business that allows me to live beautifully, fly around the world, it opens up great opportunities and many doors for me - and I like it. I did not set myself the goal of making a billion or two dollars, but nevertheless I managed to achieve the fact that two royal families from the Middle East are negotiating with us, who are discussing investments - from $ 150 million and above - into our company.
I understand that this money will give a very powerful impetus to our business around the world - opening boutiques, a new design studio in Paris, creating new collections ... But the fact is that we were born in the 20th century and are the bearers of that culture. Human life is very fleeting. After some time, I will be 60, then 70, and then I will not. We all come to this world for a short time and leave it. So my mom died this year, the Kingdom of Heaven is for her, after that I matured in my heart for twenty years. And we are carriers of the culture that we received from our parents, and from their parents, and from the society in which we were brought up. It’s even hard for me to imagine what a computer or iPhone will be like in 10 years. Perhaps the iPhone will pop out of my pocket or be transparent. And maybe in 30 years we will be still alive and some implants will be sewn into our brains into which we can insert USB and upload knowledge of different languages and thousands of books of world literature there. Technologies are developing rapidly. As my friend from London Timur Artemyev says, our generation will live at least 100 years due to the development of technology, because of new drugs and because we have already learned how to grow human organs. The generation of today's 40-year-olds is different from the generation of 60-year-olds, and the generation of 20-year-olds is different from the generation of 40-year-olds. And the talented artists who are now 20 years old who go after art academies to work at Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, MaximiliaN - London - they are completely different from us, they have a different outlook on life, a different mentality. At the same time, I understand very clearly what, for example, is the difference between me and Lawrence Graf: he is 74 and I am 44. These 30 years are a huge gap. He was very cool and fashionable in the 70s, but in the XXI century the Count is no longer the same. I do not criticize him - I am equal to him - but he is no longer cool. Its design is outdated, it is for very adult conservative people. I always watch how fashion and design change in the jewelry business. For example, I was impressed by the new Tiffani bracelet. This is the 21st century, it is creative. And jewelry of the future will absolutely not look like classic "grandmother" necklaces. It will be something completely different.
You are a man with a military education, and judging by what you are telling, you are in touch with the rather tough side of the business. Nevertheless, in the collections of MaximiliaN - London you can see so subtle and graceful jewelry, for example from pearls and diamonds, as if the forefathers of the master in three generations were engaged only in the creation of jewelry masterpieces.
M. A .: I make sketches of large jewelry myself. But, like any brand, I have as many as 13 artists around the world. These are Italians, French, Germans, Swiss, Russians, Japanese, Koreans, Arabs. Each is good in his own, each has his own direction. I do not put any barriers to my artists. I tell them: draw everything that you consider necessary, everything that you consider fashionable. And they draw. Not so long ago, I realized that Art Deco came into fashion again. But ardeco is one of my favorite styles in art. I have a long-standing dream - to create my own jewelry museum, and someday I will certainly fulfill it. When I have more time, I will retire and sell my company. But so far these are only plans. I really love to go to antique exhibitions in Paris, Italy, London and Hong Kong. I like old things very much, because before everything was created by hands, it was real creativity, people put their soul into it.
Artists painted sketches by candlelight, masters created their products only with their hands! For me, antique jewelry is real art. As for our line of pearl bracelets and necklaces, one day at an exhibition in Japan I saw the strings of the smallest pearls 1 mm in diameter (and I, as a jeweler, must first see a stone or object so that the idea of a new jewelry is born in my head ) The Japanese told me how they mine it, how they manually drill holes in small pearls with special needles that are thinner than human hair. After that, we created our own line of similar jewelry. In general, what the Japanese are able to do, no one can do - even with the most modern technology.
And how many jewelry a year do you produce?
M. A .: We have about 2500 products a year.
Pretty little.
M. A .: Yes, it is very small. We are a small private club of contemporary jewelry. We create things exclusively according to the individual wishes of customers. First, we sell them “loose stones” at investment prices, and not at the crazy prices of great brands, and only then we draw for the customer and make a true masterpiece.
Do you know how many products, for example, Van Cleef & Arpels sells?
M. A .: I can’t give exact figures, but I know from official data that Van Cleef & Arpels sells two and a half billion euros a year. Just like Cartier - for the same amount. This is a lot! But the fact is that this is the sale of the entire group and it includes glasses, watches, perfumes, accessories, bags, leather belts and silk scarves.
The sale of high jewelry items from them takes no more than 5% of the total turnover. Therefore, with a turnover of more than $ 100 million per year, most of our profits are generated from the sale of precious stones to Jewelry houses, and not from the sale of jewelry. We are a small exclusive boutique and know every client by sight. We are private banking art jewelry! But when I created the company, I immediately, from the first day, announced that I was working in the segment of high jewelry art. There are companies that start slowly and slowly climb Everest to get to the level of Cartier, Graff, Harry Winston, Boucheron, etc. And I climbed right there, because I knew what and how I wanted to do it. I said that I would rather make 10 products a year, but worthy of the level of collectors and royal families.
Have you asked about the criteria for high jewelry? So - this is the art whose items are bought by collectors. These are private clients, representatives of royal families, sheikhs, princes, aristocracy from Europe, rich Americans and educated Russians. They arrive at the Biennale in Paris at the Grand Palais, looking for those things that European Houses release in a single copy (Piece Unique). Masters have been working on such jewelry for years.
And for these jewelry, they naturally look for special stones.
M. A .: Yes, precious stones are doomed to an infinitely long and painful life. Today, stones have reached us that were mined 2, 3, 5 thousand years ago. The stone does not evaporate, does not exhale, it can sink with someone on the Titanic, burn in a furnace in a concentration camp, it can be lost, buried with a man in the tomb - and after 5 thousand years black diggers will get it. In all the mounds that Genghis Khan left behind, people were buried with decorations, because they believed that they would need them in the afterlife. And black diggers found all this through millennia. You ask me: where is all this? And these stones live among us. Today, when we come to Cartier to buy a ring and pay $ 5 million for it, we cannot be sure of its origin and history. We jewelers can track history one, two generations maximum, back through auctions, but no more.
In other words, now we adorn ourselves with stones that were worn, say, even under the Roman Empire?
M. A .: Maybe. And when you buy a stone in Boucheron, no one can give you a guarantee that the ring with this stone was not on the finger of a pharaoh in ancient Egypt, the emperor or one of the Roman centurions, because then there was a different cut. The stones saw many deaths, they were killed for them, they were carried by dozens and hundreds of different women, who were sometimes exiled to the monastery or killed; perhaps after that the stone fell to someone from the Tatar-Mongol horde, who wore it on the finger of his hand, which was up to the elbow in blood; then this man was buried, and after 1000 years the grave was excavated and found in it this stone. Therefore, no one can guarantee you anything. The gemological certificate may indicate the place or region in which the stone was mined, for example, in Afghanistan, in Colombia, in Burma.
But it is impossible to determine, exactly as in the navigator, its initial location, and say when the stone was removed from the earth - 1000 or 2000 years ago. And the fact that the stones have seen in their lifetime, God forbid, see anyone. Therefore, I feel great pleasure in depriving them of their virginity - I buy original natural raw materials and turn them into precious stones. Our Jewelry House is the first hands and they are clean. It is in this sense that we are unique.
